Data Breach Case Study: LinkedIn and Sony PlayStation Network Attacks

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This report analyzes the cybersecurity breaches of LinkedIn and Sony.

Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Assessment item 2.................................................................................................................................2
Assignment – 2......................................................................................................................................2
Part A.................................................................................................................................................2
1.........................................................................................................................................................2
2.........................................................................................................................................................4
Part B.................................................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................7
References.............................................................................................................................................8

Introduction
As the number of cases in cybersecurity and crimes is rising day by day, this paper investigates some
of those cases which happened in the past. The first case would be regarding the LinkedIn case that
happened in last year when some hacker stole user’s credentials and sold them online. In the second
case when people were trying to log in but weren’t able to do so as their credentials were hacked
and used by some other mind. This paper will include the reason for the breach and also proposed a
solution for that.
Assessment item 2
Assignment – 2
Part A
1.
In 2016, a Russian hacker that goes by ‘Peace’ cracked the security parameters of the famous
company or website, LinkedIn and hacked about 177 million users data like their username,
password, email address, LinkedIn ID or number. Also, when the particular user tries to change their
password, the hacker was able to get to the bank details of that user. (Pagliery, 2016)
The Problem
17 May 2016, LinkedIn found out that their data which includes users or customer’s login
credentials, username, password were hacked and stolen. Although this happened earlier in 2012
when the user credentials of LinkedIn got hacked by some hacker. On that time in 2012, the number
of hacked credentials was around 6.5-7 million user credentials. But it seems that the 2012 case was
just a tip of the iceberg, in May 2016 an infamous hacker namely ‘Peace’ somehow managed to
crack the security walls of the LinkedIn website and reached the point where he was able to see all
the credentials of the users. (LinkedIn Help, 2016)
Normally companies secure their entry by using the username, encrypted password and captcha
image to save the data from any robot entry but after the case of 2012, LinkedIn didn’t use another
pivotal security layer which makes the text harder to decode as it increases the jumbled word
complexity. That is why the hacker namely, ‘Peace’, broke into the security parameters and stole
approximately 177 million and was selling them online on black market auction called, “The Real
Deal”, at a starting rate of 5 bitcoins or $2300 million in starting phase.
How and What Happened
At the time of 2012 breach when some other hacker hacked into the securities of LinkedIn and
managed to stole the same data but in fewer amounts around 7 million user data, the LinkedIn got
aware about the hack and somehow managed to overcome it. They used automated tools for the
identification of any malware or suspicious activity that arise in the accounts of LinkedIn and also
block them as well using the support of Legal agencies for the security purpose also, they used two

factor authentication for the verification of the user which sends an OTP to the user’s personal
mobile number but still the drawback or the reason for 2016 breach came up that there wasn’t
pivotal security layer that makes the captcha even harder to recognize and makes security tights.
This drawback led the LinkedIn process to another cybersecurity crime, the data breach or hack,
where a very large amount of data was stolen and on sale to the public and LinkedIn wasn’t able to
do anything about it tighten the security. (Hunt, 2016)
Possible solutions:
This data breach was the second time when the user credentials were on sale on a black market
website where people can bite on them from starting value of $2,300 USD. On the first time, in 2012
the same thing happened but in less amount in which all the credentials of users of LinkedIn got
stolen and used by someone else. This make the all thing very complicated hence the company tried
to make some changes in the security parameters of the LinkedIn entrance and aware the people
about what they can do to get safe from the data breaches and hacks and also let the people know
about their initiatives about what they are doing to prevent such kind of incidents to take place in
future.
The possible solution that came up by going through all the investigation process, research and
analysis, there are some points which should be must focus at the time of designing the parameters
of security wall of any website. Sometimes, some weak bone is there in the security parameters,
using them the hackers peeks into the company website and stoles information. The possible
solutions to prevent such damages are:
 Using the two-factor authentication techniques at login time from the new device so that every
time user try to log in they have to put the OTP received on their registered device for the
verification purpose.
 The pivotal layer should be used to make the captcha text a little bit harder and complex to
understand by any robot so that only human can read and answer that code.
 Use of password hashes to make them encrypted so that any software cannot read those
credentials. Password encryption locks the password as # and never let any robot or malware to
detect it. (Spring, 2016)
 Change password in a period of time regularly so that the security can be maintained. Resetting
the password in priority when the information is very important and such incidents like breaches
and hacks are going on.
 Use always strong password combination instead of using a normal combination of either
alphabets or numerical. Use a combination of numerical numbers, capital and small letters, and
special characters like @, -, _, &, $ etc. (Dhasarathan, Thirumal & Ponnurangam, 2015).

2.
Fence registers are able for memory relocation. The base address is mandatory to discrete two user
areas which are provided in the memory relocations. For particular user areas, programs are used as
the base address. Now, base register is there for the programs to restrict them to cross the base or
lower limit but there should also be some restriction for the programs so that they do not cross the
upper limit of the memory locations. Therefore, another register, which is used to limit the upper
area so that the program does not enter to the other, is used. This register is bound to register. This
is how the detachment of two user areas is done and this is why the use of base and bound register
is compulsory. Also, these registers maintain the integrity of the database. Hence a couple of
base/bound registers are used to limit the upper and lower side of the body to protect it engaging
with another user.
Paging is a process which is used to divide the whole program into the equally divided size or pages.
Using the paging technique the provided program is subdivided with the same size of pages or
memory storage. For the case of memory, paging is used to divide that memory into parts that are
called page frames. Therefore, by this function, the memory and the page table name can be divided
and stored in a page table. These assigned pages have assigned unique values. These unique values
are known as offset values where different addresses can be accessed by the same offset values.
Now for the synchronous and asynchronous inputs and output values. The synchronous activities are
put on the halt when the system is processing the other activities. While in the case of asynchronous
activities, the process isn’t put on halt for some time when some other is going on, instead of that
the process keeps on going in the background. So synchronous activities can be concluded as the
activities which let the input-output activity to attach with the system and shifts the on-going
process on halt as per the priority sequence. But, asynchronous activities don’t go like this, it shifts
the other activity on process but keeps on processing the current process in the background which
takes more memory values of the system.
Therefore, for the user who wants to access the database of the system and there is a file which
needs I/O write, that does not have to wait for the process to accomplish. Hence the asynchronous
execution of the I/O activity, there may be some process that actually can modify the current
processor data which is stored in the memory and which is into the access by another data. So,
somehow the current process of I/O activity has a capability of accessing, manipulating the
background process which is on processing when I/O activity is accessed. This becomes a reason or a
problem for the data which is processing in the background and in the register of base/bound and
also paging register can be edited, modified, overwritten background.
Solution
To overcome this problem or to solve this issue, an implementing method is used in which the data
that is going to process should be held on check on the data access. Another solution is to checkthe
accessibility of the range of affected addresses before commencing the I/O operation. However, this
solution is ineffective if a process can be relocated after the I/O begins, for example, due to a page
fault or to compaction of memory.

Part B
The Problem
Some official blogs of the Sony PlayStation were not responding or that server was displaying not in
range. Whenever any customer was trying to sign in to their account from their PlayStation 3,
customers were getting a message stating that the server is in undergoing maintenance. Due to that
message, no customer of that time was able to sign in to their PlayStation system at that time.
Sony admitted that they shut down the services as they noticed something suspicious activity going
on that platform which was not related to the gaming or its purpose. Security analyst explained that
the hackers found out the weak bone of PSN structure and attacked it. Sony PSN didn’t entertain
that weak bone as it was time-consuming and expensive. But the hackers somehow manage to
discover that weak point and entered into the fundamental system of Sony PSN and steal personal
information and credentials of almost about 2500 customers. (Phillips, 2015).
When reporting to the company or customer care of Sony PlayStation, they get to know about it and
asked the customers to keep patience while they find out the issue and solve it. Later, the
researchers get to know that actual problem is someone illegally interrupted the services of
PlayStation 3 by hacking and getting into it. A group or individual broke the security walls of the Sony
network, interrupted and steal customers information.
Affected Personalities
Sony PlayStation 3 was providing their newly introduced services to overall the world. In 2011, due
to that external intrusion, people who subscribed for their services and bought PlayStation 3 were
prevented by some external server that illegally controlled the services provided by Sony. The
external server wanted to block the services of Sony PlayStation on 20th of May overall the world due
to which they hacked all the accounts of 77 million people overall the world who were using this
service of Sony.
This is how this outage affected 77 million people overall on the globe as it stopped them using their
services. This outage lasted for about 23 days considered as the biggest computer data breach or
history where almost about 77million people got affected and also the company has to pay a large
amount of money to compensate the customer and also to regenerate their security wall more
strong and effective.
The network outage caused the company a loss of about $171 million and also the lost trust of the
customer as many customers get affected by this outage. Hackers hacked into the main system of
the Sony PSN and started analysing and copying the information and credentials of the user which
they used to sign in into their account. Using these credentials, it was enough to sign into their
account and steal their personal information and credentials like their name, credit card number,
debit card number, address, phone number and other information which they late posted on the
blog of approximately 2500 customers but didn’t use to carry out cash ye through their credit card.
(Fox & Neeman, 2015).

The solution of Cyber Attack
After the complaints receiving from the customer of not able to sign in the company tried to find out
the reason which lately discovered as an external intrusion by some group or individual which
affected the overall business of Sony PlayStation 3. According to manufacturers the lost was around
$171 million.
As the company get to know about it, they instantly shut down the services of PlayStation Network
(PSN) and Qriocity globally. After this, Sony planned to make a more secure network with better
security connections for the customers. This led them to introduce their plan on 1st May which was
encountering following services with much better security than the previous one:
 Better security parameters were introduced.
 Provide access to the customer to reset their account information and password.
 Online verification procedure presented by Sony for the verification purpose.
 Compensation to every user if they are victimised of credit card fraud during this PSN outage.
That would be of $1 million USD.
Attack Prevention techniques
This attack on Sony PlayStation was a very large attack of the history which affected almost 77
million people or customer that have been using the Sony services or trying to use. This data breach
was large enough that it took around 7 days for Sony PSN to totally shut down and restart the
services and cost around $171 million USD.
Although Sony took the right action, for the knowledge purpose, at the time of Data breach, the
following are some actions that could save the stored data on their account.
 First of all, shut down the services that are still continuing so that the interruption can be
stopped.
 Secondly, to clear out rumours, publish a key message to the people and customer stating three
support statement to make them calm and trust can be maintained.
 Find out the amount of information and confidential data that is stolen in the data breach.
 Finding out the main reason or root problem by which this data breach took place and make
sure that it won’t repeat again.
 Report about the breach at credit bureaus and ask for a fraud alert on your file.
 Most importantly, contact with the related banks and ask them to stop any transaction for some
time.
 Change all passwords of customers to save them from the hack.
 Use two-factor authentication methods to put an extra lock to the confidential data.

Conclusion
This paper is regarding the cybersecurity crimes that have been taking place in large companies and
organisation and stealing the user’s credentials and other important and confidential information
from them and selling them for their purpose. Here in part A, a LinkedIn 2016 case is addressed
where 177 million user credentials got stolen. In Part B the Sony PlayStation case was investigated
and reviewed which explained about the solutions that should be considered before the breach took
place.

References
Dhasarathan, C., Thirumal, V., & Ponnurangam, D. (2015). Data privacy breach prevention
framework for the cloud service. Security and Communication Networks, 8(6), 982-1005.s
Fox, H. & Neeman, (2015). Case study: sony, zurich and the playstation data breach. Retrieved from
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0cd8a3d7-9dba-467c-9d66-b301d3a1c87a
Hunt, T., (2016). Observations and thoughts on the LinkedIn data breach. Retrieved from
https://www.troyhunt.com/observations-and-thoughts-on-the-linkedin-data-breach/
LinkedIn (2016).LinkedIn Help. Notice of Data Breach: May 2016. Retrieved from
https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/69603/notice-of-data-breach-may-2016?lang=en
Pagliery, J., (2016). Hackers selling 117 million LinkedIn passwords. Retrieved from
https://money.cnn.com/2016/05/19/technology/linkedin-hack/
Phillips, T., (2015). Five years ago today, Sony admitted the great PSN hack. Retrieved from
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-04-26-sony-admitted-the-great-psn-hack-five-years-ago-
today
Spring, T., (2016). 2012 LinkedIn breach just got a lot worse: 117 million new logins for sale.
Retrieved from https://threatpost.com/2012-linkedin-breach-just-got-a-lot-worse-117-million-new-
logins-for-sale/118173/
Thomas, K., Li, F., Zand, A., Barrett, J., Ranieri, J., Invernizzi, L., ... & Margolis, D. (2017, October).
Data breaches, phishing, or malware?: Understanding the risks of stolen credentials. In Proceedings
of the 2017 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (pp. 1421-1434).