PSN Coming Back, But Sony Isn't Secure

Encouraging hackers to create more downtime?

Two stories at odds with one another...

First off, Sony is bringing back the PlayStation network... actually, PSN should now be up for everyone. You'll need to download a software update, and of course you should be changing your password, but now you can enjoy your PSN goodness again after nearly a month without it.


Second, how secure is it really in Sony's network? Reuters did some investigating, asking the CTO of the partially government funded US Cyber Consequences Unit to check out Sony's security. He found numerous problems just by doing some Google searches, locating servers, files, and sensitive areas that should have been locked down. Reuters was kind enough to tell Sony about what they found, so hopefully those areas have been secured now. Still, being able to just Google and find a security management console for A Sony web site is disturbing.

At least Sony has brought back the network and they can try to move past this nasty little incident and hope that everyone forgets all about it, preferably before E3 takes place. I suppose it can happen, given how everyone was able to look past the Red Ring Of Death problem that Microsoft had with Xbox 360's. Of course, in that case it was pretty clearly a hardware design issue, and once they changed the design the problem mostly went away. It's not exactly the same with network security. We all hope Sony has learned a thing or two about locking down networks against hackers, but how can we really be sure?

Sony has announced a bunch of freebies for customers to try and make up for the problem, and I'm sure the customers will probably not hold it against Sony for long. At least, that should be true if no unusual charges show up on their next credit card statements. The bigger issue for Sony is the developers who lost a lot of money from the outage. Perhaps they are being handled quietly, individually, and being asked not to comment further. But Sony does need to make some public gestures to reassure potential developers that they will not lose money being PSN developers.