Bobtheduck wrote:Except the article was saying the reason Sony shut down PSN was because fake dev consoles were getting free games.
Yes...and that proves my point that Sony themselves were the ones saying their system was unhackable because they didn't put security measures in place to restrict what dev consoles can do. Their line of thought was "There's NO WAY someone could hack the system to make it look like a dev console, so we don't need any security precautions. As long as the console says 'Yep I'm a dev console' then it's perfectly fine!"
So...you really just are supporting what I said...thanks for agreeing with me I suppose?
No has said that this hack = access to CC# info. We have two separate claims: "Hackers may have access to personal info" (Sony) and "Sony shut down PSN because people were pirating." (the Reddit commenter)
Okay, I misunderstood on that. It does seem like perhaps there's two separate things going on here. If that's the case, then the question is which one Sony reacted to first, and really there's no way to tell.
As for this possibly being a form of revenge against Sony for the Geohot thing, I say, good. Sony deserves it. Note however that I do not condone identity theft]Actually, what I said is hackers were **** off that Geohot lost the suit[/QUOTE]
Except he didn't lose. They settled out of court. He agreed not to work on Sony consoles anymore, but that doesn't count as a loss, since the court case did not render a verdict.
You mean they hacked the system? Is a murder victim the party directly responsible because they didn't defend themselves well enough? Is a parent of a kidnapped child the party directly responsible because they didn't protect their child well enough? I mean, I know American culture plays the victim card FAR too often, but that doesn't mean it's never valid. And, so you know, parents of kidnapped children ARE often blamed for someone taking their kids. By spouses, by family members, by anyone close enough to have an emotional interest in the event.
Didn't I mention something in my post about how if I left a wad of cash in my car seat with a wide open door in the red light district, it doesn't mean I'm responsible for its theft but it makes me incredibly stupid and a moron? Pretty sure I did...well, since apparently that didn't go through, I guess I'll re-type it.
Sony is partially at fault for not having a good enough security system set up on PSN. They're not at fault for being hacked, but they are partially responsible for making it
easy to be hacked. If I drive to the red light district and leave my car door wide open and a wad of hundred dollar bills sitting on the seat, while that doesn't make me responsible if I get robbed blind, it does make me INCREDIBLY STUPID for doing that.
Say what you will about Xbox Live, but I don't recall a major fiasco like this happening with their service. This is probably because one, the service costs money for people to use, which means that Microsoft is fully invested in protecting the interests of its users...because if people are upset with their service, they'll stop paying money. People not paying money is usually a pretty good incentive for businesses to protect that. Whereas with Sony I get a feeling it's like "Pssh what do you expect? You don't pay for this service," which is bad for business and an insult to consumers. There are of course PSN+ users, but that service wasn't available until a while ago. I can't seem to find any numbers on how many people are using the Plus account, though a February 2011 article says that it reached 100,000 subscribers. I do feel safe in saying that likely, the Plus account users are not a majority of the people using PSN, though.
Which, as I said, gives Sony little incentive to do the things Microsoft has done...namely, work their butts off to protect private data and ensure the network has top of the line security (one might also wonder if Microsoft is actually better at doing security than Sony is, being almost exclusively a computer company while Sony does a bit of everything).
Well, I can't speak for PSN, but it took 4 years to hack the PS3. Far longer than the Wii or the 360. I'd say they actually did have a pretty good handle on security
But security for a system by itself is always going to be easier to do than security on a network, which doesn't really prove a whole lot. Hacking a PS3 on its own doesn't really hurt much...hacking a network with personal info does. To me, this actually proves Microsoft more competent. So their system gets hacked, so what? They're protecting what's
truly important, and they're doing what they want to prevent people from hacking their systems anyway...remember the outcry about MS banning modded consoles from XBL a while ago? This actually to me is far preferable to what Sony did. Microsoft honestly doesn't give a crap if you hack their console. You just void the warranty, and can't get online with it. Other than that, whatever. But Sony was too far interested in keeping people out from under the hoods of their PS3 and apparently wasn't interested in protecting info on a network.
While the leaks haven't been this extensive, leaks have occurred on XBL as well.
And there's the problem. The problems with XBL haven't been this extensive. At no point in XBL's existence have they had to shut down the network for over a week because of a hackers. This argument actually strengthens what I'm saying, that Sony is either incompetent or just doesn't care...because XBL has been running a LOT longer than PSN (almost nine years in fact), and hasn't had as many major problems.
In fact, the problem that a few sites are reporting right now (and the reason why Microsoft has issued a security alert for XBL) is that people are using in-game chats for phishing...which is a problem, yes, but far from the problem PSN had, and one that isn't Microsoft's fault in the least.
Do banks get blamed when they're robbed? Funny enough, they DO, but do you really think they should be?
This isn't a valid comparison for the fact that in a bank robbery scenario, people's lives are at stake...actual, physical lives, because the robber might have a gun and shoot some people up if he gets upset. Thus, the decision might be made to give the guy what he wants in the interest of having someone not get killed or injured, and at that point it doesn't matter what kind of security you have because you're attempting to save human lives.
No one can really be murdered over a network hack, unless someone broke into Sony's offices and held a gun to the head of an IT guy and was like "Give me everyone's personal info or I'll blow your brains out!" If that actually happened, then I will absolve Sony of any blame, because that guy did what he had to do to protect his life. If that ISN'T what happened, though, then that's different.
They SHUT DOWN the network completely once they discovered they'd been compromised, and spent days trying to figure out the extent of the compromise.
And didn't tell anyone anything. The other half of doing everything you possibly can to protect people is to INFORM THEM if something horrible has happened. As I said, it took SIX DAYS for them to inform people something may have happened. That's unacceptable, and proves how negligent and incompetent Sony is. You can bet if Microsoft had a problem like this, they'd IMMEDIATELY inform people of the problem, because they want people to trust them and keep paying them money.
They were trying to figure out what the extent of the intrusion was. They didn't want to create a panic unnecessarily.
That scenario would make sense if they hadn't shut down PSN. When PSN was shut down and Sony didn't release an official statement, guess what people relied on? Rumors. Hearsay. In other words, things probably got WORSE by Sony not releasing an official statement, because then nobody knew WHAT was going on.
If a massive explosion took out all of New York City, do you think it would be BETTER for the government to not say anything about it until a week after it happened? If so, I don't know what to say to you, because that would clearly be a bad move. If something huge happens, people want info. They want to know what they should be doing. That's SIX WHOLE DAYS that, if a hacker had someone's personal info, they could be using it for identity theft and someone wouldn't even know about it because Sony NEVER TOLD THEM.
Many false alarms have been worse than real ones because people panic and Sony had a duty to shareholders to NOT CAUSE A PANIC IN THEIR CUSTOMERS until they knew more.
Duty to
shareholders? Oh, so you're saying that their profits are more important than informing people that their personal information may have been compromised. If you're seriously arguing that shareholders are more important than people's identity and accounts, then I think this conversation is worthless because we simply find different things more important. I've never been a fan of putting profits over people.
As far as I'm concerned, Sony's duty was to its USERS who needed to be informed, PROMPTLY, that their information may have been compromised so they could take the necessary steps to prevent their identities from being stolen. Sony should have protected its users first and foremost, and they didn't, and that to me is absolutely indefensible. Period.
Ah, false dichotomy.
Yeah, because I'm sure that everyone at Sony is completely intelligent and competent and the stars have aligned so that their best efforts are thwarted by the cosmos! Because that's honestly the only other option.