Playstation Network Down Update: Sony Says It May Never Know Who Hacked It Or What They Got

Tweet

It’s a bit disingenuous, I know, to call this a “Playstation Network Down Update” being as the Playstation Network is actually up in most places, but it’s an update relating to the outage all the same as Sony announces perhaps the most distressing news possible to its users: they may never find out who pulled the hacking that dropped the network for better than a month, nor will they ever likely know just what precisely was taken during the hack.

Kaz Hirai took on an interview with the BBC that left a whole lot more questions than answers, as he said that, while Sony is aware they were hacked (and they could have just read us to find that much out), they don’t know what specifically was hacked, or what was taken. Meaning that the hackers could have got a file full of the last four digits of account phone numbers, a file jammed full of account holders’ first names, or entire accounts.

Worse yet, that same interview showed Hirai’s own dismay as we discovered that Sony found that the hackers were, reportedly, very good at covering their tracks in and out of the system, meaning a trace would be very difficult if outright impossible.

And then, just to put the icing on this particular horrible cake, Sony has, reportedly, learned that it needs to be “very vigilant” with users’ credit card data, a key learning that everyone’s probably looking at all agog right now. You’d think they would have known that much going in.

Still though…at the very least, they’re being honest, though I can’t help but wonder what kind of impact this will have on the company going forward. While Microsoft certainly has its problems, it’s never had its account data stolen. Or maybe, this will just get Sony users using their credit card data less and using cards bought at retail outlets more.

There are many possibilities here, so I throw the floor open to you guys. What do you think the long-term ramifications of Sony’s hacking will be? The comments section is waiting to hear just what you think, and so are we, so head on down and fill us in!