Companies spend plenty of time, effort and money protecting
their networks from hackers. Firewalls, Intrusion Detection and
Protection Systems (IDPS) or security gateways are commonly used to
protect connection points between internal networks and the
internet.
However, despite all these protections, networks can still be
breached. In April 2011, Sony revealed that their network had been
hacked exposing 77 million personal details of PlayStation Network
users which included names, date of births, e-mail addresses,
passwords and credit card numbers.
Unpatched server software, as well as a custom firmware release
(Rebug) effectively turned the PS3 console into a developer kit
which activated a number of features users could not normally
access. Most importantly, the firmware gave trusted access to
Sony's internal developer network. Hackers exploited this to
access and pull out information from the customer details database
– 77 million customer accounts compromised.
