Were They or Were They Not Stolen?

The recent breach of the PlayStation Network has left users in awe.  As of the day before yesterday we were informed that our credit card information had been compromised due to the fact that whoever hacked the PSN had obtained our information directly.  

Today, Sony’s whistling to a different tune.

It is said that all of our data was indeed encrypted and so whatever the hackers received will not be our credit card numbers directly. 

“All of the data was protected, and access was restricted both physically and through the perimeter and security of the network,” Sony says in a statement on the PlayStation Blog.  “The entire credit card table was encrypted and we have no evidence that credit card data was taken.  The personal data table, which is a separate data set, was not encrypted, but was, of course, behind a very sophisticated security system that was breached in a malicious attack.”  Sony also stated that the security codes on the cards (usually called CVC or CSC numbers) were not stored on the PSN or the Qriocity media service.  As you know if you’re an avid online shopper, those codes are needed to complete transactions.

There has been slight confusion about the emails that have gone out over the past couple of days and we’re going to clear that up for you.  If you received this email from Sony it is purely a warning that your data MAY have been stolen, not that it was.

Remember GeoHot?  The guy who was able to jailbreak the PlayStation that inevitably fled to South America in an attempt to evade Sony’s lawyers?  Well, of course he has a statement regarding his innocence towards this matter by saying that he “would prefer to not have the FBI knocking on my door,” he also states that he was “one of the good guys…I used to play games online on PC, I hated cheaters then and I hate them now.”  

A couple of days after Reuters reported that Sony will be working with the FBI on this case, Sony also confirmed that they were working alongside “law enforcement.”  Though they didn’t release any details as to just which organization they were working with, they did state that it was a “recognized technology security firm.”

I know you’re all hoping that at the end of this post there’s going to be a specific date on when the PSN will be up but as Sony has said, “We want to be very clear that we will only restore operations when we are confident that the network is secure.”

For a detailed play-by-play timeline of the PSN outage you can check it out here.