Sony Sony Sony...

The Sony PS3 'scandal' is still going on, and I'm still quite interested in how it develops. Press online is reporting massively on Sony's poor security measures when dealing with credit cards. Apparently they are sending credit card info as plain-text over https. In other words, they are sending text over an encrypted connection! That's not a security risk at all. Every time you input your credit card number into a browser it is sent using the same security measures.

However, if you install a custom OS on the PS3, it is possible to get the SSL certificates used in the encryption, thus getting the credit card numbers. The computer equivalent of that would be installing spyware or a virus that finds the card number on your PC and sends it. There's no difference, really, and I don't think Sony is to blame here at all.

The interesting bit though is that there are so many hackers, devoted hackers that spent a lot of time working on custom OSes on the PS3, that are hating Sony's guts right now for making yet another stupid decision towards its more creative customers. There are a lot of people that are very motivated to publish negative information about Sony, and the online media is more than eager to jump on it.

That being said, the kind of attitude that Sony is showing does mean that I won't buy a PS3, even though I really want to play Gran Turismo 5. Purely subjectively speaking, I'm not very fond of Oracle (especially after that Hudson/Jenkins debacle), but I quite like Java (and use it). I don't like Apple as a company but I love the iPad (and am even a developer for it >_<;). But what Sony is doing is just beyond all boundaries. The line must be drawn somewhere, and for me it lies right there. No PS3 for me.

 

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