
PSN has been hacked again - ukdm
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/44380/Sony-suffers-frech-hack
======
spoondan
Wait. Please tell me I'm misunderstanding. You needed only to enter a user's
e-mail address and birth date to change his/her password? So, even without the
previous (actual) hack, you could use this page to change the password of a
family member, friend, co-worker, and nearly anyone else you've ever exchanged
e-mails with if you know their birthday (or they publish it on Facebook)?

How does someone even conceive of something like that without realizing the
glaring problem with it? How does it pass muster at a major corporation that
has hired security consultants? This is utterly flabbergasting.

~~~
CWuestefeld
...and this was the solution that they spent the last month feverishly
building.

~~~
weaksauce
Why is the de facto standard way of email exchange plus old password plus
maybe a birthday not workable? Unless psn stored the passwords in plaintext,
the hackers modified data, and Sony does not have a clean backup.

~~~
LokiSnake
The main issue is that all the info used for password reset are in the
hackers' hands. There may not be a perfect method, but maybe having a system
that calls the phone number on file to give you a password reset code would
have been more secure.

~~~
blahedo
The hackers may have the email address, but they presumably can't read the
email _sent to_ that address. Hence "email exchange".

~~~
weaksauce
You are correct; that is what I meant. Users may have used the same password
on the psn and their email account though. If sony did the right thing and
only stored salted hashed passwords then that would be mitigated a bit.

Another option would be to send out a new password via mail to the billing
address if they had no other way to do it electronically. Out of luck if you
moved since then. Make the old password a requirement so mail thieves cannot
steal your account.

I was pissed that I needed to change my credit card number because of these
clowns. If someone wants to make a cool startup make a credit card number that
is a one off that will only work for a certain time frame(extendable), dollar
limit, and business name(though this one might be tougher because the business
name given to the credit card company might be different than the business
name I would enter).

~~~
markelliot
CitiCard, for one, offers unique 1-off numbers for online transactions just as
you suggest. Last I checked AmEx Gold cards also granted this feature.

~~~
weaksauce
I heard of the one off card numbers before but I thought those were for just
one month before they expire. Are they not? I haven't seen the amex gold one
though thanks.

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jameskilton
[http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/accou...](http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/account/forgotpw.html)

For having three different security firms working with Sony on the hack a
month ago, are they really just pushing out the new PSN without a proper, full
security review? I mean, any competent developer would immediately realize
that this password reset system is flawed by design, _especially_ with the
fact that the user's information requested is the information the hackers
already have!

This does not bode well for the near future of PSN as a whole. If something as
simple as a password reset feature is still being built without security in
mind, then how does the rest of the updated system fare?

~~~
simias
I must say I'm baffled. I logged back into my PSN account via my PS3
yesterday, it directly asked me to change my password when I tried to use my
previous credentials. No confirmation needed, it just sends you an email
afterwards to notify you that your password has been changed.

At this point I assumed that it had used my PS3 hardware ID + my (static) IP +
whatever to correlate that in all likelihood it must have been a legitimate
login, which was already a bit weird but I guess they wanted to make it as
simple as possible for everybody.

But this is just outstanding. It's really security 101 failure. As others have
pointed out, using a regular password reset email with a unique token would
have been much more safe, albeit not foolproof (some people would have lost
their emails accounts they used to register by now).

Sony deserves everything that's happening (and will probably continue to
happen) to them. The sad part is that I'm sure a majority of the gamers sony
really targets must still be chanting "xbox sucks go sony lol" and still think
geohot or anonymous or santa is to blame.

\-- A very unhappy PS3 (and its ancestors) owner.

~~~
stcredzero
_It's really security 101 failure.

...

Sony deserves everything that's happening (and will probably continue to
happen) to them. The sad part is that I'm sure a majority of the gamers sony
really targets must still be chanting "xbox sucks go sony lol"..._

The effective collective IQ of Sony has sunk below average at this point, and
the company lumbers along on network effects. Maybe there's room now for a
gaming platform that's not a physical console?

I hope the collective IQ analogy doesn't also work for the United States!

~~~
neutronicus
> Maybe there's room now for a gaming platform that's not a physical console?

What do you mean by this?

A resurgence in PC gaming? I hope not. I have absolutely no desire to return
to the PC gaming obsolescence cycle.

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pilif
In their defense though: What data could ask Sony for? All the data that Sony
knew about these accounts has leaked, so what ever they ask for, the hackers
with the leaked data know it too.

Exception is maybe the credit card number, but that would mean that only a
small subset of the original account holders can change their password.

Or you use a PS3 device ID and only allow changing the password on the device,
but that is also known by the attackers and I'm sure it could be spoofed.

Not even sending a token to the email address on file would work in all cases
because the users might have lost their email accounts to the breach too (by
reusing the same weak password).

~~~
mkinsella
The latest PSN update required a password change. They could have also added a
required security question and then used that when resetting passwords.

~~~
Legion
Exactly this. All previously stored data is compromised. Obviously, people
can't change their birthdates, but the password reset function unquestionably
has to rely only on newly-supplied, uncompromised data.

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jbyers
This title strikes me as misleading. It should not come as a surprise that the
personal information gathered in the first attack will be used for this
purpose. It's just shocking that PSN forgot or misunderstood that they
themselves were the first and easiest target.

~~~
simias
I agree, the term "hack" is even more abused than the term "hacker" these
days. I guess it makes for a good headline.

~~~
RuadhanMc
Yes, it irks me too. I consider myself a "hack" when it comes to programming.
I tinker, I play, I build, but I have mostly surface knowledge. "Hacker" is a
term that should be reserved for real programmers who actually know what they
are doing and dig deep into vast reserves of knowledge to get around barriers
that us mere hacks would come to a halting screech at.

~~~
simias
Well, IMHO being "tinkerer" is an important trait for a "hacker" :).

I was thinking about the hacker == kids who DDoS mastercard or steal infos
from the PSN. Some of them might be hackers, but that's not what a hacker is.
Bruteforcing PSN accounts using a stolen DB is not really the mark of a
hacker's job for me.

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51Cards
Just agreeing with the other comments here. This is not a 'hack'.. this is
just an unfortunate consequence of the original breach. All the information
was taken so Sony has nothing else to verify your identity with that can't be
'spoofed' by those with the original data. I restored my info via my PS3.

~~~
tghw
It's not dependent on the first breach. If I understand correctly that it only
requires an email address and birth date to change someone's password, then it
would be pretty easy to grab all of that data from somewhere like Facebook and
run it through.

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eswat
Reading the steps on Kotaku, I’m still not exactly clear how this procedure
goes…

So you enter the target’s email address and date of birth on the reset page.
If that clears, then the next URL has a token in the query string that you can
apply to the actual password reset page URL to reset the target’s password?

------
chrischen
Ironically I know of actual account owners who entered in fake birthdays and
could not reset their own password because they don't remember their own
"personal details."

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kmfrk
_Trophy unlocked: Unmitigated security disaster._

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citricsquid
If anything this is an oversight (albeit ridiculous) _not_ a "hack".

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dualboot
The solution to Sony's issue here seems like a no-brainer to me.

The answer is to rebuild/rebrand the networking for the playstation with a
strong partner like Amazon, Google, or Valve/Steam.

A partner like Amazon for example could bring good e-commerce stability to
lend confidence to platform.

Google is also an excellent candidate -- they have the experience with scale
and could use a strong partner like Sony to help push their home media
platforms (GoogleTV, etc.)

~~~
LokiSnake
I like this idea. What do you think about using Valve/Steam? They are in
similar industries but occupy almost completely disjoint spaces. Could it be a
match made in heaven?

Though, I do shudder thinking about having a company as incompetent as Sony
joining forces with Valve.

~~~
dualboot
Valve would be great for people who respect what they do (me included) but I'm
hesitant to believe that Valve has much to gain from the partnership.

Google and Amazon are actively working towards marketing to televisions
screens -- Amazon with Prime/Digital Video media sales and Google with
GoogleTV and YouTube. They have more to gain from a potential partnership.

------
andiw
Note, according to the original article
(<http://sony.nyleveia.com/2011/05/17/warning-all-psn-users-yo...>) as well as
this forum discussion (<http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=430574>),
this is in fact a new vulnerability that is independent of the original PSN
hack.

The problem seems to be that the email validation required for resetting the
password could be circumvented. There is no detailed information in the posts
how, but likely either the validation hash was generated in a insecure
fashion, or the email address input was not properly sanitized and allowed
piggybacking (CCing) a 2nd email address to receive the confirmation email.

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lakeeffect
I dont know why they are worrying about security, i wish they could put a guy
on the fact that my sony blu-ray disk, running in my sony playstation doesn't
play on my nokia blue tooth headsets. Thats a problem, the fact that some
people provide the sony network with acess to one of their high level
passwords is beyond me.

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fleitz
They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. All they needed to do was
generate a little random data and email it to their clients.

eg. /reset?token=XXXXX

Only the recipient of the email can use it and it will let the person reset
their password. It's so standard fare, I'm not sure why Sony needed to go this
route.

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nodata
And how will Sony be punished for this? They won't.

People will keep using them.

Nobody but us cares.

~~~
WiseWeasel
By people not buying the PS4.

~~~
nodata
People will buy the PS4. No normal person cares about the hack.

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TheBranca18
PSN hasn't been hacked again. A webpage has been hacked that could change your
password. Definitely a misleading headline.

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jbillingsley
Not a hack really just a gross oversight on Sony's part.

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shareme
well at least Sony was not security contractor at TEPCO nuke plants

