Last week, Sony announced that there had been a massive hacking of a video game network that led to the theft of 77 million user accounts which included credit card information, direct debit records, and other sensitive personal information. The hacking affected people all over the world - 10,7000 direct debit records were stolen from customers in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain. In addition, 12,700 non-U.S. credit or debit card numbers were stolen. Just recently, Sony revealed that the hackers had the account information of another 25 million users of its PC games system in a second wave of hacking. In total, this amounts to over 100 million accounts being stolen.
This breach of security really shows the fragility of the entire internet network. The PlayStation network utilizes the internet in letting its video game console owners download games and play against other people over the internet for a fee. The information stored about these people include their names, addresses, emails, birth dates, phone numbers, and credit card information.
And the vastness of this breach - over 100 million users - shows how other security systems might be hacked and cause chaos. For example, if sites like Google or Amazon were hacked, or worse, online banks, the effects would be unimaginable. We'll wait to see how this one plays out...
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