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05 Mar 2012 20:57

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Music: Michael Jackson’s musical output reportedly stolen by British hackers

  • 50,000 of MJ’s song files reported stolen source
  • » Two British dudes are facing trial over the alleged heist: You have to be a dedicated MJ fan to steal tens of thousands of Michael Jackson songs — including unreleased songs that Sony planned to milk by releasing over 10 albums in the next seven years. James Marks and James McCormick, the suspects in the musical heist, deny having done so, but that may not be enough to sway prosecutors. Sony, by the way, is basically a broken record when it comes to hacking, so this latest incident comes as no surprise.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Jun 2011 10:39

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Tech: PlayStation Network hackers arrested in Spain; tied to Anonymous

  • 3 arrested in Spain over Sony breach; they were tied to Anonymous source
  • » One computer, many hacks: Investigators say that the computer used in the Sony breach — located in a basement in Gijón, Spain — was responsible for hacks to two Spanish banks, an Italian energy company and numerous government Web sites, including Arab Spring hotspots Egypt and Libya. The main guy was actually arrested back in the middle of May, but his arrest wasn’t publicized until today. The other arrests took place in other parts of the country. So, is it surprising that the PlayStation Network hackers (not any of the other Sony hacks, by the way) appear to have been tied to Anonymous?
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

07 Jun 2011 10:43

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Tech: Sony’s PlayStation Vita: A great opportunity to change the subject

  • Sony just had a rough month, and it continues to be kinda rough. So a console launch like the PlayStation Vita comes as a breath of fresh air for the company, which needs something to take the focus off their security problems and back onto their bread and butter. So, with a brief apology — “I want to apologize both personally and on behalf of my company,” as Sony’s North American head Jack Tretton, put it — it was onto the new console. And what a console it is: An OLED screen, touchpads in the back, and multiple cameras for augmented-reality gaming. Will it be enough to bring gamers back into the fold? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 May 2011 12:43

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Tech: Sony’s PlayStation Network troubles aren’t over yet

  • PSN hacked again…kind of. PlayStation Network was down again today, but not for the familiar reason of widespread hacks. A newly discovered exploit allows people to change account passwords armed with nothing but an email address associated with the account and the owner’s date of birth — both of which hackers obtained in the larger exploit earlier this month. Gaming Nyleveia.com discovered the newest flaw and contacted Sony about the problem. The network then went down again, apparently so Sony could fix it before it got out of hand. It’s important to know that the network wasn’t actually hacked again — hackers stole no new information, but instead discovered a new exploit that’s now being fixed. Sony is going to have a rough time recovering from all of this. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 May 2011 10:49

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Tech: Will Japan allow the PlayStation Network to relaunch in its country?

  • NO Japan says that the security issues are unresolved source
  • » What’s the big problem? Without breaking into major details, Japanese Ministry of Economy official Kazushige Nobutani puts it like so: “As of May 13, Sony was incomplete in exercising measures that they said they will do on the May 1 press conference.” So, in other words, Sony’s not proving they’ve actually fixed anything to Japan yet. As Sony is famously based in Japan, this is another pretty embarrassing turn of events.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 May 2011 10:04

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Tech: Let’s not lay blame for the PlayStation Network hack at Amazon’s feet

  • Bloomberg’s piece about Amazon luring hackers to its popular cloud service, which thousands of perfectly normal sites use each day, and giving them an easy way to hack servers belies a real misunderstanding of how cloud services work — to put it simply, loaning out server space on an hourly basis has benefits that far outweigh the possibility that a couple of bad eggs might do something like this. And Amazon isn’t even the only player in the game. Do you guys know who Rackspace is? Because they’re just as formidable as Amazon in this space — but fortunately for them, aren’t better-known for selling copies of “Water for Elephants” to people in their underwear at 3 a.m. in the morning. Simply put, blaming Amazon for having an unregulated cloud space is irresponsible. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

15 May 2011 21:52

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U.S.: Sony PlayStation Network’s return a pretty bumpy one

  • great After weeks of downtime, Sony got their PlayStation Network online for the first time in nearly a month — a month full of hacks, reports of credit card fraud and apologies that followed. There was much rejoicing in the gaming world.
  • troubling WIthin minutes of its return, the system went down. “Please bear with us as we continue working on #PSN restoration. We are experiencing extremely heavy traffic,” a tweet from Sony said. It’s back up, but for how long? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

14 May 2011 11:00

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Tech: What Sony should learn from this PlayStation Network mess

  • In the future, a blowback in the realm of cybersecurity might be known as the Sony Effect.
  • Bloomberg’s Michael Riley and Ashlee Vance • In a piece called “The Company that Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.” Oh God, let’s hope it’s called “The Sony Effect,” because maybe it’ll remind other companies why not to actively antagonize their hacking-focused users. In Sony’s case, they were a combination of litigious (going after two well-known hobbyist hackers and threatening many others) and incompetent (they apparently ignore security researchers who find flaws and left their network wide open to an attack). The end result is that a company that needed to learn a lesson about getting hackers on their side learned a very expensive one — one that’s shut down their PlayStation Network for nearly a month now. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 May 2011 19:56

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Tech: Sony’s PlayStation Network still down, will remain down for a bit

  • 04/20 The date that Sony’s popular PlayStation Network went down after a reported data breach — one which the company was initially mum about.
  • 05/08 The date it was supposed to go back up — over a week after the company revealed that users’ financial data was likely stolen.
  • ????? The date it’ll actually go up; the company promises it’ll be by the end of May, but we see how they are about keeping dates. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 May 2011 00:46

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Tech: Sony gaming site hacked: Stop us if you’ve heard this one before

  • 24.5M number of Sony Online Entertainment users possibly affected by ANOTHER hack job
  • 20k number of credit card numbers that could’ve been exposed to evil hackers
  • off the status of the network, which means that Sony has TWO online gaming networks offline source
  • » Somebody has a security problem: While Sony Online Entertainment isn’t the juggernaut that the PlayStation Network is (and Sony says the financial data they possibly stole was old), it nonetheless makes the company look incredibly bad. This hack, by the way, happened roughly two weeks ago, around the same time as the PSN hack. Who wants to bet that they got hacked because of the way they handled the Geohot mess? Raise your hand. (via @The_CopyEditor)
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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