Is this the reason behind the lack of a thursday update and the no show of the GT5 prologue download?

That'd alert the user to an account problem pretty fast... leave the password untouched and continue dipping in and out as you like.

Strange SONY didn't suggest changing your password if you COULD login ok.... you know.. just to be SAFE or something.

Or did SONY mean they'd changed the pwd's of 'affected' users? How do you know if your details have been silently nabbed anyway?

Mine's the shiny gold one - think I'll try being a chav for the weekend...

There's also a lot of unhappy punters in Europe and the UK who have planned they day off so that they can download Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. The Playstation Store update is overdue and today is release day for GT5:P.

The delay is probably because of the account issues. Not good.

Got my copy in the post this morning - it rocks!!

in a country where the government are unable to keep our personal details safe and secure and not lost in the post, really, do you think we're going to get _that_ worried about someone having access to our profile ids - which can only really hold our online ID and password, a fragment of a credit card number and possibly our address. At worst, they've pinched the 1.40quid i have left in my online wallet because i only ever fill it up 5 quid at a time when i need to buy something

i'm confused how they will have nicked the money from the online wallets though, because the money is non-refundable when you load it from your credit card. So at worst, someone's managed to move all those leftover quids into their own PSN account, but i don't see how they could have moved the money into the real world - without leaving an obvious audit trail

My account is fine.

Picked up my copy of GT5:P 15mins ago, I see a weekend of gaming in the offing. :-)

Is this really hacking? I've seen a lot of similar headlines about the problems with the XBox Live network and accounts being stolen. The press love to overuse the word hacking for shock value but in reality the 'hackers' are just con artists calling up support helpdesks masquerading as other users to get their account details. Thanks to the poor training and pay of the support operators they succeed all too often.

G E. I don't know how this system works, but one possible exploit is in the 'change/ forgot my password' functionality; changing the password to one you know is almost always a lot easier than finding the existing one.

If the hack centred around resetting passwords, then anyone who's password is unchanged is safe (from this particular attack)

i tried to log into my account the other day and the pass wont recognise. the problem being now is that my account is regestered with my old companies email address. must contact sony to find out what is wrong!

erm, these are the people that gave the world the Music Rootkit, and they would instill confidence in whom, exactly? by what miracle of mass forgetfulness would Sony regain the public trust, after that magnificent electronic scalping?

whoever this target market is, must have been raised by wolves, and then suddenly presented a PS3, with no other awareness of our magnificent civilization (i know, sarcasm unwarranted...).