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This is a much much bigger deal than the Gawker security breach. Sony had substantially more information on its users than Gawker could ever hope to dream of. S

This is a much much bigger deal than the Gawker security breach. Sony had substantially more information on its users than Gawker could ever hope to dream of. Specifically information on real names, addresses, and potentially credit cards. This is a big F'N deal and I wouldn't be surprised if it cost Sony more than Microsoft's infamous 1 billion dollar write-down with the Xbox 360's Red Ring of Death. I don't think this will kill PSN or the PS3, but it's going to significantly dent things. I'm curious to see how much media attention this gets and if we'll see a macro shift towards the Xbox 360 and Wii. If I was Nintendo and particularly evil I would leverage this opportunity to tout the new system and emphasize the cutting-edge online modes with rock solid security. And MS can also talk about their great track record in the online world.

dman 15y ago
You can diss your competitor for poor security practices only if you have some confidence in your own.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - esrauch 15y ago
    He's not saying that the grandparent comment was "dissing the competitor". The grandparent comment suggested that Nintendo and Microsoft could use this opportunity to flaunt their own systems as superior, and the person you replied to was simply stating that Nintendo can't do that without having a lot of confidence in their own networks.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- cooldeal 15y ago
  >You can diss your competitor for poor security practices only if you have some confidence in your own. Nope, companies usually don't leave any chance to point to the competition's faults and laugh, even if they themselves are worse in that regard.
  - dman 15y ago
    It does carry a risk though - if you make securing a major online service sound too easy by ridiculing your competitor then down the line when you get breached its more damaging imo. eg I dont remember any Car companies in recent history pointing to Service recalls of their competitors in their advertisements, ditto for Airlines and crashes.
    - nkassis 15y ago
      Airline crashes would be such a bad PR idea I mean, that's just bad taste.
      - scott_s 15y ago
        It is, and that's the example I thought of in response to the point. But car companies do advertise the safety of their cars. The situation is different, though, since different cars do have different safety measures, and such things do get rated.
- Sukotto 15y ago
  All big companies claim total confidence in their own security... right up to the moment they're proved wrong. (and sometimes beyond)
Alex3917 15y ago
"I wouldn't be surprised if it cost Sony more than Microsoft's infamous 1 billion dollar write-down with the Xbox 360's Red Ring of Death." Banks, colleges, hospitals, and credit card processors do this all the time, and it doesn't cost them anywhere near a billion dollars despite the fact that they have vastly more personal information. Sure they usually only have a few hundred thousand records and not a few million, but even still the idea that this is going to cost them a billion dollars is absurd.
- OmarIsmail 15y ago
  I would argue the cost of the RRoD was a heck of a lot more than $1B because of all the lost sales. People didn't want to invest in hardware that was going to break 5 times over. The direct damage from this won't be $1B (still tens of millions at least). But what about the impact of the lost sales and customers from the loss in credibility and trust? That is what could be huge. It was relatively "easy" for Microsoft to replace broken hardware. How easy and how much is it going to cost Sony to replace broken trust?
  - achompas 15y ago
    I would argue the cost of the RRoD was a heck of a lot more than $1B because of all the lost sales. People didn't want to invest in hardware that was going to break 5 times over. Agreed. Microsoft only wrote down the $1B as an expected total cost of fixing broken Xboxes. Who knows how much money they lost?
    - hoop 15y ago
      I've been seeing the notion of accounting for the loss of sales due to "reputation" come up on HN recently and I wish to dispute it. First, most of the time when we're talking about business and we talk about costs we're clearly talking about accounting costs. This applies to startups, too. When you're talking about accounting costs, you don't get to include economic costs (e.g., opportunity cost.) Second, isn't trying to include these extra "costs" due to lost sales the same thing that the music industry is doing? That is, claiming that they lost trillions of dollars due to file sharing from, you got it, "lost sales." [1] I don't think there's any real way to measure these costs, so let's stop trying. [1] http://www.p2pon.com/2011/03/25/greed-hits-climax-music-industry-seeking-75-trillion-damage-compensation-from-limewire/ http://www.p2pon.com/2011/03/25/greed-hits-climax-music-indu...
dangrossman 15y ago
Microsoft had millions of pieces of defective hardware out there which they were warranting free replacement on for several years. Unless Sony's going to replace all the PS3's in the wild, the direct costs for dealing with this PR nightmare shouldn't come close to what Microsoft set aside.
- th0ma5 15y ago
  if pki alone is at the core of their infrastructure problems, and the key is in the chip, this may well be what they have to do. however i don't know that this is entirely because their public key infrastructure.
- cube13 15y ago
  Would replacing all the PS3's fix it? It seems that this is more related to the infrastructure of PSN than the actual PS3 hardware. If that's the case, there's not much that Sony can do to really fix the situation.

dman 15y ago

You can diss your competitor for poor security practices only if you have some confidence in your own.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- esrauch 15y ago
  He's not saying that the grandparent comment was "dissing the competitor". The grandparent comment suggested that Nintendo and Microsoft could use this opportunity to flaunt their own systems as superior, and the person you replied to was simply stating that Nintendo can't do that without having a lot of confidence in their own networks.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
cooldeal 15y ago
>You can diss your competitor for poor security practices only if you have some confidence in your own. Nope, companies usually don't leave any chance to point to the competition's faults and laugh, even if they themselves are worse in that regard.
- dman 15y ago
  It does carry a risk though - if you make securing a major online service sound too easy by ridiculing your competitor then down the line when you get breached its more damaging imo. eg I dont remember any Car companies in recent history pointing to Service recalls of their competitors in their advertisements, ditto for Airlines and crashes.
  - nkassis 15y ago
    Airline crashes would be such a bad PR idea I mean, that's just bad taste.
    - scott_s 15y ago
      It is, and that's the example I thought of in response to the point. But car companies do advertise the safety of their cars. The situation is different, though, since different cars do have different safety measures, and such things do get rated.
Sukotto 15y ago
All big companies claim total confidence in their own security... right up to the moment they're proved wrong. (and sometimes beyond)

Alex3917 15y ago

"I wouldn't be surprised if it cost Sony more than Microsoft's infamous 1 billion dollar write-down with the Xbox 360's Red Ring of Death." Banks, colleges, hospitals, and credit card processors do this all the time, and it doesn't cost them anywhere near a billion dollars despite the fact that they have vastly more personal information. Sure they usually only have a few hundred thousand records and not a few million, but even still the idea that this is going to cost them a billion dollars is absurd.

OmarIsmail 15y ago
I would argue the cost of the RRoD was a heck of a lot more than $1B because of all the lost sales. People didn't want to invest in hardware that was going to break 5 times over. The direct damage from this won't be $1B (still tens of millions at least). But what about the impact of the lost sales and customers from the loss in credibility and trust? That is what could be huge. It was relatively "easy" for Microsoft to replace broken hardware. How easy and how much is it going to cost Sony to replace broken trust?
- achompas 15y ago
  I would argue the cost of the RRoD was a heck of a lot more than $1B because of all the lost sales. People didn't want to invest in hardware that was going to break 5 times over. Agreed. Microsoft only wrote down the $1B as an expected total cost of fixing broken Xboxes. Who knows how much money they lost?
  - hoop 15y ago
    I've been seeing the notion of accounting for the loss of sales due to "reputation" come up on HN recently and I wish to dispute it. First, most of the time when we're talking about business and we talk about costs we're clearly talking about accounting costs. This applies to startups, too. When you're talking about accounting costs, you don't get to include economic costs (e.g., opportunity cost.) Second, isn't trying to include these extra "costs" due to lost sales the same thing that the music industry is doing? That is, claiming that they lost trillions of dollars due to file sharing from, you got it, "lost sales." [1] I don't think there's any real way to measure these costs, so let's stop trying. [1] http://www.p2pon.com/2011/03/25/greed-hits-climax-music-industry-seeking-75-trillion-damage-compensation-from-limewire/ http://www.p2pon.com/2011/03/25/greed-hits-climax-music-indu...

dangrossman 15y ago

Microsoft had millions of pieces of defective hardware out there which they were warranting free replacement on for several years. Unless Sony's going to replace all the PS3's in the wild, the direct costs for dealing with this PR nightmare shouldn't come close to what Microsoft set aside.

th0ma5 15y ago
if pki alone is at the core of their infrastructure problems, and the key is in the chip, this may well be what they have to do. however i don't know that this is entirely because their public key infrastructure.
cube13 15y ago
Would replacing all the PS3's fix it? It seems that this is more related to the infrastructure of PSN than the actual PS3 hardware. If that's the case, there's not much that Sony can do to really fix the situation.