PSN Outage : More Involved

Yes folks, now the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and Canadian Authorities is also looking into the Sony's PSN Hacking case.

What's more, there's news of the hacker selling the information for a grand total of $100,000. Pretty hefty chunk of money there. And Patrick Seybold of the PlayStation Blog has confirmed that credit card information stored on PSN and Qriocity was encrypted, while personally-identifiable information was not.

The DHS ( Department of Homeland Security ), is very serious on the PSN case.
"The Department of Homeland Security is aware of the recent cyber intrusion to Sony's PlayStation Network and Qriocity music service," DHS spokesman Chris Ortman said. "DHS' U. S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team is working with law enforcement, international partners and Sony to assess the situation."

While gaming and music networks may not be considered "critical infrastructure," the data that perpetrators accessed could be used to infiltrate other systems that are critical to people's financial security, according to some computer experts. Stolen passwords or profile information, especially codes that customers have used to register on other websites, can provide hackers with the tools needed to crack into corporate servers or open bank accounts.

Also, security researchers said Thursday that they had seen discussions on underground Internet forums indicating that the hackers who infiltrated the Sony PlayStation Network last week may have made off with the credit card numbers of Sony customers.

Kevin Stevens, senior threat researcher at the security firm Trend Micro, said he had seen talk of the database on several hacker forums, including indications that the Sony hackers were hoping to sell the credit card list for upwards of $100,000. Mr. Stevens said one forum member told him the hackers had even offered to sell the data back to Sony but did not receive a response from the company.

When asked about the hackers’ claims, Patrick Seybold, senior director of corporate communications and social media at Sony, said, ”To my knowledge there is no truth to the report that Sony was offered an opportunity to purchase the list.” Mr. Seybold also pointed to a blog post Sony published Thursday that said: “The entire credit card table was encrypted and we have no evidence that credit card data was taken.” Sony has said that it could not rule out the possibility that hackers might have obtained credit card data.

An update from Sony! While they do ask for CSC codes, we do not store them in our database. So it shouldn't have been stolen by the hackers.

And about anonymous! Anonymous was asked by Console Monster what they thought of people blaming the group for the recent PSN outage.

"No matter who did it, this action is against the Anonymous principles, so it wasn't an Anonymous attack, it just was an attack to get private data. Thats not Anonymous, that's just a crime to make money."

They were also asked if they were planning on attacking the PSN once it’s back up online. PS3 users you can rest easy.

"No, i don't think that someone related to anon will attack them in the future, they already stopped the anonymous cyber-attacks against Sony in the past and instead they demonstrate in real life."

But alas, since the group is Anonymous, and there's no clear leader, we can't rule out the possibility that a former Anonymous, or an Anonymous that acted separately did the hacking. Who knows? It's the internet, people are hiding everywhere.

Source :
NextGov
New York Times
Playstation Blog
Anonymous Condemns PSN Attacks