ApocaliPSN: the Great Digital War

What started as just a failure in the PlayStation 3 online services soon became one of the biggest digital crisis in recent times. Since April 20, no PS3 owner in the world can access their PSN account, therefore being unable to play multiplayer games or to purchase products on the PlayStation Store. The cause of everything? Hackers.

After a few days in silence, Sony confirmed what everyone already suspected: the reason for the blackout in the systems was the circumvented security and that someone broke into the company's servers. However, the damage was much greater than originally thought. More than simply ending the diversion of millions of people around the globe, the attack caused the data from all PSN users to leak out in public. According to Sony, personal information such as name, address, date of birth, email, passwords and purchase history were stolen and possibly credit cards were also enrolled into the dance. It was the beginning of an intense battle fought within and outside the digital world.

Hackers have become a major headache for companies and services that work within the virtual world. Banks, for example, have long suffered from fraud cases instigated by these individuals, as well as several other institutions have their privacy systems violated for many different purposes. It is the so-called “cyber-terrorism we have become so familiar with in these modern times, where attacks are made at long distance and hidden in the secrecy--and it’s all done by the computer screen. Until now, nobody knows exactly who raided Sony's servers or why. However, there are still many questions to be answered by it; just look at recent events involving the company to realize that the battle was imminent.

The battle began with the hacking of the PlayStation 3. After keeping the pirates away from the console for years, the codes that were once thought to be impregnable were finally discovered. The responsible was George "GeoHot" Hotz, also famous for having broken the locks on the iPhone. Of course, Sony would not let this matter pass and then proceeded to take legal action against GeoHot. The company's legal decision was the trigger for the riot, as hackers around the world understand the move as an affront to freedom and GeoHot transformed into sort of a martyr to the cause. The reasons why the company embarked upon Hotz are obvious. Besides having exploited a flaw that allowed the use of pirated games on the PlayStation 3, he was the only one to show up in the whole story. This caused him to become the perfect target for Sony and if he were punished, it would be the perfect example showing that Sony isn't joking.

While the case against him was rolling in the courts, the fight was starting in the streets. Hackers have come together in groups and were preparing to attack. fail0verflow, for example, threw the bomb spread the methods for those who wanted to use them - an effective way to undermine the "adversary" in the pocket. Anonymous, the most emblematic warriors of the whole struggle--and also as the name suggests--they hide behind the mask to act and declare war against the PS3 manufacturer. Represented by the mask of Guy Fawkes, they began a series of attacks towards PSN.

As much as the service has not dropped any time during these assaults, they were perceived by those who tried to enjoy their time online, since the connection was unstable. However, even without achieving the desired success, attitude served to show that, if done well, these actions may go unpunished, trying to impose a will or thought on the basis of fear. To put it simply, this is the definition of terrorism. The term is already well known to us since a decade ago we’ve heard about bombings and other things which helped consolidate the idea that, for this type of attack, you cause physical harm.

However, there is no need for explosions and killings to actually define terrorism: Just stimulating fear to induce people to do exactly what you want. And what better way to do this with a business rather than exposing their security weaknesses and getting personal data of millions of people around the globe? As stated earlier in this article, what began as a simple failure proved to be something more serious and caught people's attention around the world. According to dataloss DB, data leakage from Sony is already the 5th largest in history. The difficult part about it is that these hackers just have not had access to personal information of the PSN users, but also the number of all credit cards registered in the system - about 10 million, said the company's president, Kaz Hirai. The official announcement following that brought safety concerns and raised endless question, filling the internet in a short amount of time. With this, the PlayStation maker has created a FAQ page to soothe the souls of desperate users.

Of course, soon after the statement that hackers broke into the database and stole millions of PSN data, the hunt for the culprits would start. The name of George Hotz returned again to be named. After many legal fights with Sony, GeoHot went public to swear innocence. According to him, to exploit flaws in a system is different to disrupt an entire community. Not to mention that after all the trouble he got into due to the release of the PS3, it would be illogical to find a new fight even more serious. On the other hand, he also hasn't lost the opportunity to snipe the internal adversary. After stating that he would boycott all products of the Japanese company, Hotz said that the real culprits of the current chaos came from company's own executives’ faults--the ones who truly started this war. As for the hacker, they should have hired security experts rather than lawyers. A similar situation occurred with Anonymous, the group that had attacked the PlayStation Network earlier. In its official website, they immediately claimed they were not responsible for the attacks and say that Sony is trying to use the fame as a scapegoat for their internal problems.

Source: AnonOps Communication

It's not every day that more than 70 million users’ personal information fall illegally on the Internet - mainly originated from a database invasion of a major electronics companies in the world. The various rumors that have arisen as a result found in the fertile ground for doubt has spread and increased the suspicion about the official announcements from Sony. One of the most terrifying rumors, for example, was that it was possible to find the stolen list for sale on the black market and that it was even offered to Sony, which has refused to buy it. However, the company issued a statement saying that this assertion is false.

However, this did not prevent the company to be the target of some criticism by consumers, press and even people from the United States government. This is the case of Senator Richard Blumenthal, who was keen to send a letter to Jack Tretton, president of the American division of the brand, to demand transparency and speed up the time to communicate users on matters of extreme importance.

Blumenthal was not alone in questioning the delay in informing the players. Gamers Voice also showed dissatisfaction with the delay for new officers. In an interview with Eurogamer, they claim that the fall of PSN is something sad, but the leak is of concern and there should be a major concern in keeping customers inside of what is happening. Like any kind of negative news, the PSN's invasion had a connection in Sony's pockets. On the day that the announcement of the stolen information has been published, the company's shares fell nearly 5% in Tokyo stocks.

That was not the only damage caused by hackers. According to the Ponemon Institute, an expert in digital privacy, Sony is expected to spend about $ 24 billion on professionals to investigate the case. In an interview with Forbes magazine, the institute's spokesman said the high price just happens through the large number of registered accounts.

Developers can also suffer financially from the problem, especially by the time the PSN is down. An anonymous developer told Virgin Media that it expects a 5 to 10% drop on digital content sales. Not to mention the smaller devs, whose only way to offer their games is at the PlayStation Store. The schedules of many of these software houses had to be changed because of the blackout. As there was no update last week, several projects were postponed, including the alternate costumes pack for Super Street Fighter IV, which now has no date set to be released.

In addition, several less-known games will now have to compete for visibility with larger projects. It may seem irrelevant, but makes little difference in the marketplace, given that the struggle to draw consumer’s attention will be even more intense. In contrast, Sony has said it will help spread some of these games to compensate the time offline.

Many players took advantage of the time that the PSN is down to play offline games. However, not all titles allow this option. Games like Bionic Commando: Rearmed and Final Fight 2: Double Impact requires that the user is online, which means that they are also unavailable since PSN is down. A situation that’s even more critical is the MMO's from Sony Online Entertainment, who had their service suspended for the same reason. Free Realms and DC Universe Online are some examples. The question is about the sign up system: will there be some sort of compensation for those who paid the fee and cannot play? Even the comments in the official blog went into the PlayStation game, because you must use your own account details to express your opinion, and nobody else can log in to use this feature.

Source: Engadget

As you have already checked in NoobFeed.com, Sony CEO's Kaz Hirai gave a press release on Sunday to explain the situation and presented the plans to rebuild the network. He said the service should return soon with some bonuses: PlayStation Plus will be available to all users for a period of 30 days. Additionally, Hirai was keen to stress that the safety of the "new PSN" is further strengthened and ready to offer maximum privacy to its users. Not to mention the rumors that the company would be releasing new development kits for the studios to adapt to the software ribs designed by the Japanese giant.

Although we are close to the return of the PSN that does not mean that the battle against hackers is over. As previously mentioned, no service is completely invulnerable to attack, which forces companies to constantly invest in data security improvements for its users. Moreover, the hunt for those responsible for PSN's tragedy also expected to continue - especially with the intervention of U.S. federal agencies. Although the capture of these individuals can not represent the end of this practice, this does mean that large companies are aware and are struggling to protect the personal information of its users. On the other hand, it may simply create a new GeoHot and transform the invaders into martyrs for a cause, restarting the whole process from scratch.

Marco Cecilio, NoobFeed