Sony Says ‘No Truth’ to PSN Credit Card List Rumors

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“No it didn’t” neatly sums up Sony’s reaction to late-last-week rumors, led by various security firms, that the massive PlayStation Network fumble included customer credit card numbers.

In a PlayStation blog “network security” update this afternoon, Sony Computer Entertainment America spokesperson Patrick Seybold echoed Sony deputy president Kazuo Hirai’s conciliatory stance during a press conference yesterday, apologizing again “to the many users who were inconvenienced and worried abut [sic] this situation.”

He then took aim at a rumor, spawned last Friday by security researchers, that hackers had compromised millions of credit card numbers, and were trying to pawn the list for big money through back channel chat rooms.

“To my knowledge, there is no truth to this report of a list, or that Sony was offered an opportunity to purchase the list,” said Seybold.

He also clarified a previous point about customer passwords, which he says–while not encrypted–were “transformed using a cryptographic hash function.” They weren’t stored as clear text, in other words.

Security experts may call that cold comfort, but it’s Sony basically saying “Look, we screwed up, but we’re not rank amateurs here.”