Earlier this week Sony confirmed that hackers had managed to bypass the PlayStation Network’s security and gain access to over 70 million users’ personal information, including their credit card numbers and expiry dates.
The security breach is being called the biggest of its kind in several years, if not ever.
Users around the world reported cancelling their credit cards in fear of hackers spending their money, but Sony allayed some fears later in the week when it announced that the credit card information was encrypted, and it is unclear whether the hackers managed to gain access to it. Sony also stated that users were never asked for their 3 digit CCV codes which are printed on the back of credit cards. Without this number it is impossible to make any purchases with the credit card data.
This claim seemed a bit strange, because if Sony never asked for customers for their CCV code, then it follows that it should not have been possible to make purchases on the PSN in the first place.
Sony’s Patrick Seybold has since clarified the issue in a statement:
“While we do ask for CCV codes, we do not store them in our database. It is transmitted to our payment processors of verification purposes only.”
According to Seybold, this information was not stored on the PSN database, and therefore it is impossible that hackers gained access to it.
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