<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nThis story about the Playstation Network being hacked<\/a> is huge<\/strong>. Just trying to draw a chalk outline around the thing is a major undertaking. The degree to which this will impact the behavior and attitudes of the rest of the industry is hard to judge. But you can bet the people in Redmond<\/a> are letting out a slow breath and saying, “Thank God this didn’t happen to us<\/em>.” And then they laugh and go back to brainstorming new ways to make Games for Windows LIVE even more horrible. <\/p>\n This is<\/strong> the worst-case scenario for Sony. Their entire network is down, it’s been down since last week, and they don’t even have an estimate of when it will be up again. They don’t have an explanation. And someone out there has all of the personal data of all of the PSN users, ever. <\/p>\n Here is an email from my brother Patrick, this morning:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I'm sure you have heard of the PSN leak last week. I was actually affected by this. Someone tried to buy some monitors or tv's or something using info from dell using information they got off the Playstation network. It didn't go through because DELL, not my credit card, called me to make sure that I was who I said I was. Because of this I am free and clear, and Playstation has already said anyone affected will have their credit score fixed on their dime. (I Have a copy of the email they sent if you want it.)<\/p>\n This is EXACTLY the kind of liability a developer assumes when using online services for activations, game sales, DLC offerings and anything else. Aside from from all the other costs one has to wonder if companies are going to determine that DRM and online activation costs are being offset by the percentage of piracy they are eliminating.<\/p>\n Try to imagine the combined credit score and combined credit available if someone were to get into Blizzards servers. How many kids have online accounts with their parents cards? Now imagine a smart crook who would wait until blizzard server is being inundated with cash transactions, say during a diablo3 release and all the thefts aren't caught until people start getting large CC bills a month later.<\/p>\n This is why middlemen still exist. It always sounds good to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dceliminate the middleman'…. But he has his purpose.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Think about how many people use the same name \/ password pair everywhere. That means this hacker has more than just credit card numbers, they also have a bunch of potential World of Warcraft \/ Steam \/ Twitter \/ Facebook \/ Newegg \/ Gmail logins, along with a smattering of logins for various banks. The potential for widespread chaos and theft is alarming. <\/p>\n I am NOT a super-brain, and I can’t keep a unique name & password for every single site I visit. I have several tiers of passwords I use, from my low-security one I use for one-shot forum registrations, to my most secure login that I save for things with my credit card attached. I haven’t used my PSN login in a couple of years, but that is one place I would have trusted with one of my good passwords. I mean, Sony, right? Multi-billion dollar company. This isn’t some shady blog or forum or Facebook app. This is a major corporation. They know what they’re doing when it comes to security, right?<\/p>\n