Someone who goes by the name of Schnell was not having a good day yesterday.

In a posting on the technology site Slashdot.com , he related how he had spent most of the night changing his online passwords, after learning that his private information had been hacked - along with that of 77 million other account holders - by an intruder to Sony’s

Playstation network.

“As a previously happy PS3 user, I'm infuriated at their shoddy handling of this whole thing,” commented Schnell, whose choice of words was exceptionally tame compared to the expletive-ridden reactions posted by many other angry victims on Twitter , Facebook and countless other Internet forums.

NONE The streams of curse-laden reactions began to flow late on Tuesday after Sony’s US spokesperson revealed that a network outage that had frustrated Playstation owners for over a week was actually one of the greatest data breaches in the history of the Internet.

Sony’s Patrick Seybold said the unidentified hacker who penetrated the game and entertainment online network had gained access to members’ names, addresses, email address, birthdates, passwords and logins. If that wasn’t bad enough, it was also possible that members’ credit card details had been exposed, he said.

Sony had detected the intrusion a week before, taking the unprecedented step of completely shutting down the service and rebuilding it anew. That action was certainly an annoying

inconvenience to the millions of people who used the network to play online games, watch movies via Netflix and download music and videos through Sony’s Qriocity service.

But the exposure of their personal data turned the fiasco into a personal security nightmare for millions of customers, whose adverse reaction could threaten the already shaky future of a company that once ruled the electronics world virtually unchallenged.

“The fact that you've waited this long to divulge this information to your customers is deplorable. Shame on you,” read one message on the Playstation Network blog from a user named Korbei83.

“You really should have told us this last week. This is completely unacceptable,” wrote another user, VisionaryLight.

“You guys are seriously dropping the ball here. You wait a week to finally say something legitimate and it might be something that can ruin the lot of us financially,” added VixDiesel.

“This veil of silence when people’s credit card info is potentially at stake is totally unacceptable,” said someone called Strangelove. “Sony has absolutely botched their response and shaken my confidence in their company.”

Bid to regain top spot

According to The Wall Street Journal , such hostile attitudes could wreck Sony chief executive Howard Stringer’s central strategy for challenging rivals such as Apple, Microsoft, Nintendo and Samsung to regain its top spot in the consumer electronics hierarchy.

     

Stringer’s plan envisions Sony’s televisions, computers, game consoles and media players as gateways to a ubiquitous network of content, much of it provided by the company’s record labels and film studios.

Having 77 million members and their credit card details went a long way to creating this digital ecosphere - until the latest imbroglio dealt the plan a huge setback. “The security problems could unnerve new and existing customers about entrusting personal data

with Sony,” noted the newspaper.

But Strangelove did offer some consolation for Sony, indicating the underlying reality that 77 million PS3 owners aren’t about to throw away their consoles over this error.

“I want PSN back online as soon as possible so I can get back to playing Killzone,” he said.

- dpa