They hit the nail on the head about the hacked PSN

[IRISH BULL]

http://www.vg247.com/2011/04/23/hacked-to-death-sony-faces-crunch-time-over-psn-failures/

 

Hacked to death: Sony faces crunch-time over PSN failures

 

Sony has been found immature and naive on hacking problems this year, and must address PSN security issues now or face dire consequences.

Sony must demonstrate it is capable of dealing with this situation right now. If these episodes become regular in any way, PSN’s users, core or not, will lose faith in its brand and gravitate elsewhere.

 

On paper, this was Sony’s year. The hardware manufacturer has its best ever PS3 line-up by some margin, is finally about to snake past 360 on a global level, is gearing up for NGP’s launch in the autumn, and is now dominating Japan. Hirai’s ten-year tree-planting exercise is showing ripe fruit.

 

But PlayStation’s entire 2011 so far has been marred by a single issue: hacking. It’s a problem faced by all electronics manufacturers, but the manner in which Sony’s responded to a story which has refused to drop out of the headlines since returning from Christmas is now threatening the PlayStation brand itself.

 

This week marked a significant turn in PlayStation’s 2011 hacking saga, with the American and European PSNs taking offline on Wednesday thanks to “external intrusionâ€. Services have still not been restored.

 

While PS3’s battle with hacking had been largely contained to the core community and press in the first quarter of the year, Sony has now allowed the issue to affect its entire audience: it has been forced to deny millions of PSN users a key PlayStation feature over a global holiday, leaving anyone that doesn’t read sites like VG247, or is keen enough on PS3 and PSP to read the PS Blog, with no reason why they can’t play Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat on their Easter break.

That error message really is ugly. And it’s still there.

 

 

So what?

 

It all started relatively innocuously. PS3 got hacked. The publication of the machine’s root key and a demonstration of the ability to sign code on jailbroken versions of PS3’s Firmware in the New Year were interesting as core stories, but for every, “This is massive,†there was a counter, “So what?â€

 

Without exception, every videogame console gets hacked. It’s par for the course.

The question Sony faced was whether or not it actually mattered. The truth is that the huge majority of under-the-TV console users simply don’t pirate games. Chipping or running illicit OS software is always easy to detect, voids warranties and brings inevitable service-banning. For all but the serious hardcore, it’s just too much effort.

 

Xbox 360 and Wii were cracked years ago, and if you look at download figures for pirated version of games on those platforms last year, Dante’s Inferno was the most torrented 360 title in 2010 with 1.23 million downloads, while Super Mario Galaxy 2 topped the Wii chart with 1.47 million.

Taking 360’s global install base into account – some 50 million units – that means around 2 percent of 360 owners pirated the most popular illegal game last year. Yes, it’s semi-blind calculator-punching, but the number’s obviously very small.

 

PC piracy is a far greater issue, as it’s largely devoid of consequences to the user: the PC version of Black Ops was torrented 4.7 million times last year, while it was pirated a significantly smaller 930,000 times on 360.

 

PS3 was only hacked in January this year, having released in 2006. Instead of showing maturity and restraint, Sony sued George Hotz, the man responsible for the publication of PS3’s root key, and embarked on a ludicrous game of legal headline ping pong that, irrefutably, ended in PR disaster.

While many supported the action against Hotz, many did not. A general feeling that Sony had “gone too far†pervaded comments threads, and Hotz himself proved to be a far stronger individual than Sony surely anticipated.

 

Sony’s legal team was reduced to spurious accusations of Hotz’s creation of a PSN account he’d told a court didn’t exist – in relation to this, one of Hotz’s neighbours later said he’d lent his PS3 to the hacker – and even went as far as highlighting Hotz’s going on holiday to South America as damaging his case.

 

While Sony managed to finish the Hotz debacle out of court, tying him down to heavy fines if he eversomuch as looks at a Sony product in anger again, the damage was done.

Sony should never have sued Hotz. It solved nothing. The reasoning applied to taking Hotz to court was similar to that behind “drug warsâ€. You can’t stop people taking drugs: you just start wars. Some did opine in the case’s aftermath that a clear message had been sent to PS3 hackers, but it would be very easy to argue that Hotz got sued largely because he was so visible.

 

Hotz achieved notoriety by hacking iPhone. Apple didn’t sue him. Jailbreaking iPhones was declared legal in July last year, because, as was constantly thrown up by Sony’s opposition in the PS3-Hotz case, some people want to fiddle with the innards of their personal property.

Sony certainly did send a clear message by suing Hotz: hack PS3 and we’ll sue you, you’ll achieve international infamy and eventually you’ll get away with a “settlementâ€. Will it stop people trying to hack PS3? Of course not. Will it drive PS3 hackers out of sight? Very probably.

And you can’t sue what you can’t see.

 

The firm should have step-matched the hackers with Firmware updates – as it showed was possible as the legal case got underway – and strengthened PS3’s security without creating such a nonsensical fuss. Hotz, clearly a stupidly talented kid, said after he’d published PS3’s root key that he wanted to work with the likes of Sony and Microsoft on security: instead of taking the guy to court, why didn’t Sony talk to him?

 

Had Sony behaved more sensibly we could have avoided Hotz rapping about Sony engaging him in forced, unlubricated anal sex – the worst kind – and the “George of the Jungle†headlines.

There has to be a serious question over Sony’s judgement in the Hotz case.

 

Regardless, the story was too geeky for the mainstream up to this point. If you’re reading this, you’re probably already familiar with what happened, but dude-who-buys-a-few-games-a-year couldn’t care less. What happened next, though, catapulted the story into the glare of the nationals, and was almost certainly the catalyst for the hack attack that crippled the American and European PlayStation Networks last week.

 

 

We are Anonymous

 

As the Hotz case was winding down, ultra-liberal hacking group Anonymous said it was to target Sony over both the Hotz case and Alexander Egorenkov, who’s being sued over his efforts to restore Linux use on PS3, a feature removed from the machine by a Firmware update in March 2010 over “security concernsâ€.

 

For the record, the removal of OtherOS has always been Hotz’s stated reason for hacking PS3.

This was terrible news for Sony. While there are those that dismiss Anonymous as some kind of A-level irritation rather than a real force, facts are facts: the group has been responsible for denial of service attacks that have taken down government websites, has been demonstrably involved in recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and took down MasterCard and Visa’s sites in response to their roles in pressuring Wikileak’s Julian Assange to stop publishing US government cables last year.

 

Anonymous targeted PSN, bringing the service down for most of a day in early April. The user backlash online was significant enough to make the group change tack, saying it would no longer aim efforts at PSN, but encouraged sit-in protests at Sony stores, an effort which fell flat.

 

Anonymous has said it will persist with action, but has denied it had anything to do with this week’s attack. No one outside of Sony and those responsible for the most recent incident knows what happened on Wednesday as yet, but whatever it was forced Sony to take the American and European PlayStation Networks offline.

 

Let’s read that again: PSN is offline, and we don’t know when it’ll be back up. It is an intrinsic part of the current PlayStation offering. PSN is as much a part of PS3 as the console’s Blu-ray drive.

 

On a most basic level, the fact PSN has been down the last three days is shocking news for gamers, but let’s not forget that Valve released a bespoke version of Portal 2 specifically tying together PSN and Steam earlier this week, and the PS3 version is now unplayable. You’d have to expect that Gabe and co may think twice before doing that again.

 

Taking a broader view, PSN has 75 million accounts and is responsible for safeguarding the personal information and credit card details of users all over the world. The implications to a completely unkown hacker or group of hackers – whether a splinter of Anonymous, as some have suggested, or not – waltzing around PSN to such a degree that Sony has to take it offline for the best part of a week, will be casting a long shadow over Mr Hirai’s office tonight.

 

Sony’s escalation of its war on hacking could potentially threaten not only Sony’s ability to cut content deals, but, in a nightmare scenario, may compromise personal information of its millions of users.

 

Sony must demonstrate it is capable of dealing with this situation right now. If these episodes become regular in any way, PSN’s users, core or not, will lose faith in its brand and gravitate elsewhere. PSN must be robust enough to withstand external influences, whatever they are.

 

We can only hope we soon see an apparently hopelessly naive Sony make good on what is, in reality, a disaster for PS3. Services are built on trust, something Sony now has to work hard to rebuild.

[BLACKCLOUD--]

I'd like to hit someone in the head.

[CaribbeanCLANK]

Very interesting read. A lot more to this story. Thanks for posting this IRISH. Now here is my 2 cents.........

 

I never got the reasoning and logic of Hackers and groups like Anonymous. YES....you have an opinion of what is right and wrong and want to fight for your ideals. Unfortunately, the ideals, ideas and personal views of good and bad are usually just opinions. You may share these opinions with a small or large group of people but this does not make your opinion right. And the actions or methods you or your group use to fight for your cause are not justified because your cause has a large following. So....are groups like Anonymous right? In my opinion....NO!!! Any person or group who's action affect innocent bystanders are inconsiderate and self righteous. Sony is no different from any large company. They want to make money and will do what they can to protect their interests. Hotz was a threat to those interests. He brought this crap onto himself and he only has himself to blame.

 

Anonymous's actions towards Sony are simple.....they were simple acting out in defense of a fellow hacker. Not to rid the world of evil companies or to spread an ideal of unity and justice. Sony sued a hacker for an act they believed to be an illegal act and that pissed them off.

 

As for the current state of the PSN.....a damn shame. Whoever is responsible must be really proud of themselves. I do hope Sony gets things sorted out and I hope they have learnt a few valuable lessons these past few months. The PSN is a major part of the Playstation 3 experience and is obviously weak. VERY weak. Time to step up your game Sony.

[CaribbeanCLANK]

LOL Conspiracy Theory ALERT!!!!!!!!!!

 

"On paper, this was Sony’s year. The hardware manufacturer has its best ever PS3 line-up by some margin, is finally about to snake past 360 on a global level, is gearing up for NGP’s launch in the autumn, and is now dominating Japan. Hirai’s ten-year tree-planting exercise is showing ripe fruit."

 

Anonymous has already stated that this current attack is not because of them. So how might be the responsible party?? A smaller group of hackers trying to make a name for themselves?? Or could it be the evil doings of a much, much larger group....or company. A competitor maybe??? It is no secret that Microsoft is not doing as well as they thought they would. And despite a slow start and rock launch, the Playstation 3 has still managed to catch up to the XBOX 360 in sales and has shown the industry that the Playstation library of games is still one of the strongest in the industry. And getting stronger.

 

Makes me wonder....how low will a company go to come out on top????

[shane]

I would like to say that the fact that it took this long to really criple PSN, does show the stability in the system... I will tell you as an IT Professional, if there is a way and someone wants it bad enough, they will find the way. I took them a long time to do it, now PSN is creating a strategy to stop this from happening again while closing the gaps currently affected.

 

But it does suck that it happened.

[Crusty_Demons]

Very interesting read. A lot more to this story. Thanks for posting this IRISH. Now here is my 2 cents.........

 

I never got the reasoning and logic of Hackers and groups like Anonymous. YES....you have an opinion of what is right and wrong and want to fight for your ideals. Unfortunately, the ideals, ideas and personal views of good and bad are usually just opinions. You may share these opinions with a small or large group of people but this does not make your opinion right. And the actions or methods you or your group use to fight for your cause are not justified because your cause has a large following. So....are groups like Anonymous right? In my opinion....NO!!! Any person or group who's action affect innocent bystanders are inconsiderate and self righteous. Sony is no different from any large company. They want to make money and will do what they can to protect their interests. Hotz was a threat to those interests. He brought this crap onto himself and he only has himself to blame.

 

Anonymous's actions towards Sony are simple.....they were simple acting out in defense of a fellow hacker. Not to rid the world of evil companies or to spread an ideal of unity and justice. Sony sued a hacker for an act they believed to be an illegal act and that pissed them off.

 

As for the current state of the PSN.....a damn shame. Whoever is responsible must be really proud of themselves. I do hope Sony gets things sorted out and I hope they have learnt a few valuable lessons these past few months. The PSN is a major part of the Playstation 3 experience and is obviously weak. VERY weak. Time to step up your game Sony.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arU_z_Dngzw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

Sent with a flux capacitor at 88 miles per hour via Tapatalk

[funkvader]

What smug bitches , sad thing is these guys would be harder to catch than Osama bin laden

[Pillorian]

I would like to say that the fact that it took this long to really criple PSN, does show the stability in the system... I will tell you as an IT Professional, if there is a way and someone wants it bad enough, they will find the way. I took them a long time to do it, now PSN is creating a strategy to stop this from happening again while closing the gaps currently affected.

 

But it does suck that it happened.

 

That definitely is one thing we all have to remember during this.

 

Honestly, I think Sony should take their time repairing this. This group that is attacking them will make the push again in the future. I would hope that they are looking at not only securing the vulnerability that they used during this instance but also others so this does not happen again or if it does, they can stop it quickly.

[shane]

Latest...

 

We sincerely regret that PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have been suspended, and we are working around the clock to bring them both back online. Our efforts to resolve this matter involve re-building our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure. Though this task is time-consuming, we decided it was worth the time necessary to provide the system with additional security.

We thank you for your patience to date and ask for a little more while we move towards completion of this project. We will continue to give you updates as they become available.

[darth_cedaus]

@Crusty that was dated April 7 2011 I dont think it has to do with Wednesday night/Thursdays meltdown. But ive been know to be wrong before.

[Nemesis]

Anonymous has already said they weren't behind this:

 

Anonymous: PSN outage not our doing

 

After going down Wednesday night, Sony's PlayStation Network is still down as of Friday afternoon. And ever since a Thursday morning notice that it may be a day or two before service is restored, Sony has been silent on the matter.

 

At the moment, it only does offline.

 

One group that isn't staying quiet is Anonymous. In protest of Sony's litigious treatment of PlayStation 3 hackers, the decentralized group temporarily brought down the PSN earlier this month with distributed denial of service attacks. However, today a press release posted on the loose-knit organization's news site insists it has nothing to do with Sony's current woes.

 

In a release titled, "For Once We Didn't Do It," the group acknowledges members of Anonymous could be acting independently, but insists its organizational structure "was not related to this incident and does not take responsibility for whatever has happened." It goes on to suggest that Sony is merely using its recent struggles with the group "to distract users from the fact that the outage is actually an internal problem with the company's servers."

 

The note specifically points to an entry posted to and then pulled from the official European PlayStation Blog that implied the PSN could be down due to "targeted behavior by an outside party." The Anonymous attack from earlier this month not only impacted the PSN, but also brought down PlayStation.com and the official PlayStation blog for stretches of time.

[Nemesis]

Thought this was pretty funny:

 

Edited April 24, 2011 by Nemesis

[Crusty_Demons]

@Crusty that was dated April 7 2011 I dont think it has to do with Wednesday night/Thursdays meltdown. But ive been know to be wrong before.

 

That was exactly the point.

 

Sent with a flux capacitor at 88 miles per hour via Tapatalk

[TheSoviet]

"We sincerely regret that PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have been suspended, and we are working around the clock to bring them both back online. Our efforts to resolve this matter involve re-building our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure. Though this task is time-consuming, we decided it was worth the time necessary to provide the system with additional security.

We thank you for your patience to date and ask for a little more while we move towards completion of this project. We will continue to give you updates as they become available."

 

I guess that means they were hacked, so yea...

 

Also here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldtNivuSxoQ&feature=player_embedded

Edited April 24, 2011 by TheSoviet

[SgtJoeFriday]

What does that mean, "You are strangling yourselves with the very thing you wished to see destroyed"?

What do we want destroyed? PSN? That doesn't make sense.

 

Sent from Galaxy class phone NC-1701

[iDnTyX]

Socom girlfriend/wives anonymous were behind all this.

[GeneralSarcasm]

whatever you do DONT tell your wife or gf PSN is down... you will lose brownie points for not playing. It has to appear to be a choice you are making.

[IRISH BULL]

IMO, Sony kicked a frakkin hornets nest, and got stung. And now we are paying for it.

 

They went to far with their investigation. They should have just monitored their PSN and banned systems and users that were using illegal or unauthorized OS.

 

They do not have a right to tell people what they can and can't do with their property. Anonymous has a point with the analogy they used with Microsoft. Could you imagine the uproar if they came out and said they are no longer allowing Firefox or Google Chrome? And you can ONLY use Internet Explorer.

 

And if this is about piracy, it is even more of a outrage. Like the article points out, only about 2% of consoles users pirate games on their systems. And they can monitor that if they were more diligent.

 

But if it is about piracy, it's like they are saying, "We made $400 billion last year, but that $500,000 we lost on pirated games is bullshit!" "Call the FBI, we need people in jail!!!"

 

Now don't get me wrong, I DO NOT condone piracy in any shape or form. But they could have handled the whole jailbreak issue better. Every other system that was jailbroke did.

[funkvader]

whatever you do DONT tell your wife or gf PSN is down... you will lose brownie points for not playing. It has to appear to be a choice you are making.

 

Now thats funny but true !

[Peebrain]

What does that mean, "You are strangling yourselves with the very thing you wished to see destroyed"?

What do we want destroyed? PSN? That doesn't make sense.

 

Sent from Galaxy class phone NC-1701

 

I think they mean that the PSN user are mad at Anonymous because of this, when Anonymous's stand is that they are on the users side. So the users wish to see anonymous destroyed, but in fact they are actually spreading the word of anonymous.

 

On an unrelated note, this whole debacle really makes me want to watch Hackers!!!

 

[CritiKiL]

It's time for the Internet to start being policed. People 'have' to be held accountable for encouraging, helping and participating with the crooks and protesters who think that these types of attacks are simply 'voicing their opinions'. It is simply an infringement on consumers who only want to benefit from monies they have paid to enjoy their lives. Shutting down corporations are only going to force them to make their product even more restrictive and we will soon start having to pay the price for what these offenders do, in the form of raised prices. If I run a company and you don't like how it's being run, you have no right to stand in my doorway and not let me in my company. This is what this attack is simulative of!

 

RIGHTS? ~ That shit went out the door when they turned their protests into an 'actional attack'. But this attack cannot be seen in our eyes as a solution but rather an envision that Sony will indeed make US pay for in the future. The minute we let people like this get away with what they're doing means that our society will soon crumble without any recourse for people who want to break laws. These people need to be shown as examples of what happens when you break laws, laws that were clearly broken just to make a point of protest. Now we are pulled into the bullshit of people who want to hack someone's product and get mad and attack because Sony stopped them from inputting their own OS. If they are soo self-righteous to want their own system software, then they should make their own PSN products. Simple.

 

Those who are responsible, have JUST taken Seth from Zipper 'off my shit list'...at least for now. Sony should 'agree' and allow to their demands, setting a trap to imprison all those who take part in what they want Sony to undo. Sony is definitely setting some sort of trap. You can bet your bottom dollar that the millions lost will be made back through our pockets in the future. Bet that!

Edited April 25, 2011 by CritiKiL

[Peebrain]

Crit, the pursuit of justice is exactly what got sony in the mess. Hacking and pirating is pretty much unstoppable and it's going to be impossible to persecute everyone. I'm willing to bet that everyone on this website has pirated at least 1 thing in their life wether it's just one song, one TV show, or whole seasons and discographys. Hacking will always be a problem. I'm just as mad as you that this shit happened as Im sure most people are, but I also believe that sony did this to themselves. They should have learned from other companies. I do believe that sony will recover and this will blow over. Just like we've stuck by zipper through think and thin, I'm sure most here will stick by sony through this as well.

[GeneralSarcasm]

honestly I'm shocked that they don't have a backup PSN they could put up while they work on the real one. Even if this meant it was only partially down (say no PS store, home, etc) but we could play multiplayer games.

[Bandit99]

In really fail to see the logic in some of these posts. One of the most glaring one is the use of "this has been going on forever and cannot be stopped". This one really confuses me. So by your logic, then anything that has a long history should just be ignored? Murder, rape, molestation etc....all of those have been around a lot longer than software and hardware piracy. We have fought that fight forever to no avail, so we should just let it go and turn the other cheek?

 

I bet you also have an open door policy at your house. You do not lock your doors so that anyone who may feel that you have more than you need, can just walk in and take what they like. That it is your duty to make sure everyone feels welcome to come to your home and help themselves. That you would be selfish and self-serving if you locked the doors trying to protect your property.

 

You see wealth is relative to each situation and who is doing the evaluating. While you may say, the hell with Sony, they are rich what is a few 100,000 pirated games, the hungry homeless kid on the other side of town who has nothing may say, "the hell with you, what's wrong if I take a few of your games, tv and ps3 to buy food, at least you have a home.

[darth_cedaus]

Well up here in canada we dont lock our doors.

 

Sent from my HTC Vision using Tapatalk