Thursday, 2/23/2012, 1:06 AM EST [ Sorry, Closed. ]
0 Comments | 4 May 2011
Recently, the massive electronics company, Sony, fell victim to a massive breach of security. Someone was able to not only get unauthorized access to the Playstation Network, but they were also able to steal a truly massive amount of customer data. Not only the Playstation Network, but also Sony Online Entertainment and Qriocity customers are affected as well.
“So what does this mean for me?”
On the basic level, it means that you should immediately change your password for these services. Somebody having access to Sony’s username and password Data would be bad enough. This case is even worse, however, as Sony failed to encrypt the passwords. This means that these hackers need to do very little work to retrieve – and use – your passwords.
On a more important level, if you bought anything through any of the above services – providing your credit/debit card number – you should really cancel that card and get a new one. While Sony says that the credit card information was encrypted, this is a definite case of ‘better safe than sorry’. Given enough time and computing power, any encryption can be broken.
So what does this teach us? We here at JeremySelph.com take away two valuable lessons from this event. First, for the developers, like us – make sure that user information such as passwords are always encrypted. It seems like common sense to me, but Sony proves that even the biggest companies can make a mistake.
Second, and this one is for everyone – keep up your firewall and virus protections! A skilled hacker can get through your everyday firewall, but it will go a long way towards keeping you safe online. Your virus protection should be kept up to date for the same reason. Virus protection is arguably even more important, since it’s very hard to avoid the huge amounts of spyware and viruses online today.
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