Please see below for an official statement from Sony on the situation regarding the PSN. This has been copied in whole as to not miss out any important information.
“Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve the current outage of PlayStation Network & Qriocity services. We are currently working to send a similar message to the one below via email to all of our registered account holders regarding a compromise of personal information as a result of an illegal intrusion on our systems. These malicious actions have also had an impact on your ability to enjoy the services provided by PlayStation Network and Qriocity including online gaming and online access to music, movies, sports and TV shows. We have a clear path to have PlayStation Network and Qriocity systems back online, and expect to restore some services within a week.
We’re working day and night to ensure it is done as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience and feedback.
Valued PlayStation Network/Qriocity Customer:
We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19, 2011, certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network. In response to this intrusion, we have:
- Temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services;
- Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened; and
- Quickly taken steps to enhance security and strengthen our network infrastructure by re-building our system to provide you with greater protection of your personal information.
We greatly appreciate your patience, understanding and goodwill as we do whatever it takes to resolve these issues as quickly and efficiently as practicable.
Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state, zip), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained.
For your security, we encourage you to be especially aware of email, telephone, and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. Sony will not contact you in any way, including by email, asking for your credit card number, social security number or other personally identifiable information. If you are asked for this information, you can be confident Sony is not the entity asking. When the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are fully restored, we strongly recommend that you log on and change your password. Additionally, if you use your PlayStation Network or Qriocity user name or password for other unrelated services or accounts, we strongly recommend that you change them, as well.
To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, we encourage you to remain vigilant, to review your account statements and to monitor your credit reports. We are providing the following information for those who wish to consider it:
U.S. residents are entitled under U.S. law to one free credit report annually from each of the three major credit bureaus. To order your free credit report, visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call toll-free (877) 322-8228.
We have also provided names and contact information for the three major U.S. credit bureaus below. At no charge, U.S. residents can have these credit bureaus place a “fraud alert” on your file that alerts creditors to take additional steps to verify your identity prior to granting credit in your name. This service can make it more difficult for someone to get credit in your name. Note, however, that because it tells creditors to follow certain procedures to protect you, it also may delay your ability to obtain credit while the agency verifies your identity. As soon as one credit bureau confirms your fraud alert, the others are notified to place fraud alerts on your file. Should you wish to place a fraud alert, or should you have any questions regarding your credit report, please contact any one of the agencies listed below.
Experian: 888-397-3742; www.experian.com; P.O. Box 9532, Allen, TX 75013
Equifax: 800-525-6285; www.equifax.com; P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA 30374-0241
TransUnion: 800-680-7289; www.transunion.com; Fraud Victim Assistance Division, P.O. Box 6790, Fullerton, CA 92834-6790You may wish to visit the web site of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission at www.consumer.gov/idtheft or reach the FTC at 1-877-382-4357 or 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20580 for further information about how to protect yourself from identity theft. Your state Attorney General may also have advice on preventing identity theft, and you should report instances of known or suspected identity theft to law enforcement, your State Attorney General, and the FTC. For North Carolina residents, the Attorney General can be contacted at 9001 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-9001; telephone (877) 566-7226; or www.ncdoj.gov. For Maryland residents, the Attorney General can be contacted at 200 St. Paul Place, 16th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202; telephone: (888) 743-0023; orwww.oag.state.md.us.
We thank you for your patience as we complete our investigation of this incident, and we regret any inconvenience. Our teams are working around the clock on this, and services will be restored as soon as possible. Sony takes information protection very seriously and will continue to work to ensure that additional measures are taken to protect personally identifiable information. Providing quality and secure entertainment services to our customers is our utmost priority. Please contact us at 1-800-345-7669 should you have any additional questions.
Sincerely,
Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Network Entertainment”
Source: US PS Blog
Joe
Meh…. Shit happens… Are you guys that naive that you think with all your details on so many sites in this online age that something like this wasn’t going to happen? Change your password, cross your fingers and move on… Deal with it if anything actually happens.
SpikeyMikey23
Good luck trying to buy shit with my credit history ;) haha. Although all the naughty uni credit history drops off soon!
m61726b
I was thinking the same. Hackers wouldn’t even get lent a pencil with mine.
m61726b
Sponsored Ad FTW! Check your credit history.
TheArgonian
LOL “Possibly”
matthangzhou
For those who have been wondering about out PS+ being a paid server Pachter had this to say:
“Sony will of course be liable to reimburse PlayStation Plus customers for their downtime. I’m sure that they will provide something (free game downloads or something similar) to recompense customers for the inconvenience caused, which is significant.”
GTRsannin
I don’t know about that isn’t PS+ a monthly service like they give stuff out monthly and it hasn’t been a month yet
matthangzhou
Yeah, but it’s a paid for service and at the moment people are paying for a service that they can’t use. They could just extend the promotions from this month and incorporate them into next months offerings, or as he said offer them something free as way of apology.
matthangzhou
Also 2nd BBC news article link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13192359
raines80
I understand there is no true security against a brilliant hacker, but I am extremely angry that Anon proved that Sony was vulnerable, but it takes someone retrieving user data to get Sony off their lazy ass to do something about it. I am also fairly pissed off that Sony just released this information today. I have spent a lot of my day changing passwords to sites that I use the same PWs on. For all I know I am already too late in doing this. I am not as worried about someone using my CC information as I am about the ID theft issue.
I am seriously thinking I may just use my 360 from here on out. I guess you get what you pay for… and with a free service I guess they went cheap with the protection.
raines80
Oh yeah… Stop posting about how we should be mad at the hacker and not Sony… If it wasn’t this hacker today it would be some other hack tomorrow. Sony needs to step up their game. If my seat belt snaps in a car wreck I am not mad about it not working towards the guy who hit me.. I am mad at the manufacturer of the seat belt.
Boomshanks
Once again bad analogy.
If someone breaks your seatbelt, who are you mad at. Surely not the manufacturer of the seatbelt?
marshaal5
The staement says “While there is NO EVIDENCE at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained.” Thing is they were damned if they do and damned if they dont here. who knows if they knew straight away what was and was not taken ? who knows how long it took to determine what was taken ? millions of people put this exact same info (name address d.o.b etc) on sites like facebook for all to see, Blame the hackers NOT sony.
raines80
you are very wrong in this. if Sony had the smallest notion that user data might have been compromised then they should have come forward from day one. do you blame the cop that catches you when you speed? or do you blame yourself for being stupid enough to speed in a school zone? come on now… hackers are going to hack… it is the job of companies that hold important information to stay on top of their security. Sony is currently revamping their entire security program. that tells me they weren’t already doing the best they could to keep our information safe.
iamtdogg
Lets say i build a 15 foot fence to keep a burglar out of the garden, and they still manage to climb over (or under it) so i extend it to 10 foot deep and 30 foot high that doesn’t mean someone with the want and will can’t still get to my house. I have however done the best i could to secure my house.
It’s fine and well to blame sony for this but no matter how secure something is there are people out there that WILL find a way round it and you can’t blame sony for that.
We all seem to be assuming that the data was held in a central database and in plain text but we simply DO NOT KNOW what security measures were breached, for all we know they could have been encrypted and someone managed to break it.
And for the record as it’s been mentioned throughout banks HAVE been hacked in the past world bank was hacked (and was reputed to be going on for over a year), rbs’s worldpay (which is used on a MASSIVE number of websites) was hacked, HSBC were fined £3m in 2009 for not properly looking after its customers personal information that was simply on a very easy google search.
These things happen and Sony will be punished by the data commissioner if they did not do enough to protect our personal information.
E8_BALL_
guess the pentagons security must’ve been pretty lax, when a one guy hacked into it.
like i said before, anything made by man is hackable by man.
Foxhound_Solid
Nothing is unhackable sadly. If anything the security is on the back foot trying to keep up with the hackers.
Heres hoping we are all ok.
tatoemonkey
Well said.
hazelam
it’s at times like these i’m glad i don’t have a card on my psn account.
it does mean that it’s a bit more of a hassle buying content, but at least it means i shouldn’t have to worry about some scumbag hacker raiding my bank account.
i had something like that happen to me a few years back, some fucker in egypt, luckily there wasn’t much in my account at the time, but shit, it was scary, thinking that some frakker could have cleaned out my account.
TURRICAN-808
With 297 comments, isn’t this article the most popular with TSA’ers bloggers. Its poopular for all the wrong reasons though..