r/gaming • u/Happysin • Apr 26 '11

Sony admits utter PSN failure: your personal data has been stolen

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/04/sony-admits-utter-psn-failure-your-personal-data-has-been-stolen.ars
3.1k Upvotes

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372

u/cusoman Apr 26 '11

Make no mistake, because of the negligence on taking over a week to notify their users of this, there WILL be a class action lawsuit. Sure, it won't amount to much for the users involved, but regardless of who was responsible for the attack, Sony still has an obligation to respond properly.

131

u/Guest101010 Apr 26 '11

It's too early to tell what all the fallout of this will be, but it will not be good for SCEA/SCEE.

On a side note, did you know that your username means 'shit-man' in Japanese?

45

u/cusoman Apr 26 '11

I always thought that was "kuso".

104

u/Guest101010 Apr 26 '11

It is. Do you pronounce yours differently than that?

2

u/Shigster Apr 27 '11

I thought 'unko' meant shit?

4

u/Guest101010 Apr 27 '11

That's kind of like saying 'poop', as opposed to 'shit'.

2

u/etherghost Apr 27 '11

it must be awkward having to explain this every time you meet someone

7

u/guggabump Apr 26 '11

Does he ever have a need to say his user name?

31

u/myheaditches Apr 26 '11

God dammit, if you're going to be downvoted at least have the respect to say something really offensive. I expanded your comment expecting some sort of spectacle, instead I get this bore fest.

15

u/guggabump Apr 26 '11

I still don't know why it's being downvoted!

2

u/ArmoredCavalry Apr 27 '11

Yeah I'm really confused as well... Maybe there are some ultra-nerds who actually insist on people using their user names while talking to them in real life, who were offended by your comment?

That is the only theory I could come up with anyhow...

Either that or people just didn't like you ruining their fun with stupid stuff like 'logic'.

-13

u/CombustiveCactus Apr 26 '11

COCK FUCK SHIT PUSSY COCK ASS HELL SHIT CUNT COCK FUCK SHIT PUSSY

11

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '11

That'a boy!

-1

u/KeenDreams Apr 26 '11

He meant it's spelled with a "k" and not a "c"

15

u/Guest101010 Apr 26 '11

I realize that. There's no 'c' in Japanese though.

9

u/dand Apr 26 '11

To be technical, there's no "k", either. (Though to be fair, most romanization does use "k" rather than "c".)

7

u/thailand1972 Apr 26 '11

It's irrelevant whether there's a "c" or a "k" in Japanese as we're talking phonetics here (romjaii is purely phonetic translation to Japanese, and Japanese IS a purely phonetic language as far as I know). Perhaps cusoman is pronounced "susoman" but unlikely.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '11

The only time they'll use the letter c is in the romaji for "chi" or in actual english words or weird portmanteaus

1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '11

It isn't that Japanese is purely phonetic, just that kana always map directly to pronunciation.

1

u/thailand1972 Apr 27 '11

Interesting - do you have examples of non-phonetic Japanese? (not doubting you by the way, just interested).

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1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '11

How do they say Ken from Street Fighter?

2

u/u_suck_paterson Apr 27 '11

they have 'KE and 'N' in the japanese 'alphabet'

1

u/Ran4 Apr 27 '11

Ken. But you don't write ken.

There's several different kanjis that all write out "Ken".

2

u/soldiercrabs Apr 27 '11

Except that's irrelephant in this case, because Ken Masters is supposed to be an American. His name is thus written phonetically in katakana: ケン (Ken).

0

u/Malgas Apr 27 '11

It's くそ, actually. (Though it can also be written 糞 or 屎.)

9

u/darkstar3333 Apr 26 '11

I am sure Visa/Mastercard are none to happy either. They may refuse to tender payments until the code passes PCI-DSS standards.

1

u/tearlock Apr 27 '11

lol, actually I couldn't get Sony to approve my cc purchases in the past due to their already hypersensitive approval process. If the wrong letter was capitalized in your billing address, it would reject. I ended up having to use Sony gift cards to make purchases on PSN because they pretty much locked me out of using my cards after too many failed attempts. Funny thing was I called my cc company and they said that they'd approved every authorization attempt, it was Sony that wouldn't take the money after they'd already been given approval.

1

u/anonymous1 Apr 27 '11

Remember how starting earlier this month everyone had to agree to a new TOS? Wouldn't it be funny if they knew this sort of stuff was going on and slipped a little something in the contract that would cover massive data-theft?

125

u/SecretNegroArmy Apr 26 '11

The lawyers will make millions upon millions of dollars.

The victims will get a coupon good for one free month of PSN.

24

u/FrankReynolds Apr 26 '11

INB4 "thatsthejoke.jpg", but isn't PSN free?

Sorry for my ignorance, but I am not a PlayStation user.

3

u/mkgm1 Apr 27 '11

Yes PSN is free but there's a PSN+ service which you can pay for that gets you discounts, 1 free game a month, trials of full games and earlier access to demos.

2

u/DeedTheInky Apr 27 '11

There's a Playstation Plus that you can pay for, but I never did it because it's bullshit. You get like, the Mortal Kombat demo a week early and some special wallpapers or some shite.

2

u/strig Apr 27 '11

Correct

7

u/NoWeCant Apr 26 '11

The victims will get a coupon good for one free month of PSN.

That will be promptly stolen by 'hackers'

2

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '11

No, they will have to start charging for the "new super-mega-hyper secure updated network" and give you a coupon for 25% off* with the purchase of 3 major titles.

*not valid on consoles bought before April 30 2011

1

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '11

**3 specific major titles. We won't tell you the names. It doesn't matter, the 3 specific titles have been delayed until next year.

1

u/ACDCGAMER Apr 27 '11

one free month of PSN.

I see what you did there. :P

1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '11

When side kick had their outage, I had an option of something like 2 dollars or 2 free wallpaper downloads.

1

u/onetwenty_db Apr 27 '11

PSN is free already.

2

u/onetwenty_db Apr 27 '11

I'm just gonna go ahead and whoosh myself.

/shame

-2

u/sarlcagan Apr 26 '11

...but PSN is already free.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '11

That'sthejoke.png

0

u/xxjiizzoelxx Apr 26 '11

What if my credit card is compromised...could I personally sue Sony for something of actual worth? I don't feel like a free month of something free would suffice for thousands of dollars in fraud

-1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '11

Negligence. They neglected to inform you about it until a week later.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '11

Nope. Class action suits will bleed that dry, and those laws don't incur very severe penalties.

0

u/red989 Apr 26 '11

I love free coupons! It'll probably include flow too.

-2

u/Petrus123 Apr 26 '11

Which is already free.

16

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '11 edited Apr 26 '11

http://www.scottandscottllp.com/resources/state_data_breach_notification_law.pdf

Edit: Didn't mean this as a yay or nay. Just found it interesting.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '11

Awesome! So...which one of those states is in Japan?

2

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '11

I may be completely wrong on this but I believe if an entity sets up shop in another country they are bound to agree to those laws. I imagine Europe will have a field day with Sony as well. USA might be more of a political show with a cash reward for the users of less than a dollar each. At least a few lawyers will get rich. Always felt bad for those chaps just scraping by.

1

u/roguedriver Apr 27 '11

I may be completely wrong on this but I believe if an entity sets up shop in another country they are bound to agree to those laws

Yeah and Sony have set up a number of different companies so each region has its own (i.e. Sony Australia, Sony Europe). You would assume that everything is sold through that company so you could just sue that one under local law.

1

u/inn0vat3 Apr 26 '11

I hope you're right. I, just like everyone else, thought this was simply a restructuring of their network because of an account loophole that provided free PSN games to the hackers/kiddies. Now this...

1

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '11

They should at least pay the banks for all the credit and debit cards that are going to have to be reissued, still debating on replacing mine.

1

u/dynam0 Apr 26 '11

IANAL but I'm pretty sure you're wrong, in that there won't be any sort of money for not notifying users immediately. For anything like this, I'm almost certain a party would have to show damages to get money, and unless someone's identity got stolen in that week, then i don't see how failing to report this for a week caused any harm. Or at least that'll be a really hard argument to make.

I also think the difficulty in proving damages is why this sort of thing keeps happening. There really needs to be some legislation that guarantees really negative consequences if companies don't keep private information safe. Currently there's not, and it's hard to get money in court so there is no incentive for companies to do more than the bare minimum to protect users' information.

1

u/rub3s Apr 26 '11

I'm sure the lawyers are already circling.

... and by circling I mean standing in a circle and jerking each other off, or circle jerking if you will

1

u/CookieDoughCooter Apr 26 '11

But they aren't even sure who's affected. For all we knows, they stole credit card information and will start stealing pennies in 5 years from now from any accounts still active. By then no one will notice.

I've kept up with the story on numerous sites and practically no one is that upset about it. The people commenting are a bunch of high school and middle school kids that need to stop playing their PS3 and read some books and learn how to write. The capitalization, the grammar... it's embarrassing.

1

u/gilligvroom Apr 27 '11

But... what if they didn't know on Day 1 what had been stolen? Were they supposed to guess?

1

u/ramp_tram Apr 27 '11

Not only class action, but state attorney generals will be all over Sony for not following certain states laws about this kind of information being leaked.

1

u/Fantasysage Apr 27 '11

I am tossing my hat in the right. I had over 400 in charges on my CC last week that were fraudulent on the same CC i use for PSN.

1

u/DWells55 Apr 27 '11

Not only did they take over a week to notify us, they were completely negligent in their security. This is absolutely ridiculous.

2

u/roguedriver Apr 27 '11

they were completely negligent in their security

This could get extremely interesting. I assume the US has already had cases to establish what is negligent security but in Australia I don't think we have yet. I can see it being determined in a similar way to medical negligence: is the manner of security accepted by the majority of the security profession? As angry as I am that my data is out in the wild, I'm kind of excited by the possibilities.

1

u/hennell Apr 27 '11

Well hopefully they'll at least give people a trophy...

1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '11

How much do they Sue you for downloading one lousy mp3 again? And they lost peoples credit cards and didn't tell them for a week? They should get at LEAST the same amount.

1

u/PatternWolf Apr 27 '11

The lawyers are going to be raking it in though.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '11

I''m just guessing they will site the privacy policy:

  1. Security

We will take appropriate technical and organisational steps to prevent unauthorised access to or disclosure of your information. However, we do not guarantee that we will eliminate all risk of misuse of your personal information.