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[Thad]

I could overlook being hacked. My info stolen. Shit happens. (It sucks, but it happens.) [...]
Being down for almost a MONTH? No. Unacceptable.

Now see, from my perspective those priorities are pretty out-of-whack.

That's WAY too long. I understand they are fixing it, but this is too fucking long. They've got it fixed. It's been fixed for a while. I assume they are just sitting back and debating on what exactly to give away to get in good graces again without losing too much money.

I'm sure that's part of it, but the big part is figuring out legal liability and how to keep it from happening again.  This is a major fuckup and they're going to need significant backend redesign and a pretty thorough auditing process.  And that's just the "getting their servers back online" part; in the meantime the security team needs to figure out who got in and how.

[PhoenixUltima]

My prediction: Sony will put the PSN back up and exclaim that it is now safe and 100% secure, please go ahead and buy things oh god pretty please. The very next day someone will hack the service, PSN will go back down while they figure out how to patch their 100% safe and secure network. Repeat until Sony finally closes all the gaping holes in their networks (yeah right) or the company closes its gaming division forever because people abandoned the PS3 in droves. The whole time people with names like "xXXboxRulez420Xx" will be insufferable twats (more than usual).

[Brentai]

In case it wasn't clear before I don't believe Microsoft's network is that much more secure because it's fucking Microsoft.  If the shit's running on some manner of IIS framework (almost certain) then it's probably just got viruses cancelling out other viruses in equilibrium.

MS is relatively safe right now mainly because they haven't done anything lately to piss off any enthusiast groups.  Somehow.  If Sony really closes up shop over this (not that unlikely!) we can only but hope that everyone else watching the story unfold will come to the correct conclusion: that overreacting to the piracy issue can utterly decimate your bottom line in ways that the original problem never even approached.

[Nickasummers]

I don't remember where I saw or heard it, and it might not have been true at all, but somewhere I got the impression that before the PS3 was released Sony was considering closing the Playstation division, and if the PS3 wasn't really successful there would not be a PS4. If this affects sales, it seems likely to me that it is the end of the Playstation franchise. The game franchises that were previously PS-exclusive will move to Microsoft or Nintendo systems, and people will mostly forget about the Playstation. Or maybe some new company will pop up to compete with Microsoft for the graphics-oriented console market in their stead.

[Thad]

Oh hey, Phoenix; was just wondering where you'd gotten off to.

Per Sony getting attacked again immediately: well, that's exactly what they're taking so long trying to prevent, and if they hire competent security professionals maybe they can get it to work this time.  No network is 100% secure, but I am willing to bet money that this attack was the result of an incredibly stupid mistake (remember their complex cryptography where they forgot to salt the keys?).

100% security is impossible, but pretty-good security is entirely possible; Sony's just bad at it.

In case it wasn't clear before I don't believe Microsoft's network is that much more secure because it's fucking Microsoft.  If the shit's running on some manner of IIS framework (almost certain) then it's probably just got viruses cancelling out other viruses in equilibrium.

I haven't kept up with the latest version of IIS, but in MS's defense, they've really made major strides in improving security on their OS.  I'd put their track record a damn sight better than Sony's these days.

MS is relatively safe right now mainly because they haven't done anything lately to piss off any enthusiast groups.  Somehow.  If Sony really closes up shop over this (not that unlikely!) we can only but hope that everyone else watching the story unfold will come to the correct conclusion: that overreacting to the piracy issue can utterly decimate your bottom line in ways that the original problem never even approached.

I'm reluctant to draw the "This happened because of the OtherOS/Hotz situation" conclusion without further evidence, simply because no ulterior motive is necessary here; stealing credit card numbers from a Fortune 500 company is an end in and of itself.  While it's entirely possible this is some sort of retaliation, it doesn't HAVE to be, and as far as I know the only evidence that it was is the timing.

Though obviously it WOULD be nice if people drew a conclusion along the lines of "let's stop fucking our customers for no reason".

[TA]

I seem to recall reading that this information was only discoverable because of the fail0verflow discovery and crack.  At least, the whole "this information is being passed in an unencrypted string" part wasn't learned, or at least not publicized, until after the crack allowed people to learn it.

[Brentai]

I don't remember where I saw or heard it, and it might not have been true at all, but somewhere I got the impression that before the PS3 was released Sony was considering closing the Playstation division, and if the PS3 wasn't really successful there would not be a PS4. If this affects sales, it seems likely to me that it is the end of the Playstation franchise. The game franchises that were previously PS-exclusive will move to Microsoft or Nintendo systems, and people will mostly forget about the Playstation. Or maybe some new company will pop up to compete with Microsoft for the graphics-oriented console market in their stead.

PS2 was an overall success for Sony but the PS3 has lost more money than the PS2 made... and that's before all this bullshit started.  The main problem is that their business plan involved eating a loss until Q3 2008, at which point they hoped to start turning a profit. 

Q3 2008.  Poor fucking bastards.

Anyway I wouldn't put a nail in the PS4's coffin just yet.  Sony's a big damn corporation and has been playing the electronics field for longer than Nintendo and Microsoft (possibly longer than both of them combined if you don't count Nintendo's silly Ultra Hand/Laser Shooting Gallery years).  If there's anything a company of that size and age should understand, it's how to recover gracefully from a fuckup, at least in a business sense.  A shrewd enough executive board might conclude that the PS3's failure was due to some rather severe external factors and a lot of highly avoidable mistakes, and might resolve to learn from those mistakes and give it another shot, at least after putting Kaz Hirai's head on a pike first.  I'm not enough of a Japanese omnicorporate executive to say for sure, but I think the fat lady's still in rehearsal for the time being.

[Thad]

I seem to recall reading that this information was only discoverable because of the fail0verflow discovery and crack.  At least, the whole "this information is being passed in an unencrypted string" part wasn't learned, or at least not publicized, until after the crack allowed people to learn it.

If that's true then the lesson is still "Don't undermine your expensive, complex security architecture with stupid amateur-hour mistakes" rather than "Don't give people a reason to look for stupid amateur-hour mistakes".

That said, "Don't piss off your customers" is still a bit of advice that Sony and everybody else really should take to heart.

And yes, agreed that it's very much premature to talk about Sony's impending demise.  They dominated two generations of the console market; this is a big setback but if they have good sense they'll still look at it as a one-off.

And it's still premature to talk about the next gen of consoles; Nintendo's the only one to give us anything resembling an announcement yet and for all we know the Wii 2's going to be an incremental improvement rather than a major leap forward.

At least, it will be if Nintendo's learned anything from ITS series of mistakes after dominating the console market for two generations.

[Nickasummers]

Ps3 was a fuckup from the start money-wise. They sold it not just at a loss, but below the cost of their bluray players so they not only lost money on the console, but they stole sales from other parts of their own company. On top of that, their "at a loss" was still more than their competitor. And then, to make up costs, they decided to sell their games for $80 when x360 games were $60 and pc games were still $50. If they do continue making consoles, some people had better get reamed for what has happened so far with the ps3.

[TA]

If that's true then the lesson is still "Don't undermine your expensive, complex security architecture with stupid amateur-hour mistakes" rather than "Don't give people a reason to look for stupid amateur-hour mistakes".

That said, "Don't piss off your customers" is still a bit of advice that Sony and everybody else really should take to heart.

It can be both.  "Don't make blindingly retarded decisions in securing your system" and "Being aware that even without said such decisions, there's no such thing as a perfectly secure system, don't antagonize your customers into a mad dash to find the holes".

fail0verflow didn't invent these holes.  They went undiscovered for years, because the people who would have been most interested in finding them didn't have much incentive to.

[Mongrel]

Okay, I saw most of this story, but I missed the origins you guys seem to be referring to.

What was it that Sony did to antagonize it's customers this bad? And if it was no one thing, what was the straw that broke the camel's back?

[TA]

When the PS3 was released, it had a feature called OtherOS.  This would let you install Linux on it, so you could use it as a computer as well as a PS3 and a Blu-Ray player.  This was pleasing to the hacking community, because they could throw Linux on it and fuck around and they need didn't start looking for exploits or vulnerabilities to do the same.

Then when they put out the PS3 Slim, that no longer had OtherOS, but the older models were still fine.  Until a firmware update in April 2010 removed OtherOS from the older models as well.  This pissed a lot of people off, and when the announcement was made, people active in the hacking community told people not to update their firmwares and swore to find a way to put custom firmware on the machine.  And god damn did they ever.

[Nickasummers]

If there's anything a company of that size and age should understand, it's how to recover gracefully from a fuckup

Thats true. Sony does have a lot of experience with fucking up and living to tell about it.

[Niku]

they decided to sell their games for $80 when x360 games were $60 and pc games were still $50.

When exactly did this happen?

[TA]

YYYeah, I don't remember that ever being true.  Neither does Google - all I'm seeing is speculation from Famitsu a year prior to the PS3 launch that they might.

[Aintaer]

By the way guys, PS3 got linux back.

[Nickasummers]

YYYeah, I don't remember that ever being true.  Neither does Google - all I'm seeing is speculation from Famitsu a year prior to the PS3 launch that they might.

I distinctly remember seeing the number less than a week before launch, but I think it was in a discussion on the internet. Which means someone probably threw that number out even though it wasn't true and nobody bothered to correct him at the time. And since I never even looked at prices in a store, I've spent almost 5 years now being wrong. Sorry guys, you are right about that. I think I will check my facts in the future.

[Mongrel]

October 1917. Ahahaha.

[Joxam]

I think I will check my facts in the future.

:Manlytears: I think he just grew up guys.

[the asshole you hate]

"Don't piss off your customers" is a more learnable lesson now that said customers (read: not those who grew up with video games but the unwashed masses who have since discovered them) have largely found internet-ways to communicate about what is going on with a given console/company. I'm speaking of course about commercial media. That said, people are morons, so ? hello XBOCKS/NINTENDOG era ?

I hope to hell Sega comes back. That would rock.