Over the last few weeks there’s been a lot of commentary around the breach of Sony’s PlayStation Network. Sadly, there has been no good discussion of how PSN was breached. What this breach means for Sony is largely defined by how it happened. Before we get to that though let’s go over a quick timeline of some of the important points in the breach’s timeline.

Jan 2, 2011: Months of battles between Sony and PS3 hackers reaches a climax when George Hotz aka GeoHot publishes the Root Key for the PS3. Among other things this allows users to sign and run …

Following the industrial control system attack of Iran’s nuclear facilities dubbed Stuxnet, vulnerability researchers have intensified their scrutiny of the software that runs these industrial systems, known as SCADA systems. The results are unsettling. Given the danger of vulnerabilities in the software that controls power and water systems and industrial plants you would expect vulnerabilities to be rare. It is just the opposite. Common vulnerabilities listed in the CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Errors such as SQL injection (#2), Buffer Overflow (#3), and Use of Hard Coded Credentials (#11) have been found in SCADA systems over …