Sony Marketing Man Tweets PS3 Master Key

An anonymous reader writes "Sony Marketing Man, Kevin Butler's official Twitter feed retweets a post by @exiva that posts the PS3 Master key. Kevin Butler who has over 69,000 followers tweet read (The tweet now deleted): '@TheKevinButler Lemme guess... you sank my Battleship? RT @exiva: 46 DC EA D3 17 FE 45 D8 09 23 EB 97 E4 95 64 10 D4 CD B2 C2 Come at me, @TheKevinButler'" Here is a screenshot of the tweet.

So...

[Aeternitas827]

Does this mean that Sony have now published the key? Its not as though the person running the Twitter account had to retweet. Reply or dm would have been sufficient to get the quip in. A simple Google search would have told what this was, after all.

I don't understand. why did this happen?

[goombah99]

Why did this happen? A few theories:

1) an unintentional auto-complete disaster
2) disgruntled employee
3) Hacked twitter account used to launder code in to public domain
4) A diversion: A secondary easily revoked key, not the master, being used to take the piss out of efforts to to find the real master ....???
what is your guess?

Re:I think

[redemtionboy]

Microsoft has handled the situation appropriately, by putting in fixes and banning consoles and user accounts that break the EULA by hacking the system. Such behavior doesn't end piracy (something that is impossible to do, See: The Fallacy of Perfect Security), it only makes it less convenient, but it doesn't get in the way of honest individuals who purchase content fairly. I fully support Microsoft's behavior as it is a much more reasonable response that keeps both gamers and studios as happy as possible. It may not be as ideal to me as a consumer who wants to do what I want with the console and run homebrew and custom hacks on it, but it never gets in the way of me using the console as Microsoft presented it when I purchased it.

Re:I think

[Anonymous Coward]

First the rootkit, now this. It's not difficult to boycott Sony for me.

Yes. We know. We heard you the first time. We heard all your friends the first time. We heard everyone who agrees with you the first time. We heard reply after reply after reply after identical reply the first time. We heard all of you the first EIGHT THOUSAND TIMES. We heard all of you the first EIGHT MILLION TIMES . We actually agree with you. Now SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT ALREADY and actually DO it instead of bragging about how you're going to boycott them over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Just don't come back here crying after you rushed out to buy Final Fantasy whateverthefucknumber when it's a PS3 exclusive and expect us to even care when you start up the boycott-o-matic again.

In the context of trade secrets and the law ...

[perpenso]

I am guessing, but I think the poster was asking if Sony published in the context of protecting a trade secret. My understanding is that if a company fails to protect and/or publishes a trade secret, either intentionally or accidentally, the information loses its trade secret status in the eyes of the law. So in this context it is an interest question, does publicly repeating what an outside has said count as disclosure of a trade secret with respect to the law?

Re:So...

[miknix]

I think the guy behind TheKevinButler twitter account thought the twittered PS3 master key was some kind of coordinates, that's why he replied "you sank my Battleship?". After someone from Sony realized it was in fact the master key, the marketing team must have removed the related post. Makes sense.. no?

Re:Or...

[franciscohs]

I never understood this "account hacked" thing. You mean that twitter service has a security vulnerability and someone was able to tweet with his account without the right credentials, OR someone used his account logging in with his weak password?, because that's not hacking on my book.