A source from within the seedy depths of the Internet has implicated Amazon's cloud servers in the PlayStation Network breach that saw millions of consumer data stolen and the downtime of Sony's online services.
According to the allegation, hackers created a legitimate account (with fake details, obviously) to rent a server through Amazon’s EC2 service and stage its attack on the PSN from there. The account has been shut down, which is obviously a great comfort to know at this stage.
Amazon and Sony have declined to comment. The FBI has also refused to say if it is investigating Amazon.
If Amazon's found to be culpable in this situation, it'll be a hefty PR blow to Amazon's remote servers. Companies are already said to have concerns over such things, and this'll make those worries all the greater. At the very least, it looks like Sony isn't the only company that may need to drastically upgrade its security.
Amazon Server Said to Be Used in Sony Attack [Bloomberg, thanks Diyana]
Jim Sterling serves as reviews editor for Destructoid.com, head of the Podtoid podcast, and produces a number of news stories, original features, one-of-a-kind videos. With his passionate argumentative style, controversial opinions, harsh delivery, and dedication to brutal honesty Sterling is a name that you can't help but recognize.
Likes
PS2, iPod Touch, Silent Hill 2, Metal Gear Solid, Dynasty Warriors 3
Meet the rest of the team
| BBcode help |
| [b]Bold text[/b] |
Bold text |
| [i]Italic text[/i] |
Italic text |
| [url]http://www.dtoid.com/[/url] |
http://www.dtoid.com |
| [url=http://www.dtoid.com/]Web link[/url] |
Web link |
|
| [img]http://www.example.com/robot.jpg[/img] |
 |
Post a comment! You can also post a photo below:
Comment with Facebook
Click connect and comment instantly!
|
Comment with Dtoid
New? SIGN UP - it takes 5 seconds
|
71 comments | showing # 1 to 50
|
Comment with Facebook
Click connect and comment instantly!
|
Comment with Dtoid
New? SIGN UP - it takes 5 seconds
|
Comments policy
Destructoid is an open discussion community. You don't need to "audition" to post a comment - just speak your mind. We respect differing opinions on the site, so have at it. Be smart, funny, insightful, clueless, or cute -- but back it up with substance. Keep your cool, keep it fun. We only ask that you act respectfully and above all: don't be a troll and ruin it for everyone else. Don't bring down gamers or we'll, you know, gently shoot you in the face and stuff you into a flaming mailbox. Each comment is your opportuntity to make this community awesomer. Is that even a word?
Avoiding the banhammer only requires common sense: spamming, trolling, racism, NSFW stuff, and other forms of sucking will not be tolerated. If anyone is griefing please report abuse. Be good. Don't suck!
Contest:
9:00 AM on 05.14.2011 | 
......or, y'know, sony's infastructure just sucks. But who 's rational at a time like this: This. Is. PANIC HOUR
IT GOT HACKED!
How so? Amazon is not responsible for what their clients do with their products. The best they can do is close the account if they found them to be doing illegal things with them/breaking the agreeement, but they cannot be held responsible so I honestly doubt it will have any effect on their PR.
Furthermore, the Amazon Cloud servers were also down during the PSN hack, although not for the same reason. Soooooo... Yeah, this story is very probably incorrect. Might be worth updating the story.
"5 6 7 8 Using the power in your face sending you back to your place. Don't look atour crotches while we synchronize our watches, bop po po bop bop po po po bee bee bee bee, synchronized ! Go away skips its time for you to go away, it's time for you to go to your room, yeah its time for you to go to the moon"
Because 2 free games whitewashes our worries of our personal info.
fuck sony seriously
the more you hear about this story the more and more pathetic sony looks as a company in regards to anything involving the net
And for those of you saying Amazon was down, it was not. The East Coast center was down, the West Coast was not.
What should Amazon do, go to someone's house and check their driver's license? The criminals almost certainly would have used a stolen identity and credit card. Nothing in the article referred to a security breach on Amazon's part.
Also, the fact that it was allegedly a rented server means very little, when a skilled hacker could take over one at random for an operation like this. I suppose it would have been a matter of convenience.
And Amazon's my go-to retailer for physical goods (and now, digital music).
Kinda, ya.
I will continue to support my ps3 library because im not the only one in the house who plays games. I will NOT however be buying another sony console item. Even though I wasn't really affected so much with the ps3 user data info...I am pretty pissed that the online portion of it is down. I always hated sony...I didnt like the ps1 ALL that much, i was a DC guy over ps2 and then onto xbox...I gave them one last chance with the ps3....and thats how they repay me. With fail.
Really, this is getting ridiculous.
in the past 15+ years they bribed developers, thretened media outlets, made fake sites promoting their products, published fake reviews to both praise their own products and bash competition. over the years they pulled every single dirty trick, con and scam you could possibly think of and frankly THIS(making fake allegations to blame others and cover up) wouldn't be surprising at all - they did even worse things in the past 3-4 weeks to cover their asses.
Sources or GTFO.
Wonder if the conspiracy theorist here bothered to actually READ the article and notice that this was LEAKED information and Sony didn't publicly implicate anybody for this yet. Not really, with this swirling mass of misinformation and rampant fanboyism driving idiots into a frothing clusterfuck of moronic "moonlanding is faked" level coverup rants... you'd be surprised how little these experts actually know.
Also, Lik Sang was sued by Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony for selling modchips. They were a well known local source for bootleg video games. They were paying homeless people to stand in lones so they could dramatically mark up and scalp console hardware. Since when are these people good guys? Oh wait, they shut down, took the money and ran, and claimed huge legal fees (one would think at least a single appearance in court would verify these allegations), and added a pregnant woman sob story. That, and they were hit for a second time by Sony and Sony equals evil.
I wonder how many people know what truly evil shit Nintendo has done to the games industry? They gave us Mario, they get the pass...
There are some stories that Destructoid has decided not to run. Still waiting to see what they offer people in other areas though.
@CO Jakyl
So how are you going to rationalize buying Microsoft hardware after it leaked that they knew the thing would fail like mad, released it anyway to beat the others to market, and it took multiple lawsuits to get appropriate coverage for their intentionally shoddy product. I mean, if Sony gets hacked and that's enough for you to abandon them forever, how are you going to treat a company that directly tried to fuck you over and weasel out of it at every turn? I'm still getting both, and I went 5 weeks without a 360 only to get it back still flaky, which is 100% MS's fault. I'm just not buying the next Xbox right away.
@sheppy
I believe Lik-Sang was also told 6-12 months in advance that if they didn't knock it off with the PSPs, Sony was coming after them. That's a fair warning.
OMG THIS IS ALL A VIRAL L.A NOIR MARKETING !!!!!!!!!!! We need to find clues about who kill psn :O:O:O ( lol only Valve would do that with ARG game xD )
And i didnt know Amazone sell server to "anyone", it like super computer or i dont know ? Or just a powerfull cloud server, used for the attack?
Funny thing, those letters didn't say "don't sell the systems ever." They gave a two month window to allow Japan to be supplied decently. Every other import shop agreed. Lik Sang just got greedy, ignored the warning, and wanted to sell for $500 what they were buying for $212. Not too ironicly, when the Slackers game chain showed this kind of behavior on the Wii, they were blasted rightfully. Lik Sang was fine for doing this but Slackers was the devil.
read the article man, this is leaked info, sonys not pointing the finger at anyone.
Please, they have all of our credit cards. They're typing away on those Keyless Optimus Popularis keyboards.
really sources? cause nobody know about
- Heavy Rain scandal when sony blacklisted entire french media who first got Heavy Rain for review and many other gaming sites/mags around the world, while owners of few of the biggest gaming sites revealed that sony has been buying reviews and blackmailing media outlets for years.
- entire psx era when sony was paying publishers not for exclusivity but to not make games for other platforms.
- entire scandal with fake blog/websites promoting psp and all fake early Halo ODST reviews(in one day over 30 different reviews with 2-4/10 review scores showed up where 2/3 of the review was bashing Microsoft and Xbox while the rest was bashing Halo series with 2 maybe 3 lines about ODST itself mentioning dual-wielding for example(everyone who played the game know there's none).
- how about constantly changing facts about PSN outage or entire Sony music scandal when they put spyware on every single CD album they were selling for months.
However, if you're doing that while blithely pushing your money into Microsoft's coffers, then you're either extravagantly unintelligent or a complete hypocrite. Either way, it invalidates your entire position and makes you look ignorant in the bargain. It's like complaining that CBS is biased while championing Fox News as the voice of reason. Basically, it's bloody fucking stupid.
-You do know Nintendo, microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft, Blizzard, pretty much any game publisher has blacklisted review sites, right? Know how you get around blacklisting? Buy the fucking game. Oh no, Jimmy Video Game World Of Awesome has to spend $60 to see if a game is good or not instead of getting their free copy.
-You do know for the entire of the NES generation, this wasn't what Nintendo was doing. They were outright demanding exclusives, on their schedule, limited number of games, or else your Licensing rights were pulled altogether (where many of the victims went to Tengen). Once again, if you're going to start accusing one side of this issue, just quit playing games. Because all three have done evil, evil, evil shit like this. Even Steam has more than a couple of these skeletons in their closet.
-ODST was linked to Sony and not just fanboys HOW? Why do you think Metacritic refuses early reviews from obscure websites? And weren't MOST of these reviews linked more to pirated copies? yes, I believe so... idiot.
-Constantly changing facts I can almost get behind. Ever been robbed? Did you know immediately what all was stolen? No? Well what about if you had a huge warehouse filled to the brim with data? Obviously it's Sony's fault because they cannot accomplish the impossible and know everythign about their systems when breached. If you know about internet security at all, Sony was a textbook case of what to do. But what do I know, you're referencing the Rootkit fiasco without knowing a single fact about what it did. Spyware indeed... idiot.
So your saying that no company (be it games/movie/music industry) has ever ever bought a review, ad space on a site etc in order to gain favourable reviews.