Was PSN Hack an Inside Job?

***wraggster*** · May 2nd, 2011, 22:44

News via http://psx-scene.com/forums/f6/psn-h...ide-job-85869/

Just days before PSN was "hacked," Sony fired over 200 employees in their online division.

In Sony massive corporation style thinking, once March 31th, 2011 rolls around they decide to get rid of any "dead-weight", in this case, employees they think are "useless" or no longer needed so they can close off the "year-end books" with various "claimed losts" to save corporation taxes, just like any big massive corporation thinks, only for themselves and their "bottom line", not for the little human beings slaving away everyday for their profits.

Like all layoffs that are hard to swallow, this case was a big one, one 1/3 of the staff that worked in the ONLINE division, in all over 200 employees were given their sad "pink slip" 2 week notice, which means they had to work right up until the very dates that Sony had to shutdown the PSN network!

Even tho Sony rented servers from AT&T data center, being the "unmanaged" type, any Sony employee in the SOE dept. would be able to gain access showing their "photo id" badge to do maintenance work on the servers, if they needed more then just "whitelisted" remote server access from their office.

Today, Sony again announce that all the user account "passwords" were "hashed" on their blog, but any key online employee that was layoff could very well have easy access to the needed cryptographic hash function information in regard to any encryption that might have been used on the servers, including CC access for billing and accounting.

Quote:
Sony Online Entertainment Slashes Hundreds of Jobs, Shutters Three Studios
8:57 PM 3/31/2011 by John Gaudiosi

Sony Online Entertainment has closed three of its game studios and laid off 205 workers as part of a massive restructuring.

All possible steps are being taken to ensure team members affected by the transition are treated with appropriate concern."

"SOE will transition development efforts for the Denver and Tucson studios' suite of products to its San Diego headquarters in order to better position SOE to remain a global leader in online gaming and deliver on its promise of creating entertaining games for players of all ages and servicing the 20 million players that visited SOE servers in just the past year," the company said.
Quote:
Sony Online Cuts Staff By a Third
April 15, 2011, 12:08:32 PM By Rick DeMott

Sony Online Entertainment has laid off a third of its staff, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The move means 205 employees will lose their jobs and the company will shut down offices in Denver, Tucson and Seattle.
Quote:
Wikipedia History Timeline on SOE

On March 31, 2011, SOE has confirmed that "it will eliminate 205 positions and close its Denver, Seattle and Tucson studios." Production of The Agency has also been discontinued.

On April 27, 2011, Sony, the parent company of SOE, released statements regarding an intrusion, on or about April 18th, into the PlayStation Network, and the potential theft of up to 77 Million subscribers personal data. Sony maintains that PSN and SOE are hosted and run on completely separate subsystems and that the PlayStation Network intrusion had no major affect on SOE's online services.

On May 2, 2011, SOE completely interrupted their online services. Over the previous month several intrusions of PSN have caused the developers to post messages of concern and apology, but also assurances the SOE servers and systems were not compromised. This most recent development has shut the service down entirely with the message: "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)."
Even tho some of these employees were in working in remote offices, they could have easy had whitelisted server access to the San Diego HQ to do their daily work, it just seems very strange that suddenly both networks go down after a massive layoff of KEY ONLINE SONY EMPLOYEES when they have to work knowing it is their last days on the job being a lowly paid slave to evil corporation.

Dear Sony, you need to look inside your own organization!

**Fonixx** · May 3rd, 2011, 00:51

oh I really do hope it was an inside job then Sony will have to learn to start treating staff and customers with respect, because as much as they like to moan and blame everyone else they have to realise THEY created themselves some powerful and determined enemies.