No, Sony Wasn’t Hacked, but They Were Mass-Attacked

It may be alluring to foretell any extramarital online behavior a "hack," and it's certainly section of attracting clicks, but in actuality, this narrative circulating about Sony being hacked gets the about critical point dead base.

Sony admitted in an official PlayStation blog post last night that it had "detected attempts on Sony Entertainment Network, PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment…services to test a massive set of sign-in IDs and passwords against our web database." The IDs and passwords probably came from a "incomparable or to a greater extent compromised lists from other companies, sites or other sources."

Note what's absent from that statement, and not because Sony's spinning. Hard exploiter names and passwords—en masse or no—isn't a hack, or if that's what we're calling a "hack" these days, the word's lost all meaning.

But nobelium, it really hasn't. A hack involves gaining unauthorized access to information in a system. Unless Sony's not telling us something, information technology sounds like all these folks gained (fleeting) access to was the purchase power of a relatively small number of Sony online accounts.

Sony says that since "the overwhelming majority of the pairs resulted in failed matching attempts, it is likely the data came from another root and not from our Networks," adding that it's "taken steps to mitigate the activenes." And mitigate—perhaps by way of IP block, or attempting to secure a copy of the listing to safeguard potential affected accounts—is all you can real do here. The only way to firewall a system from someone trying an ID or watchword that might not constitute theirs would be to disable logins for everyone. Sony's real firewall exists between those online accounts and its backend services.

What's more, Sony claims "To a lesser degree one tenth of one-hundredth (0.1%) of our PSN, SEN and SOE audience may make been affected." The company so breaks that down by Numbers, admitting there were about 93,000 accounts globally (about 60,000 PSN and SEN, about 33,000 SOE) in which the login attempts succeeded, but the company's already barred those accounts. And of those 93,000, "Only a small fraction…showed additional activity prior to beingness fast."

Sony adds that anyone with charge plate info on file is safe, that it'll make for with anyone who finds their account was utilized to make unauthorized purchases, and that you'll know you're among the affected if you receive an email from Sony prompting you to readjust your password.

Again, the semantics matter here. Had Sony been truly hacked, we'd be talking about another dismaying flaw in their cybersecurity apparatus. Instead, we're talking about the fallout from a prior assail, in which hackers condemned and reportedly released Sony drug user account-related info.

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Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/477308/no_sony_wasnt_hacked_but_they_were_mass_attacked.html

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