A message from sir Howard Stringer to all PSN and PS3 userrs

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A Letter from Howard Stringer
May 5th, 2011 @ 05:30 pm › Patrick Seybold
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Please see below for a letter from Howard Stringer:

Dear Friends,

I know this has been a frustrating time for all of you.

Let me assure you that the resources of this company have been focused on investigating the entire nature and impact of the cyber-attack we’ve all experienced and on fixing it. We are absolutely dedicated to restoring full and safe service as soon as possible and rewarding you for your patience. We will settle for nothing less.

To date, there is no confirmed evidence any credit card or personal information has been misused, and we continue to monitor the situation closely. We are also moving ahead with plans to help protect our customers from identity theft around the world. A program for U.S. PlayStation Network and Qriocity customers that includes a $1 million identity theft insurance policy per user was launched earlier today and announcements for other regions will be coming soon.

As we have announced, we will be offering a “Welcome Back” package to our customers once our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are up and running. This will include, among other benefits, a month of free PlayStation Plus membership for all PSN customers, as well as an extension of subscriptions for PlayStation Plus and Music Unlimited customers to make up for time lost.

As a company we — and I — apologize for the inconvenience and concern caused by this attack. Under the leadership of Kazuo Hirai, we have teams working around the clock and around the world to restore your access to those services as quickly, and as safely, as possible.

I know some believe we should have notified our customers earlier than we did. It’s a fair question. As soon as we discovered the potential scope of the intrusion, we shut down the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services and hired some of the best technical experts in the field to determine what happened. I wish we could have gotten the answers we needed sooner, but forensic analysis is a complex, time-consuming process. Hackers, after all, do their best to cover their tracks, and it took some time for our experts to find those tracks and begin to identify what personal information had — or had not — been taken.

As a result of what we discovered we notified you of the breach. Our investigation is ongoing, and we are upgrading our security so that if attacks like this happen again, our defenses will be even stronger.

In the last few months, Sony has faced a terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan. But now we are facing a very man-made event – a criminal attack on us — and on you — and we are working with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies around the world to apprehend those responsible.

In the coming days, we will restore service to the networks and welcome you back to the fun. I wanted to personally reach out and let you know that we are committed to serving you to the very best of our ability, protecting your information better than ever, and getting you back to what you signed up for – all the games and great entertainment experiences that you expect from Sony.

With best regards,
Howard Stringer

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Service Restoration Update
May 6th, 2011 @ 07:00 pm › Patrick Seybold
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As you may know, we’ve begun the process of restoring the service through internal testing of the new system. We’re still working to confirm the security of the network infrastructure, as well as working with a variety of outside entities to confirm with them of the security of the system. Verifying the system security is vital for the process of restoration. Additional comprehensive system checks and testing are still required, and we must complete that process before bringing the systems online.

As you’ve heard us say, our utmost priorities are the security of the network and ensuring your data is safe. We won’t restore the services until we can test the system’s strength in these respects.

When we held the press conference in Japan last week, based on what we knew, we expected to have the services online within a week. We were unaware of the extent of the attack on Sony Online Entertainment servers, and we are taking this opportunity to conduct further testing of the incredibly complex system. We know many of you are wanting to play games online, chat with your friends and enjoy all of the services PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have to offer, and trust me when I say we’re doing everything we can to make it happen. We will update you with more information as soon as we have it. We apologize for the delay and inconvenience of this network outage.

On Tuesday, April 26 we shared that some information that was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network. Once again, we’d like to apologize to the many users who were inconvenienced and worried about this situation.
We want to state this again given the increase in speculation about credit card information being used fraudulently. One report indicated that a group tried to sell millions of credit card numbers back to Sony. To my knowledge there is no truth to this report of a list, or that Sony was offered an opportunity to purchase the list.
One other point to clarify is from this weekend’s press conference. While the passwords that were stored were not “encrypted,” they were transformed using a cryptographic hash function. There is a difference between these two types of security measures which is why we said the passwords had not been encrypted. But I want to be very clear that the passwords were not stored in our database in cleartext form. For a description of the difference between encryption and hashing, follow this link.
To reiterate a few other security measures for your 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 continue to work with law enforcement and forensic experts to identify the criminals behind the attack. Once again, we apologize for causing users concern over this matter.
Our objective is to increase security so our customers can safely and confidently play games and use our network and media services. We will continue to provide updates as we have them. visit the official site of PSN FOR MORE INFOhttp://blog.us.playstation.com/

PSN FAKE PIC BUT COOL

PSN BAD NEWS !!!

Sony has announced the bad news: hackers have your personal data, and they may have your credit card information as well. Now it's time for the questions, such as how much this breach and the bad PR attached to it will hurt Sony, and how long the company knew the data was in the hands of the hackers before sharing that information with customers. While it doesn't look like Sony will be liable in any legal sense for holding back information, this black eye won't soon go away.

How much danger are we in?

I called Beth Givens, the director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a "nonprofit education and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the privacy of American consumers," to get her take on the matter. "The key piece of data for identity theft is the social security number, and that has not been compromised," she told Ars. The real danger is that, with the information that we know has been taken, hackers with malicious intent could use social engineering to pose as Sony and gain the trust of consumers to gather more information. To its credit, Sony did warn of that danger in its initial announcement.

The question is whether Sony broke any laws if it was aware of the data being taken and didn't immediately warn consumers. Givens argues that the law is more complicated than that. "The data breach laws for the most part allow for some wiggle room in terms of notice. Six days, in comparison to other breaches, is not unheard of." Still, it's a troubling amount of time. "Once they were certain of the breach, and were certain of the types of data compromised, they should have told the affected individuals immediately."

California's disclosure law, for instance, doesn't come into play as long the data is encrypted, or a law enforcement states that disclosing the breach could harm an investigation. That's an easy loophole, however. "The law enforcement provision in these laws has been used to unnecessarily delay notice in many, many breaches," Givens explained.

While Givens was quick to point out that Sony may not have broken any laws, she's not willing to praise the company. "When you look at past business crises, and there are business school case studies of these things, you get high praise if you come out early and clearly with information about the breach," she said. This is something Sony did not do. "Not just a little bit of information, but a lot of information so individuals know what has happened and what they need to do."

This is all assuming that credit card information has not been stolen. If it turns out that credit card data has been taken as well, the damages could become very large, very quickly. That has gotten the attention of at least one man in government.

Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal is upset about the breach, and has written a letter to SCEA President Jack Tretton, citing his concern over the loss of personal data.

"Compounding this concern is the troubling lack of notification from Sony about the nature of the data breach. Although the breach occurred nearly a week ago, Sony has not notified customers of the intrusion, or provided information that is vital to allowing individuals to protect themselves from identity theft, such as informing users whether their personal or financial information may have been compromised," he wrote. "Nor has Sony specified how it intends to protect these consumers."

He called for Sony to act in a decisive manner, instead of the current foot-dragging standard. "Additionally, PlayStation Network users should be provided with financial data security services, including free access to credit reporting services, for two years, the costs of which should be borne by Sony," he said. "Affected individuals should also be provided with sufficient insurance to protect them from the possible financial consequences of identity theft."

This is a temporary problem

"Sony is doing the best that they can in a really tough situation. Security breaches happen, and they are horribly inconvenient for customers, but at least in the US, no PSN customer is going to be liable to pay bills for credit card info that was fraudulently obtained," Michael Pachter, the managing director of Equity Research at Wedbush Securities, told Ars. "Thus, although this hurts Sony's image with its customers, nobody really suffered anything more than the loss of enjoyment for a couple of weeks, and the hassle of tracking down whether somebody is fraudulently using credit info."

The fact that the target of the attack was a gaming service, and not a bank, is also comforting. "In my view, a serious hacker with evil intent would be better off hacking into a financial institution rather than a gaming network," he said. "My guess is that this is somebody who hacked in for fun, and who has no intention of doing anything illicit with the information, so I think it's really just an unfortunate inconvenience, and not a serious security threat."

The takeaway is that while Sony is going to suffer some loss of trust, they will be back in everyone's good graces in a matter of time. "I expect that Sony will give everyone some free stuff—a Fat Princess download?—and they will definitely refund something to the PlayStation Plus customers," Pachter said. "Over the long run, we'll all forget about this, unless it happens again."

Sony does get communication, and this will hurt the company

The toothless disclosure laws won't hurt Sony, but the fact that the company shared so little information in the six days leading up to this announcement is damning. Gamers were left with no way to buy new games, which hurt developers, and even worse they couldn't play any of the games they already owned with their friends. When such a large part of the system is taken away from your customers, they deserve more than a few weak updates saying that there is nothing to report, while thanking them for their patience.

The problem is that gamers weren't being patient—they were pissed off. Now it looks like Sony hid the extent of the breach from consumers, and that's not helping matters much. The company has exhibited a tin ear throughout the entirety of this process, and the bland apologies in the latest update, in contrast to the dire news in the post, made it sound like Sony didn't understand the damage it has done to itself with consumers.

What's unclear is who may have hacked the service. Anonymous has been quick to claim they aren't responsible, but Sony has done a lot to make sure it has powerful enemies in the darker corners of the Internet. In some circles, damaging a company this badly would be considered a badge of honor, no matter how many other people were hurt in the process.

While researching this story, I called my bank and asked if they had heard anything about the breach. "No, but I have a PlayStation 3 at home and I know Sony was going to make an announcement today or tomorrow—what's going on?" the man on the phone said. I explained who I was, and read him a few sections from Sony's announcement. There was silence on the line for a moment. "Oh crap," he said, finally, before getting up and getting his manager. For more info please visit pssn.com

PS3 offline NEW

Update on PlayStation Network and Qriocity
Apr 26th, 2011 @ 12:50 pm › Patrick Seybold
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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 92834-6790

You 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; or www.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

The same information can be found at the following websites:

http://us.playstation.com/news/consumeralerts/#non-us

For those that live the United States, but not Massachustes or Puerto Rico:
http://us.playstation.com/news/consumeralerts/#us

If you live in Massachusetts:
http://us.playstation.com/news/consumeralerts/#mass

If you live in Puerto Rico
http://us.playstation.com/news/consumeralerts/#pr

Tagged // playstation store
Filed: PSN
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PSN IS OFFLINE

PlayStation®Network Service Outage

Answer ID: 2185

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.


During this time you may:

• Not be able to access the PlayStation®Store
• Have difficulty signing in to the PlayStation®Network
• Not be able to play online games
• See a maintenance page when attempting to access the PlayStation®Network

Note: When you log into the PlayStation Network, a message may appear which states, "the PlayStation Network has been suspended". This does not mean that your account has been suspended; it simply means the PlayStation Network has been taken offline. Please wait until the maintenance window has passed before attempting to connect to the PlayStation Network again. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. FOR MORE INFO VISIT PlayStation®Network  http://us.playstation.com/support/

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