Sony Playstation Network Hacked

I'm so pissed off right now just got an E-mail from Sony that their network was compromised and all sorts of personal information was compromised. I know I will no longer be buying Sony products if they can not be professional enough to have robust security to protect my information they don't deserve my business. A copy of the E-mail follows below let me know what you think?

Valued PlayStation Network/Qriocity Customer:

We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19, 2011, 
certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account 
information was compromised in connection with an illegal and 
unauthorized intrusion into our network. In response to this 
intrusion, we have:

1) Temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services;

2) Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a 
full and complete investigation into what happened; and

3) Quickly taken steps to enhance security and strengthen our 
network infrastructure by rebuilding our system to provide you 
with greater protection of your personal information. 

We greatly appreciate your patience, understanding and goodwill 
as we do whatever it takes to resolve these issues as quickly 
and efficiently as practicable.

Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, 
we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following 
information that you provided: name, address (city, state/province, 
zip or postal code), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation 
Network/Qriocity password, login, password security answers, and handle/PSN 
online ID. It is also possible that your profile data may have been obtained, 
including purchase history and billing address (city, state/province, zip 
or postal code). If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, 
the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. 
While there is no evidence that credit card data was taken at this time, 
we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card 
data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution 
we are advising that your credit card number (excluding security code) and 
expiration date may also have been obtained.

For your security, we encourage you to be especially aware of email, 
telephone, and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive 
information. Sony will not contact you in any way, including by email, 
asking for your credit card number, social security, tax identification 
or similar number or other personally identifiable information. If you 
are asked for this information, you can be confident Sony is not the 
entity asking. When the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are 
fully restored, we strongly recommend that you log on and change your 
password. Additionally, if you use your PlayStation Network or Qriocity 
user name or password for other unrelated services or accounts, we 
strongly recommend that you change them as well.  

To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, 
we encourage you to remain vigilant, to review your account statements 
and to monitor your credit or similar types of reports.  

We thank you for your patience as we complete our investigation of 
this incident, and we regret any inconvenience.  Our teams are working 
around the clock on this, and services will be restored as soon as 
possible. Sony takes information protection very seriously and will 
continue to work to ensure that additional measures are taken to 
protect personally identifiable information. Providing quality and 
secure entertainment services to our customers is our utmost priority.  
Please contact us at 1-800-345-7669 should you have any additional questions.

Sincerely,

Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Network Entertainment

Malware, Spyware And Google

This is rather funny in a way, you should read this paper Ghost In The Machine it is informative, though it can cause a chuckle or two.

The reason why it's funny in a way is because one of the sites that google Blogger recommends to use for a Hitscounter is Statcounter you can find the recommendation here

Google recommends these Counters

The funny thing is once you install this little piece of code you will find that programs like Spybot and Addaware will give you a warning after a scan that what some people consider is spyware has been found on your computer.You can try it all by yourself paste the Statcounter code in your webpage then visit your site, make sure your computer is clean beforehand and just go to your Blog or Homepage right after you run the scan so that you know you are free of any Spyware, Malware and if you want drop back here and let me know what you found I know what I did.

Maybe Google needs to look in their own backyard first before they take on the rest.

let me know what you think Leave a comment.

WordPress Hacked/Cracked

It seems that the servers for Wordpress a popular program for Blog Publishing was Cracked.

An unknown cracker broke into a server hosting downloads of the popular WordPress blogging software and rigged the file with a remotely exploitable code execution vulnerability.
News of the hack comes directly from WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg:
"If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately."

Mullenweg described the code planted into the download as "unusual and highly exploitable" and stressed that the 2.1.1 download was the only thing touched during the attack.
"This is the kind of thing you pray never happens, but it did and now we're dealing with it as best we can. Although not all downloads of 2.1.1 were affected, we're declaring the entire version dangerous and have released a new version 2.1.2 that includes minor updates and entirely verified files. We are also taking lots of measures to ensure something like this can't happen again, not the least of which is minutely external verification of the download package so we'll know immediately if something goes wrong for any reason, he added.
He did not say how the attacker was able to breach the server.
Now, WordPress is trying to get the word out to any user who may have downloaded the rigged version 2.1.1.

If your blog is running 2.1.1, please upgrade immediately and do a full overwrite of your old files, especially those in wp-includes. Check out your friends blogs and if any of them are running 2.1.1 drop them a note and, if you can, pitch in and help them with the upgrade.
If you are a web host or network administrator, block access to "theme.php" and "feed.php," and any query string with "ix=" or "iz=" in it.