On an official statement issued yesterday, Sony confirmed that their PlayStation Network (PSN) was breached and that records of its 77 million users were most likely compromised.
Users who planned to spend the long vacation last week to put some time into their PSN gaming were disappointed when they found out that PSN was down. It was on April 19 when Sony learned of the intrusion and they were forced to shut the service down. What irked its users is the way Sony handled information dissemination. It took a week before Sony came out with an official statement on why the service was shutdown leaving subscribers guessing.
Sony also revealed that personal data such as e-mail, username, password, birth dates, and addresses are not encrypted but are behind a sophisticated security system which the hackers were able to breach. Credit card information are encrypted but these two were accessed by the hackers.
The entire credit card table was encrypted and we have no evidence that credit card data was taken. The personal data table, which is a separate data set, was not encrypted, but was, of course, behind a very sophisticated security system that was breached in a malicious attack.
While all credit card information stored in our systems is encrypted and 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.
So the big question for most users is, when will PSN go live again? Sony’s best guess is within a week as they are still working on improving the security of their service.
Our employees have been working day and night to restore operations as quickly as possible, and we expect to have some services up and running within a week from yesterday (April 26). However, we want to be very clear that we will only restore operations when we are confident that the network is secure.
Sony set up an FAQ regarding this matter at their blog.
[FAQ] [Press Release]
