SOE Downtime - May 2, 2011
 

All Sony Online Entertainment services, games, forums and web sites are currently offline. This downtime relates to the recent Playstation Network intrusion. No ETA is available at this time. Here is the notice from Station.com:

Please read the information they have just posted located at http://www.soe.com/securityupdate/

In the meantime, feel free to join the ZAM's IRC chat. If you do not have an IRC program installed, you can use the Java Applet version that Feldon of EQ2Wire has set up. See you there!


What does this mean to you?

As soon as you are able to login to SOE"s website, please go to your account and change your password immediately.

You do not have to change or cancel your credit card's at this time. You only will need to do so IF you get an email from Sony stating you need to change that information.

Please be careful about any suspicious emails claiming they are from Sony, or click on any links within the email. Go directly to the website via your web browser manually instead.

http://www.soe.com/securityupdate/

Update on the situation. Summary: some non-US credit-card information from 2007 compromised. No US customer credit-card information compromised. Hashed passwords compromised, no plaintext compromise. Publicly-known information compromised.

I'm going to change my password once the systems come back up, just in case the hash isn't as one-way as they thought, and keep an eye on my credit card for unusual activity just in case. Beyond that I don't see any reason to worry.

here is part of the press release which goes into a bit more detail.. http://www.soe.com/securityupdate/pressrelease.vm



SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCES
THEFT OF DATA FROM ITS SYSTEMS

Breach Believed to Stem From Initial Criminal Hack of SOE

Tokyo, May 3, 2011 - Sony Corporation and Sony Computer Entertainment announced today that their ongoing investigation of illegal intrusions into Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE, the company) systems revealed yesterday morning (May 2, Tokyo time) that hackers may have stolen SOE customer information on April 16th and 17th, 2011 (PDT). SOE is based in San Diego, California, U.S.A.

This information, which was discovered by engineers and security consultants reviewing SOE systems, showed that personal information from approximately 24.6 million SOE accounts may have been stolen, as well as certain information from an outdated database from 2007. The information from the outdated database that may have been stolen includes approximately 12,700 non-U.S. credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates (but not credit card security codes), and about 10,700 direct debit records of certain customers in Austria, Germany, Netherlands and Spain.

With the current outage of the PlayStation® Network and Qriocity™ services and the ongoing investigation into the recent attacks, SOE had also undertaken an intensive investigation into its system. Upon discovery of this additional information, the company promptly shut down all servers related to SOE services while continuing to review and upgrade all of its online security systems in the face of these unprecedented cyber-attacks.

On May 1, Sony apologized to its customers for the inconvenience caused by its network services outages. The company is working with the FBI and continuing its own full investigation while working to restore all services.

Sony is making this disclosure as quickly as possible after the discovery of the theft, and the company has posted information on its website and will send e-mails to all consumers whose data may have been stolen.

The personal information of the approximately 24.6 million SOE accounts that was illegally obtained, to the extent it had been provided to SOE, is as follows:

name
address
e-mail address
birthdate
gender
phone number
login name
hashed password.

In addition to the information above, the 10,700 direct debit records from accounts in Austria, Germany, Netherlands and Spain, include:

bank account number
customer name
account name
customer address.

SOE will grant customers 30 days of additional time on their subscriptions, in addition to compensating them one day for each day the system is down. It is also in the process of outlining a "make good" plan for its PlayStation®3 MMOs (DC Universe Online and Free Realms). More information will be released this week.
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and oh well, no reason to worry? :rolleyes: SoE is just as at fault as the hackers.. "outdated database" with unsecure cc/bank# info from 2007 why is/was this left lying about unsecured?

Definitely be on the lookout for messages claiming to be from SOE. I've seen a few in my spam box already that copy SOE's message format but replace the links with those to malicious sites.

You mean you've ever trusted messages from SOE? I don't trust any e-mail to be from who it claims to be from. I regularly get ones claiming to be from Paypal and eBay. I get occasional ones claiming to be from Cox. Even gotten a few claiming to be from my bank (would've been more convincing if they'd claimed to be a bank I actually had an account with). I do what I do with phone calls claiming the same thing: close it and go to the phone number or URL I've got in my address book for whoever's supposed to need me to do something. If it's legit they'll know what I'm talking about. If they don't, it must not've been legit.

I don't even trust Caller ID, not when I know what you can do with Asterisk or commercial VoIP software.

yeah Ive already got 4 or 5 "SOE" emails from a soe.innovyx.net which is no official SoE email addy ive ever heard of.. im just filtering them straight to the trash

https://www.soe.com/securityupdate/recentupdates.vm

soe.innovyx.net is from their private security firm. I'd still be careful but you might want to look at those emails and call SOE.

good lord.. where was that notice buried. /sigh/and why wasnt the noticed posted BEFORE the emails went out.... Ive already deleted them now I have no idea what they said... this is starting to be more trouble than the games are worth.
thanks for the notice though Dolby

agreed, those mails went down the drain for me, too. how silly of them...

Even if you use a third party to do your emailing you should still arrange it so that messages come from your own domain. A mom-and-pop store is fine sending emails via some provider but a company as large as SOE has no excuse for not being able to work it out so that emails come from [email protected].

And there's this wonderful thing called a subdomain, so even innovyx.soe.com (or mail.soe.com to be less tied to a company) that would work. A multimillion dollar company (a billion dollar company really, in Sony) should not be someone else's subdomain. It's sloppy and using it for official communication absolutely destroys your credibility in getting messages out. If your email always originates from a domain you control then it's easier to control. I could buy a domain in 5 minutes and start sending mail from soe.somenewdomain.com that would look as credible as their official stuff. And by doing that I avoid the need to fake the sender. Your average person is probably not likely to check to see if innovyx is okay with SOE just like they probably wouldn't check a faked domain (though MMO folks are a bit above average in that regard). Which leaves either blind acceptance of such mail or ignoring/spam-filtering of it, neither of which is good from any perspective.

[/rant], hehe.

Oh I agree, its extremely easy to setup a new sub-domain and point it at their 3rd party email provider. It may be a bit more difficult logistically if they took their normal DNS servers offline and are using a 3rd party but really some one should have access to that to add the sub-domain record.