For anyone who has a PS3, you’ve probably noticed that PlayStation Network has been down for the past few days. This is because someone succeeded in hacking it on Wednesday (April 20). I don’t know whether they were trying to get free stuff off of the PlayStation Store, hack other people’s accounts, or so on, but as a result Sony had to temporarily suspend PSN until the problem was resolved. It should be back up very soon, though.
For me, this means that I have to wait to play the co-op mode in Portal 2. :O I beat the single player mode last night, and it was honestly one of the best games that I played that was released in the past few years. Valve sure did create a masterpiece.
*EDIT*
Several days ago, it was announced that the hackers did more than just get free things off of the PlayStation Store; they were able to hack PSN’s database and find the account information (username, password, e-mail, address, phone number, and possibly credit card information) for evey person’s account. Sony is now working very hard to recover this data, restore PSN, and strengthen security to ensure this will never happen again. It’s been strongly recommended that you change any accounts (e-mail, online stores, Facebook, etc.) that have the same e-mail and password as your PSN account; although the hacke(s) were probably only trying to get credit card information from people who had it registered on their accounts, you want to make sure that none of your accounts get hacked in any way. Sony sent all of its PSN users an e-mail suggesting to follow your credit score and credit card receipts very closely to make sure you don’t undergo identity theft. They also said not to respond to any phone calls or e-mails asking you for your credit card or social security number (that’s pretty obvious).
I’m not sure if this is true, but I heard rumors that the hacker was traced and caught, and lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey. I’d hate to be them right now lol. Once again, I’m not sure if that’s true, it’s only a rumor at this point. Hopefully other companies like Microsoft and Nintendo will now realize that hackers are becoming more able to penetrate what were thought to be tough security features, and measures will be taken by all companies to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.
