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Forums - Gaming - Sony vs. Valve: The Scale of a Breach

d0nni3 on 13 November 2011
Shinobi-san said:
Trim

Its a grey area.

Hacking groups are obviously to blame and are obviously the main issue. But i stil feel that consumers are entitled to throw some anger at the companies as well.

I dont know much about the Steam hacking yet, but ive done a fait bit of research on the PSN hacking, and i feel that the security mechanisms in place wernt up to scratch. As for how much this matters? Probably not very much.....a professional and dedicated hacker group will find a way to get access to something, irrespective. But like i said, the least companies can do is use standard security mechanisms thats accepted in the ICT industry.

Also i have no issues with the timing of the public been told, or how either company has handled the situation. Theres only so much that can be done in a situation like that, and i think they did everything apart from finding the culprit and re acquiring the info which is practically impossible.

I agree once the information is gone then the damage has been done and theres nothing you can do to reclaim it, i would say this is an issue to every company handling sensative information and the amount of security they employ to protect it, we can do nothing but hope these situations help to improve standards across the board



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Kasz216 on 13 November 2011

Nah.

A) Steam notified everyone quicker.

B) Steam itself wasn't hacked. It's forums were, which was taken down.

C) Steam has Steam guard... so there was no need for it to be taken down even if it had been hacked. I mean, Gabe Newell's user information and password are on the internet, given by him. Daring people to hack him. As far as I know it hasn't happened yet.  The actual Personal user account info is pointless.

D) Valve doesn't store the credit cards security number which greatly reduces their use. ( I believe i read this anyway)

E) The most disturbing thing in the Steam hack, just like the sony hack is actually the billing adresses, not the credit cards.  Sometime after the Sony hack, the credit card market became flush with credit cards.   You can get a stolen credit card for a few pennies now.  Unless you paid with a platnium card, the chances of your credit info being used is pretty low now.

F) Valve actually apologized after announcing the hack.  Versus Sony who seemed to take weeks to actually apologize.



Kasz216 on 13 November 2011
M.U.G.E.N said:
thismeintiel said:
zarx said:
The difference is that Valve have let everyone know and told them to change their passwords as soon as possible and to watch their credit card statements. They have also confirmed exactly what information was exposed and how it was protected (hashed passwords and credit card info encrypted with the best encryption in the business) and not shut down their entire service for weeks.

By being transparent and up front about the situation they have mitigated the wild speculation that surrounded the PSN hack. The fact that this has happened before also help lessen the impact.

Not true, at all.  initially they thought it was restricted to the forums and also thought it was a minor hack, so they did no mandatory changing of paswords, like Sony did when PSN was finally up.  I'm sure most felt safe enough to keep passwords the same since Valve didn't come off as too worried.

@ OP

The major difference here is the "console warz."  Had Steam been a console, and was competing against the 360 and the PS3, it would have blown up even more.  You would have had fanboys of both consoles ripping into them.  Plus, you would have the PC fanboys (many of whom are defending Valve now because it is PC gaming) adding to it.  Of course, it didn't help that even gaming journalists can be fanboys, like the one who wrote this article.  "In other words, it pretty much made the PlayStation more of a pile of scrap than it already was."  Come on, really?  Seems like something that would have been "okay" in 2006/2007, but not now.  Besides, I'm sure 55 million people would disagree with you.

Personally, I think Sony did the better thing.  Yes, they waited longer than Valve to tell users what was going on, but they also took down the service until they knew EXACTLY how big this was and found ways to make the service more secure.  Valve, on the other hand, told people sooner, but went ahead without knowing the full extent of what happened, so didn't force password changes or change the security, at all.  Now that they have investigated further, they see it was worse than they thought previously, and by not forcing certain security measures, may have made the situation worse.  Something tells me they may not know the full extent of this even now.  And as of now, I think the service is still up.

and if i'm not mistaken they took 4 days to announce the breach as well...

Yes and no. 

It took them four days to announce there was a problem, i believe people assumed it was a DDoS?.   Seven to announce that it was a hacking attempt.

http://techland.time.com/2011/11/11/is-valves-steam-hack-as-bad-as-sony-playstation-debacle/



M.U.G.E.N on 13 November 2011
Kasz216 said:
M.U.G.E.N said:
thismeintiel said:
zarx said:
The difference is that Valve have let everyone know and told them to change their passwords as soon as possible and to watch their credit card statements. They have also confirmed exactly what information was exposed and how it was protected (hashed passwords and credit card info encrypted with the best encryption in the business) and not shut down their entire service for weeks.

By being transparent and up front about the situation they have mitigated the wild speculation that surrounded the PSN hack. The fact that this has happened before also help lessen the impact.

Not true, at all.  initially they thought it was restricted to the forums and also thought it was a minor hack, so they did no mandatory changing of paswords, like Sony did when PSN was finally up.  I'm sure most felt safe enough to keep passwords the same since Valve didn't come off as too worried.

@ OP

The major difference here is the "console warz."  Had Steam been a console, and was competing against the 360 and the PS3, it would have blown up even more.  You would have had fanboys of both consoles ripping into them.  Plus, you would have the PC fanboys (many of whom are defending Valve now because it is PC gaming) adding to it.  Of course, it didn't help that even gaming journalists can be fanboys, like the one who wrote this article.  "In other words, it pretty much made the PlayStation more of a pile of scrap than it already was."  Come on, really?  Seems like something that would have been "okay" in 2006/2007, but not now.  Besides, I'm sure 55 million people would disagree with you.

Personally, I think Sony did the better thing.  Yes, they waited longer than Valve to tell users what was going on, but they also took down the service until they knew EXACTLY how big this was and found ways to make the service more secure.  Valve, on the other hand, told people sooner, but went ahead without knowing the full extent of what happened, so didn't force password changes or change the security, at all.  Now that they have investigated further, they see it was worse than they thought previously, and by not forcing certain security measures, may have made the situation worse.  Something tells me they may not know the full extent of this even now.  And as of now, I think the service is still up.

and if i'm not mistaken they took 4 days to announce the breach as well...

Yes and no. 

It took them four days to announce there was a problem, i believe people assumed it was a DDoS?.   Seven to announce that it was a hacking attempt.

http://techland.time.com/2011/11/11/is-valves-steam-hack-as-bad-as-sony-playstation-debacle/

umm so it took them 7 days to realize it was a hacking attempt? and this is after all the industry wide hacking incidents this year. Sorry but that's not 'better' than sony at all. Sony did the right thing, took down the service, brought in external investigators and did a thourough search to asess the damage. as thisismeintel earlier pointed out, valave is still investigating the issue. that is not the best course of action when you are uncertain. quite a poor job from valve, and I agree with the article. the only reason why people don't bitch about it is because

1. sony is the evil i hate sony omfg i love xxx company more ppl

2. first of its kind in the industry afaik, at least to that extent. so many hacking incidents occurred after that, that people are 'used' to hearing it now

3. steam is not down.

heck in this thread itself we have members who have no idea what happened even.



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Kasz216 on 13 November 2011
M.U.G.E.N said:
Kasz216 said:
M.U.G.E.N said:
thismeintiel said:
zarx said:
The difference is that Valve have let everyone know and told them to change their passwords as soon as possible and to watch their credit card statements. They have also confirmed exactly what information was exposed and how it was protected (hashed passwords and credit card info encrypted with the best encryption in the business) and not shut down their entire service for weeks.

By being transparent and up front about the situation they have mitigated the wild speculation that surrounded the PSN hack. The fact that this has happened before also help lessen the impact.

Not true, at all.  initially they thought it was restricted to the forums and also thought it was a minor hack, so they did no mandatory changing of paswords, like Sony did when PSN was finally up.  I'm sure most felt safe enough to keep passwords the same since Valve didn't come off as too worried.

@ OP

The major difference here is the "console warz."  Had Steam been a console, and was competing against the 360 and the PS3, it would have blown up even more.  You would have had fanboys of both consoles ripping into them.  Plus, you would have the PC fanboys (many of whom are defending Valve now because it is PC gaming) adding to it.  Of course, it didn't help that even gaming journalists can be fanboys, like the one who wrote this article.  "In other words, it pretty much made the PlayStation more of a pile of scrap than it already was."  Come on, really?  Seems like something that would have been "okay" in 2006/2007, but not now.  Besides, I'm sure 55 million people would disagree with you.

Personally, I think Sony did the better thing.  Yes, they waited longer than Valve to tell users what was going on, but they also took down the service until they knew EXACTLY how big this was and found ways to make the service more secure.  Valve, on the other hand, told people sooner, but went ahead without knowing the full extent of what happened, so didn't force password changes or change the security, at all.  Now that they have investigated further, they see it was worse than they thought previously, and by not forcing certain security measures, may have made the situation worse.  Something tells me they may not know the full extent of this even now.  And as of now, I think the service is still up.

and if i'm not mistaken they took 4 days to announce the breach as well...

Yes and no. 

It took them four days to announce there was a problem, i believe people assumed it was a DDoS?.   Seven to announce that it was a hacking attempt.

http://techland.time.com/2011/11/11/is-valves-steam-hack-as-bad-as-sony-playstation-debacle/

umm so it took them 7 days to realize it was a hacking attempt? and this is after all the industry wide hacking incidents this year. Sorry but that's not 'better' than sony at all. Sony did the right thing, took down the service, brought in external investigators and did a thourough search to asess the damage. as thisismeintel earlier pointed out, valave is still investigating the issue. that is not the best course of action when you are uncertain. quite a poor job from valve, and I agree with the article. the only reason why people don't bitch about it is because

1. sony is the evil i hate sony omfg i love xxx company more ppl

2. first of its kind in the industry afaik, at least to that extent. so many hacking incidents occurred after that, that people are 'used' to hearing it now

3. steam is not down.

heck in this thread itself we have members who have no idea what happened even.

Except they did know before then.  They stated as much back in the QA sessions... when they finally had them.  That's one of the reasons why people were bitching.  They said they knew they were hacked from the start, and were investigating to see what had been hacked, and finally released the info on the 7th day while still investigating further.

Versus Valve, who thought their forums were damaged, and took them down.

Found out a database was hacked, told us.

Then continued investigating.


If you actually agreed with the article i sourced, you'd note they said valve was doing a better job then sony.

The only reason the guy thinks it's more of an issue is because if steam ever did go down, it'd be an issue because EVERYTHING is DDL.

Which, ignores that such a thing wouldn't happen due to steamguard.



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M.U.G.E.N on 13 November 2011
Kasz216 said:
M.U.G.E.N said:
Kasz216 said:
M.U.G.E.N said:
thismeintiel said:
zarx said:
The difference is that Valve have let everyone know and told them to change their passwords as soon as possible and to watch their credit card statements. They have also confirmed exactly what information was exposed and how it was protected (hashed passwords and credit card info encrypted with the best encryption in the business) and not shut down their entire service for weeks.

By being transparent and up front about the situation they have mitigated the wild speculation that surrounded the PSN hack. The fact that this has happened before also help lessen the impact.

Not true, at all.  initially they thought it was restricted to the forums and also thought it was a minor hack, so they did no mandatory changing of paswords, like Sony did when PSN was finally up.  I'm sure most felt safe enough to keep passwords the same since Valve didn't come off as too worried.

@ OP

The major difference here is the "console warz."  Had Steam been a console, and was competing against the 360 and the PS3, it would have blown up even more.  You would have had fanboys of both consoles ripping into them.  Plus, you would have the PC fanboys (many of whom are defending Valve now because it is PC gaming) adding to it.  Of course, it didn't help that even gaming journalists can be fanboys, like the one who wrote this article.  "In other words, it pretty much made the PlayStation more of a pile of scrap than it already was."  Come on, really?  Seems like something that would have been "okay" in 2006/2007, but not now.  Besides, I'm sure 55 million people would disagree with you.

Personally, I think Sony did the better thing.  Yes, they waited longer than Valve to tell users what was going on, but they also took down the service until they knew EXACTLY how big this was and found ways to make the service more secure.  Valve, on the other hand, told people sooner, but went ahead without knowing the full extent of what happened, so didn't force password changes or change the security, at all.  Now that they have investigated further, they see it was worse than they thought previously, and by not forcing certain security measures, may have made the situation worse.  Something tells me they may not know the full extent of this even now.  And as of now, I think the service is still up.

and if i'm not mistaken they took 4 days to announce the breach as well...

Yes and no. 

It took them four days to announce there was a problem, i believe people assumed it was a DDoS?.   Seven to announce that it was a hacking attempt.

http://techland.time.com/2011/11/11/is-valves-steam-hack-as-bad-as-sony-playstation-debacle/

umm so it took them 7 days to realize it was a hacking attempt? and this is after all the industry wide hacking incidents this year. Sorry but that's not 'better' than sony at all. Sony did the right thing, took down the service, brought in external investigators and did a thourough search to asess the damage. as thisismeintel earlier pointed out, valave is still investigating the issue. that is not the best course of action when you are uncertain. quite a poor job from valve, and I agree with the article. the only reason why people don't bitch about it is because

1. sony is the evil i hate sony omfg i love xxx company more ppl

2. first of its kind in the industry afaik, at least to that extent. so many hacking incidents occurred after that, that people are 'used' to hearing it now

3. steam is not down.

heck in this thread itself we have members who have no idea what happened even.

Except they did know before then.  They stated as much back in the QA sessions... when they finally had them.  That's one of the reasons why people were bitching.  They said they knew they were hacked from the start, and were investigating to see what had been hacked, and finally released the info on the 7th day while still investigating further.

Versus Valve, who thought their forums were damaged, and took them down.

Found out a database was hacked, told us.

Then continued investigating.


If you actually agreed with the article i sourced, you'd note they said valve was doing a better job then sony.

The only reason the guy thinks it's more of an issue is because if steam ever did go down, it'd be an issue because EVERYTHING is DDL.

Which, ignores that such a thing wouldn't happen due to steamguard.


so they took time to let us know exactly what happened by taking down the network and investigating it...you make this sound like a bad thing here when it clearly is not. IF i was a steam user I would have preferred to know exactly whats going on rather than hey forum got hacked..few days later..my bad more stuff were hacked stay tuned for the next update.

I'm not agreeing with the article that steam is doing a better job portion. it's not a black and white situation where you can draw a direct comparison, MAINLY due to the reason that Valve should have been more prepared for this by now. After Sony and a plathora of other gaming related places got hacked this year the whole industry will be or at least should be focusing a lot more on security and also on how to 'respond' in such a situation. Even under these circumstances Valve took their sweet time in announcing things properly after 7 days.



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"This world is Merciless, and it's also very beautiful"

For All News/Info related to the PlayStation Vita, Come and join us in the Official PSV Thread!

Kasz216 on 13 November 2011
M.U.G.E.N said:
Kasz216 said:
M.U.G.E.N said:
Kasz216 said:
M.U.G.E.N said:
thismeintiel said:
zarx said:
The difference is that Valve have let everyone know and told them to change their passwords as soon as possible and to watch their credit card statements. They have also confirmed exactly what information was exposed and how it was protected (hashed passwords and credit card info encrypted with the best encryption in the business) and not shut down their entire service for weeks.

By being transparent and up front about the situation they have mitigated the wild speculation that surrounded the PSN hack. The fact that this has happened before also help lessen the impact.

Not true, at all.  initially they thought it was restricted to the forums and also thought it was a minor hack, so they did no mandatory changing of paswords, like Sony did when PSN was finally up.  I'm sure most felt safe enough to keep passwords the same since Valve didn't come off as too worried.

@ OP

The major difference here is the "console warz."  Had Steam been a console, and was competing against the 360 and the PS3, it would have blown up even more.  You would have had fanboys of both consoles ripping into them.  Plus, you would have the PC fanboys (many of whom are defending Valve now because it is PC gaming) adding to it.  Of course, it didn't help that even gaming journalists can be fanboys, like the one who wrote this article.  "In other words, it pretty much made the PlayStation more of a pile of scrap than it already was."  Come on, really?  Seems like something that would have been "okay" in 2006/2007, but not now.  Besides, I'm sure 55 million people would disagree with you.

Personally, I think Sony did the better thing.  Yes, they waited longer than Valve to tell users what was going on, but they also took down the service until they knew EXACTLY how big this was and found ways to make the service more secure.  Valve, on the other hand, told people sooner, but went ahead without knowing the full extent of what happened, so didn't force password changes or change the security, at all.  Now that they have investigated further, they see it was worse than they thought previously, and by not forcing certain security measures, may have made the situation worse.  Something tells me they may not know the full extent of this even now.  And as of now, I think the service is still up.

and if i'm not mistaken they took 4 days to announce the breach as well...

Yes and no. 

It took them four days to announce there was a problem, i believe people assumed it was a DDoS?.   Seven to announce that it was a hacking attempt.

http://techland.time.com/2011/11/11/is-valves-steam-hack-as-bad-as-sony-playstation-debacle/

umm so it took them 7 days to realize it was a hacking attempt? and this is after all the industry wide hacking incidents this year. Sorry but that's not 'better' than sony at all. Sony did the right thing, took down the service, brought in external investigators and did a thourough search to asess the damage. as thisismeintel earlier pointed out, valave is still investigating the issue. that is not the best course of action when you are uncertain. quite a poor job from valve, and I agree with the article. the only reason why people don't bitch about it is because

1. sony is the evil i hate sony omfg i love xxx company more ppl

2. first of its kind in the industry afaik, at least to that extent. so many hacking incidents occurred after that, that people are 'used' to hearing it now

3. steam is not down.

heck in this thread itself we have members who have no idea what happened even.

Except they did know before then.  They stated as much back in the QA sessions... when they finally had them.  That's one of the reasons why people were bitching.  They said they knew they were hacked from the start, and were investigating to see what had been hacked, and finally released the info on the 7th day while still investigating further.

Versus Valve, who thought their forums were damaged, and took them down.

Found out a database was hacked, told us.

Then continued investigating.


If you actually agreed with the article i sourced, you'd note they said valve was doing a better job then sony.

The only reason the guy thinks it's more of an issue is because if steam ever did go down, it'd be an issue because EVERYTHING is DDL.

Which, ignores that such a thing wouldn't happen due to steamguard.


so they took time to let us know exactly what happened by taking down the network and investigating it...you make this sound like a bad thing here when it clearly is not. IF i was a steam user I would have preferred to know exactly whats going on rather than hey forum got hacked..few days later..my bad more stuff were hacked stay tuned for the next update.

I'm not agreeing with the article that steam is doing a better job portion. it's not a black and white situation where you can draw a direct comparison, MAINLY due to the reason that Valve should have been more prepared for this by now. After Sony and a plathora of other gaming related places got hacked this year the whole industry will be or at least should be focusing a lot more on security and also on how to 'respond' in such a situation. Even under these circumstances Valve took their sweet time in announcing things properly after 7 days.

Except they didn't.  After seven days we had as less infromation then Valve gave us in 4.  

The difference is, valve kept us posted, while sony left us wondering WTF was even going on... and then they halfass rushed an explination of what they knew so far.

Except... sony said password info was stolen and credit card info might of been stolen, but didn't state what securtity features it had... or even if it was encrypted!

Valve, told us that all in the first post, in 4 days, with further updates to follow.

 

And I guess it's a matter of opinion... but me, I like to be updating as things unfold, so I can take precautionary steps ahead of time.  Rather then wait while my info might be misued.

Honestly, if you fault valve for anything, it's not saying Day 1 that stuff might of been breached, if they had the indication that this could be the case.

I really can't see how you'd honestly think the alternative of complete ignroance and no safeguards is a better option then being updated as things develop.  Let alone Sony's plan of copletete ignorance that gave way to updates as things develop, but without being concise with the details, and taking a couple weeks to actually apologize.



thismeintiel on 13 November 2011
Kasz216 said:

Except they didn't.  After seven days we had as less infromation then Valve gave us in 4.  

The difference is, valve kept us posted, while sony left us wondering WTF was even going on... and then they halfass rushed an explination of what they knew so far.

Except... sony said password info was stolen and credit card info might of been stolen, but didn't state what securtity features it had... or even if it was encrypted!

Valve, told us that all in the first post, in 4 days, with further updates to follow.

 

And I guess it's a matter of opinion... but me, I like to be updating as things unfold, so I can take precautionary steps ahead of time.  Rather then wait while my info might be misued.

Honestly, if you fault valve for anything, it's not saying Day 1 that stuff might of been breached, if they had the indication that this could be the case.

I really can't see how you'd honestly think the alternative of complete ignroance and no safeguards is a better option then being updated as things develop.  Let alone Sony's plan of copletete ignorance that gave way to updates as things develop, but without being concise with the details, and taking a couple weeks to actually apologize.

The first post didn't say anything about credit cards.  That is when they felt it was just related to the forums.  The next day is when they found it was larger than they had previously thought and that credit card data may have been compromised, something Sony stated 7 days after the PSN hack.  It's really only a difference of 2 days.  The only real difference is that Sony took down PSN to deter any further attacks while they investigated and improved security.  Maybe Valve has better security, so they don't fear a 2nd attack.  Of course, I would think if it was better they wouldn't have been hacked in the first place.  Valve probably won't be bringing in outside investigators, either, so that won't slow them down.

I'm not saying Sony handled it perfectly or that Valve is handling this shitty.  Just 2 different approaches, I suppose.  Though, I do agree with Mugen that after the whole PSN fiasco, others should have cracked down on their own security.  Still, considering they are still investigating themselves, we will have to wait for this to all play out before we can say which one is worse.  In the end, it will probably be the hackers.



 

zarx on 13 November 2011
thismeintiel said:
Kasz216 said:

Except they didn't.  After seven days we had as less infromation then Valve gave us in 4.  

The difference is, valve kept us posted, while sony left us wondering WTF was even going on... and then they halfass rushed an explination of what they knew so far.

Except... sony said password info was stolen and credit card info might of been stolen, but didn't state what securtity features it had... or even if it was encrypted!

Valve, told us that all in the first post, in 4 days, with further updates to follow.

 

And I guess it's a matter of opinion... but me, I like to be updating as things unfold, so I can take precautionary steps ahead of time.  Rather then wait while my info might be misued.

Honestly, if you fault valve for anything, it's not saying Day 1 that stuff might of been breached, if they had the indication that this could be the case.

I really can't see how you'd honestly think the alternative of complete ignroance and no safeguards is a better option then being updated as things develop.  Let alone Sony's plan of copletete ignorance that gave way to updates as things develop, but without being concise with the details, and taking a couple weeks to actually apologize.

The first post didn't say anything about credit cards.  That is when they felt it was just related to the forums.  The next day is when they found it was larger than they had previously thought and that credit card data may have been compromised, something Sony stated 7 days after the PSN hack.  It's really only a difference of 2 days.  The only real difference is that Sony took down PSN to deter any further attacks while they investigated and improved security.  Maybe Valve has better security, so they don't fear a 2nd attack.  Of course, I would think if it was better they wouldn't have been hacked in the first place.  Valve probably won't be bringing in outside investigators, either, so that won't slow them down.

I'm not saying Sony handled it perfectly or that Valve is handling this shitty.  Just 2 different approaches, I suppose.  Though, I do agree with Mugen that after the whole PSN fiasco, others should have cracked down on their own security.  Still, considering they are still investigating themselves, we will have to wait for this to all play out before we can say which one is worse.  In the end, it will probably be the hackers.


You still seem to be having trouble with the timeline

D1 Sony: Sony learns of hack 

D1 Valve: Hacked, forums taken down

D2 Sony: PSN and Qriocity taken down

D3 Sony:  said it was still investigating the cause of the outage and that it would be "a full day or two" before everything is back to normal. A lie

D4 Sony: Sony confirms there was a hack attempt

D4 Valve: Lets everyone know there was a hack and personal details may have been comprimised, asks people to change passwords etc

D5 Sony: "Our efforts to resolve this matter involve rebuilding our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure," leading people to think it was just a DDoS

D5 Valve: Forums back, manditory password change

D7 Sony: Learns info was comprimised

D8 Sony: lets people know info was comprimised 

 

Then SOE was hacked and a a couple million CC numbers leack online claiming to be from PSN



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thismeintiel on 13 November 2011
zarx said:
thismeintiel said:
Kasz216 said:

Except they didn't.  After seven days we had as less infromation then Valve gave us in 4.  

The difference is, valve kept us posted, while sony left us wondering WTF was even going on... and then they halfass rushed an explination of what they knew so far.

Except... sony said password info was stolen and credit card info might of been stolen, but didn't state what securtity features it had... or even if it was encrypted!

Valve, told us that all in the first post, in 4 days, with further updates to follow.

 

And I guess it's a matter of opinion... but me, I like to be updating as things unfold, so I can take precautionary steps ahead of time.  Rather then wait while my info might be misued.

Honestly, if you fault valve for anything, it's not saying Day 1 that stuff might of been breached, if they had the indication that this could be the case.

I really can't see how you'd honestly think the alternative of complete ignroance and no safeguards is a better option then being updated as things develop.  Let alone Sony's plan of copletete ignorance that gave way to updates as things develop, but without being concise with the details, and taking a couple weeks to actually apologize.

The first post didn't say anything about credit cards.  That is when they felt it was just related to the forums.  The next day is when they found it was larger than they had previously thought and that credit card data may have been compromised, something Sony stated 7 days after the PSN hack.  It's really only a difference of 2 days.  The only real difference is that Sony took down PSN to deter any further attacks while they investigated and improved security.  Maybe Valve has better security, so they don't fear a 2nd attack.  Of course, I would think if it was better they wouldn't have been hacked in the first place.  Valve probably won't be bringing in outside investigators, either, so that won't slow them down.

I'm not saying Sony handled it perfectly or that Valve is handling this shitty.  Just 2 different approaches, I suppose.  Though, I do agree with Mugen that after the whole PSN fiasco, others should have cracked down on their own security.  Still, considering they are still investigating themselves, we will have to wait for this to all play out before we can say which one is worse.  In the end, it will probably be the hackers.


You still seem to be having trouble with the timeline

D1 Sony: Sony learns of hack 

D1 Valve: Hacked, forums taken down

D2 Sony: PSN and Qriocity taken down

D3 Sony:  said it was still investigating the cause of the outage and that it would be "a full day or two" before everything is back to normal. A lie  Not really a lie.  This is before they realized the full extent of the hack.  I mean if Valve investigates further and finds the hack goes even deeper, did they lie?  No.

D4 Sony: Sony confirms there was a hack attempt

D4 Valve: Lets everyone know there was a hack and personal details may have been comprimised, asks people to change passwords etc  If you are counting the actual hack as Day 1 (Sun), then the Day 5 (Thurs) would be the day Valve released its official response.  A day after Sony disclosed it was hacked, though not in great detail.

D5 Sony: "Our efforts to resolve this matter involve rebuilding our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure," leading people to think it was just a DDoS

D5 Valve: Forums back, manditory password change Again, you labeled the day wrong.  This is actually Day 6.

D7 Sony: Learns info was comprimised

D8 Sony: lets people know info was comprimised

Then SOE was hacked and a a couple million CC numbers leack online claiming to be from PSN

 

Still, it's a matter of a few days.  Nothing major.  Of course, it took Sony longer to get PSN up since they called in outside security companies, as well as government agencies, in to investigate.  Then they did a major overhaul to their security.  Like I said above, we have to wait for the full investigation to come to a close before we determine which is worse, not that it will really matter at that point.