Due our objective research of the SONY PlayStation Network, we decrypted nearly 100% of the traffic transferred over
proxies, http and https to and from the PSN. Just out of curiosity, not to harm anyone or anything and not like SONY may
want people to see it.

As SONY calls the scene hackers "evil", we surely do not address pirates and skiddies, we wondered how SONY is treating
the users' privacy and rights (remember the Music CD/DVD and USB stick rootkits). After we noticed a few badass functions
they have built into the PSN/PS3 functionality, we just call it the "Call of Privacy: Modern Spyware" case.

Below we list and explain a few of the shady PSN functions and data mining stuff. And remember: EVERYONE has a right to
know about YOUR OWN PRIVATE data being transferred over the networks!

Even if a connection is SSL encrypted, companies are aware of the big risk behind custom CA files and it's possibilities.
SONY seems not to care about those known vulnerabilities. It is a big company and a HUGE network. With huge we mean a
magnitude of hundreds and even thousands: the PSN utilizes thousands of servers, handled by a very small group of
administrators and quality assurance people. The IP ranges and domains of these servers are retrievable by anyone, cause
this is how the Internet works ! It is all public data and information !

An example is the credit card information and the login authentification itself. Take a look at the traffic:

• creditCard.paymentMethodId=CC_COMPANY&
  
• creditCard.holderName=EXAMPLENAME&
  
• creditCard.cardNumber=1234567890123456&
  
• creditCard.expireYear=2012&creditCard.expireMonth=2&
  
• creditCard.securityCode=123&
  
• creditCard.address.address1=EXAMPLESTREET%2024%20&creditCard.address.city=EXAMPLECITY%20&
  
• creditCard.address.province=EXAMPLEREGION%20&
  
• creditCard.address.postalCode=12345%20

The credit card information should ALWAYS be encrypted. In ANY case. At least the security code. SONY is only relying on
it's https connection. With all those CFWs spreading around, this is not secure anymore.

Same goes for the user details:

• serviceid=IV0001-NPXS01001_00&
  
• [email protected]&
  
• password=examplepassword&
  
• first=true&
  
• consoleid=EXAMPLEID123

Such sensitive data can now be captured by anyone who builds his own custom firmware with custom certificates. There
are enough n00b-friendly tools by now. Means, little scriptkiddies can spread their little CFWs and phish user data.
As many of these people are using a third party DNS, they are a potential victim of phishing.
At the beginning of the PS3 launch, this user data was even transferred over http !

The PlayStation Network agreement states that SONY is allowed to collect nearly any data that is connected with your
privacy.It is clear, that SONY won't tell you WHAT they are collecting in the TOS etc., as many people would never accept
that TOS.

The Anonymous Data Protection Officers

A few month ago we noticed the TOS silently beeing updated without a new user agreement request. It was about that you
have the right to contact a "Data Protection Offier" at SCEE, who can can give you details about what data is collected. So
we phoned SCEE. Beeing forwarded to many people, it turned out that there is no so called "Data Protection Officer".
Funny right? Shortly after this call, the clause was removed from the TOS.
SONY itself told us, that they do not know, what we are talking about regarding this Officer. They told us, that there was
never such a position inside SONY, neither a phone number. Even the address was non existing!

Still it is an impudence what huge amounts of data they are collecting. One example is an information list which is transfered
everytime you login the PSN as well as at some random time. A few short quotes:

<info category="76">TFT-TV</info><info category="77">

This is a string sent to SONY which includes your TV model. The list is long and contains a lot more like information about
attached USB devices, your home network, your playtime behaviour, installed games, apps, homebrews or their so called
"circumvention devices" and so on. Details about your Home network, statistics etc.