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General: Station.com Taken Offline
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The Sony Online Entertainment gaming portal, Station.com, has been taken offline due to continuing issues due to "an issue that warrants enough concern" for the outage. This comes hot on the heels of a series of hacking attacks on SOE leading to user account information being accessed and other serious issues.
We have had to take the SOE service down temporarily. In the course of our investigation into the intrusion into our systems we have discovered an issue that warrants enough concern for us to take the service down effective immediately. We will provide an update later today (Monday).
Source: Kotaku.com.
Comments
Man, SONY's really pileing on the fail arent they??
Looks like Sony suffered a major hack not only on the Playstation Network. The damage is much larger as it seems.
Worse of all is that we (their customers) are left in the dark with only that announce that later today they'll update the news. Man, it's been there for like 8 hours already! >:(
...not to mention that they're not giving ANY information on the social media either - not on their twitter nor on their facebook accounts #FAIL
They have never been good about keeping players informed.
My guess from the wording of the message, and what happen to the PSN, they are fixing a hole in their security system.
That was my guess as well. Lets just hope they'll fix it faster than the time they took to fix the PSN security issues...
SET SAIL FOR FAIL CASCADE!
Maybe start treating your users like human beings and not just meat bags to drain money from.
UPDATE on twitter:
We had to temporarily take down SOE services during the night. In the course of our investigation into the intrusion of our systems, we have discovered an issue that warrants enough concern. We will provide an update later today.
I know not telling much more, but at least they're starting to inform on the social media now (same message on Facebook)
A post from ZAM! Expect the worst people and immediable block your creditcard(s)! Do not wait until your bank account gets emptied and you have start going through the nightmare of getting money back (which can take a long time).
Sony nor SOE will tell you the full truth about what has been compromised! Not until it's too late and lots of innocent people gotten into trouble!
-----------------------------------------from ZAM------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is with all of these posts saying this was not Sony's fault? They were using an outdated version of the Apache web server that had known vulnerabilities. They should have patched these, any idiot could have done these updates but they chose to ignore it.
Yes, I am a server administrator and software engineer.
The real crime on Sony's part is that they did NOT encrypt the personal information! This is security 101 people! How in the world could the information such as birthday, cc number and security questions not have been encrypted??? There is absolutely no excuse for this and it is negligence on their part. The class action lawsuit for this lack of basic security has already started at http://www.techfirm.com/contact/
Again, there is no excuse to use outdated and vulnerable software on their servers and there is DEFINITELY no excuse to store our private information in an unencrypted format. If they had encrypted it like every other company does then it would not matter if hackers did break into the database.
Anyone saying "this is not SOE's fault" does not know what they are talking about. SOE is completely at fault here. This is 100% negligence on their part and it is going to cost them a lot of money.
When you are responsible for 77 million accounts and promise 77 million people that their personal information is safe with you it is expected that you will be diligent regarding keeping your server software patched and up to date.
It is expected that you will be diligent regarding storing the personal information in an encrypted format.
SOE did the opposite, instead of being diligent they were negligent. Negligence is the basis for lawsuits asking for compensation. They are going to get a nasty, nasty, nasty bill in court soon enough. You can take that to the bank.
The Rothken Law Firm (http://www.techfirm.com/) has already started the class action lawsuit and you can bet that Sony will be settling soon enough. I added my name to the lawsuit because I expect SOE to pay for me to get identity theft protection for at least a couple years. It is the very least SOE can do after they decided to place our personal information on the Internet without even the most basic security precautions in place to protect us.
I think it's time for them to rethink their creation of non-hardware products...
I think we could all do without DCUO, PlanetSide, EverQuest 2, The Agency, SWG NGE, The Matrix, and maybe even Vangaurd.
This just got posted as well about this whole Sony / SOE fiasco:
http://money.msn.com/top-stocks/post.aspx?post=0f550938-432d-4049-abcb-086d6930740c
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!"
...............
"I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. "
__Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__
...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
Have you been living under a rock? Matrix Online has been taken down long long ago already and The Agency has never been released and never will be due to recent lay offs at SOE.
on a related note, is there any reason to think paypal is a more secure way to pay for online services over credit cards? The reason I ask is i think ive used paypal with sony a few monthes back. I guess the bigger question is if t there is going to be a future for mmos if these hacking attempts keep succeding.
Hacking will always happen. Every system is vulnarible!
The point is as a company that is responsible for keeping personal and financial information of millions of users safe, to have the proper security messures in place like proper and strong enough encryption of said information! so hackers can't do anything with it!
This is why Sony (and probably now also SOE) will get a Clas Action Lawsuit against them, because they failed to protect sensitive information without any decent protection in place AT ALL!
Hacking is a crime! But the total negligence of proper secuirty by Sony / SOE is even more criminal!!
It IS a shame to see what Sony is going through. Now all SOE games are down too. Along with this official confirmation here, it just doesn't look good for Sony right now.
Hulu plus just launched on XBL too, so I guess its back to just using the PS3 as a glorified blu-ray player and staying away from SOE for a bit until everything gets sorted out. Luckily all the CC info in their system from me is outdated now.
No offense, but what you linked here seems to be a separate issue from SoE. So far there is no press release about whether the same thing that happened to Sony's PSN is what is happening with SoE. That article is only about Sony's PSN.
Unless something else has been published, there seems to be no news precisely about why the SoE services have been taken down. That is what upsets me the most.
However, whatever it is, it's bad enough that it's giving me the jitters. I am having a rethink about whether I will keep up my sub to EQ2 since I don't particularly want to have my identity stolen because of a video game.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
It's the same thing man! There was an official post on the EQ2 boards (probably all their boards) last week about SOE being hacked too!
They said they "investigated" and said that, as far as they could tell, nothing was stolen!
Now a week later they suddenly take ALL their services down without notice and are suddenly not so sure anymore??!!
Well, you do the math! As the scary thing with SOE is that they DO store your credit card's security code in their database for monthly recurring payments!!
So if personal and financial data has been stolen by hackers last week, it means they got EVERYTHING to use your identity and creditcard!!
http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/712297/soe-temporarily-shuts-down-due-to-intrusion/
Can't say i'm surprized now
I guess they used the same format or whatever acrossed all their networks.
Are you absolutely, 100% sure the CC info is stored by SoE? I ask because quite often CC info and payment is stored by third party databases, like in the case of EA-Mythic. If it isn't so, then that alone shows epicfail on the part of SoE.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
They do and always have been. They handling account management and payments themselves. That is Station.sony.com !
Now the question I have is -- does it matter if you were a former subscriber -- meaning you had an active account years ago -- but no account for the past say 3 years.
Or does it not matter if you are a player or a former player -- you may be compromised. Actually I think my card has changed since I was last subscribed to EQ2 and certainly since EQ1 but that is still the rest of the info.
These companies should have to erase any info about you or at least archieve on tape only within 90 days of when an account is closed -- it is only common sense.
Just contacted MasterCard about this. They know about the situation at SOE and told me that there was nothing to worry about. Their fraud department is keeping an eye on that situation. Anyway, they made a note about me informing about this. This makes it easier and faster to get money back if my CC number would be used without my permission.
Just contact your credit card company and keep an eye on the payments.
err Umm if they got them last week shouldnt their be a rash of theift by now?Seriously if they got them they planed on saleing them an people who they soild them to would have used them asap.Right?
One of the benifits of useing a debit card over a a credit card theirs a limit how much can be used per day. An how many times per day to.While at times a pain its a decent fall back. i check my acount fairly regualar an so far nota. an last months bank statemnt shows nothing either.
Knock on wood.hopeing it stays that way. But kinda hope stations not down a week or more to.I am a stastion acount subscriber the 30 a month deal.An eq is my main mmo i still play dcuo some . pirates of the bruning sea some, vanguard still trying it.as well as sevrial atmepts to get into star wars galaxy.even mess ith eq2 from time to time.So thats a large chuck of my entertainment.
May have to resub to coh sooner than i had planed. but they billed me 5 days early an im still bit on the unhappy side over that.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
LMAO!! Instead of just coming out and say what has REALLY happened. We have to pay long distance and call THEM!! /FACEPALM!!
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EverQuest 2 [Amnerys] Any players that have concerns regarding their account status and security should contact CS at 1-858-537-0898 (10am – 7pm PST, Mon-Fri).
EverQuest 2 [Amnerys] Please use the following phone numbers for your international area. Remember that these numbers are not toll free and are considered long distance from within each country. Players using the "Outside France" phone number will be subject to International fees. UK: (44) 870-600-0267 - DE: (49) 180-500-7774 - FR: Inside France: (33) 825-120-549 - Outside France: (33) 171-230-495