From what I gather these attacks are neither sophisticated or varied. The hacking community is basically repeating a very basic type of attack over and over. Each time finding success. The security is just pathetic, and that means even low level hackers are able to get in with little effort or inspiration. This begs a question, and not the question everyone seems to be asking. Which is when will Sony be able to put up a fight, but why hasn't Sony effectively retreated. Obviously their sites cannot protect themselves at the moment. So why aren't they being disconnected as a preemptive measure to prevent the theft.

These sites should have been taken down before they were broken into. Then brought back up once the security had been properly upgraded. Sony may lose the public perception war by turning their sites off, but they still lose the war when they get hacked. The difference being that their customers are getting victimized too. Why hurt your customers.

*crawls into bunker*

lol

I don't care

it's a legend thread! No, it's just grimes....legend 2.0

Correction to the original, it was a Sony Canada site that was compromised by a Lebanese hacker. It's an international effort I suppose.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9217028/Sony_says_hacker_stole_2_000_records_from_Canadian_site?taxonomyId=140

It seems general apathy has taken over at least for most people.

Will this ever end? Hacking a big company's web service to "prove a point" (I guess?) is stupid enough. But repeating it over and over? Really? At this point not only the company but also the consumers are suffering more and more.

God, I just want to play with my PSP Go!

@UncleScrooge

I do not think it is any more or less stupid then nations going to war with one another. The same logic really does seem to apply in this case. Sony attacked the modding community, and the hacking community retaliated in kind. There is no real point to it all other then you hit me and I will hit you back. Don't get mired in the propaganda that both sides of this issue like to smear the landscape with.

Are the customers really suffering. They are learning a great deal about the competence of a company they are doing business with. Beyond that it appears that no identities have been stolen, and Sony was compelled to offer identity guard services, and free software as a genuine concession for the inconvenience. Beyond that consumers who reuse the same passwords have been compelled to randomize their passwords. Frankly everyone should be doing this even if there wasn't a hacking incident. You should actually be doing this from time to time to prevent hackers from being able to get access to all your public profiles. Anyway a little paranoia is healthy. Getting a little scared by this may prevent a lot hurt later.

More customers are being added to the list, but no existing victim is suffering more and more. Unless they have a really unhealthy fixation with the wellness of Sony. The only things suffering more and more are the reputation of Sony, and their bottom line. Given how reckless they have been with security Sony should probably suffer even more. The cost being less then two dollars per account that being their estimate mind you is damn near mind bending. Which begs the question how cheap would it have been to prevent this in the first place. Why not spend one dollar per person to keep everyones data safe.

The fact that Sony hasn't shut down all its websites to conduct security reviews is really what shows their incompetence and disregard for customers' data here...

Then again, anyone who thought Sony cared about customer's data had their heads stuck in the sand, given the rootkit episode where they actively went out of their way to expose customers to hacks.