A writer for a French website is urging gamers to keep all PlayStation Network details private. An ID number was all a hacker needed to log in twice to the journalist’s account. Even with 2FA active, PSN support requires minimal information to grant strangers access.
PlayStation Network has experienced high profile hacks and outages as well as a notorious data breach in 2011. However, there have always remained security failures at a smaller level. The case of a French journalist who received sensitive login information because PSN support is easy to do business with illustrates the easy access one can get to sensitive login information.
Two PSN hacks despite 2FA
Nicolas Lellouche, who is a writer of Numerama, shared his plight over social media. Firstly, he described the way in which his PSN account was compromised by a hacker and the email and password were replaced. Another amount that Lellouche observed was the charge of 9.99 which is the charge of the changes.
Contacting the support, the journalist was aware of the simplicity of the recovery process. Lellouche just had to provide his user name and a transaction number of a former bill. In spite of the fact that the service has two-factor authentication (2FA), it did not make the process slow in any way.
Lellouche discovered an hour later after gaining access, he was once again hacked. After being unsuccessful in reaching PlayStation Network customer care, he chose to make a call to the suspicious company. The person was co-operative indicating that the transaction number that the writer had posted on the internet was the culprit. In any case, the suspect would prefer playing Call of Duty on the account, instead of terminating his attacks.
PSN support does not pay much attention to suspicious activity.
The last ticket Lellouche bought is pending as investigations are carried out by agents. It might have a happy ending to his story, although now more than ever, readers doubt the PlayStation Network security. It is a bitter lesson to learn that it is never a good idea to give out any details of any account, even when it comes to using more sensitive logins. Nevertheless, it is not the first time when the company has readily collaborated with hackers.
The thief of many PlayStation trophies, the collector of whom is called dav1d_123, was robbed in October. Similar to the Numerama journalist, he addressed the thief who sells the trophies in the black market. This again necessitated that the hacker just had to present a user name to PSN in order to transfer ownership.
It goes without saying that gamers cannot use 2FA or PlayStation to notice any suspicious activity. But PS5 users are not the only people who are afraid of losing their digital sales or facing unforeseen expenses. A fan of xbox has just lost a 15 year game collection when a hacker changed his email address. The case of customer service has been much reluctant to reconnect with the original owner in this instance.
