PSN account – Sacred Symbols host Colin Moriarty says he was hacked shortly after receiving a PSN warning that his account information was already in attackers’ hands. He was locked out of decades of game purchases and history, and even claims the breach was used to threate
The warning arrived like a taunt—simple, personal, and timed.
“Colin, I’m just warning you,” the message read. “They have your information and they are going to try to take your account today.”
Sacred Symbols podcast host Colin Moriarty received it and, soon after, his PlayStation account was hacked. The former IGN editor and Kinda Funny Games cofounder said he was locked out of a library of hundreds of digital games and of an account history built up over decades. Sony restored access quickly. but the incident has reopened a familiar debate for PlayStation users: how secure are PSN accounts when hackers seem willing to move fast—and to escalate.
Moriarty posted on X on May 18 that his PSN account was compromised “seemingly as part of an ongoing sophisticated series of moves against both random and ‘prominent’ users.” He said the compromise happened despite two-factor authentication protection. and he described how the attack immediately spread beyond him.
A message was sent over PSN to fellow Sacred Symbols podcaster Dustin Furman. “You’re next,” the message said. Moriarty’s account was no longer just personal property—it had become a tool for intimidation.
PlayStation Support initially told Moriarty it could take up to three weeks to get his account back. He pushed harder after reaching out to existing contacts within Sony and its first-party game studios to escalate the issue. After his access was restored. he posted on X that he “fully know[s]” he used “advantages due only and exclusively to my stature in the PlayStation community and my many tethers to the mothership.” He added that those advantages “are absolutely not privileges many other people have” and said he “simply must acknowledge that.”.
Sony did not respond to a request for comment.
Moriarty’s experience has also stirred fresh attention because it doesn’t appear isolated. Last year. Nicolas Lellouche. a writer at the French tech website Numerama. said his account was hit after he woke up to a message from Sony saying his account information had changed. Soon after, rogue purchases began rolling in on his linked PayPal account.
Lellouche said he was able to regain access, only to have the account stolen again.
He theorized that attackers could use limited pieces of personal information to convince Sony’s customer support to lock owners out of their accounts. On X. he wrote: “The main problem: the customer service has a tool to reset a mail even if it’s protected by a password or a passkey.” He added that the process “just need[s] to trust you. ” and that “an old transaction ID in a mailbox is enough for them to know it’s you.” In his account. that meant hackers could change the identity signals tied to many accounts and then sell access.
Whether Sony has fixed an apparent loophole—if it exists—or whether the method used in Moriarty’s case was different remains unclear. A past PlayStation trophy record holder previously accused hackers of bribing PlayStation support staff to aid in stealing high-profile accounts.
What connects the stories is the same pressure point: if there’s any easy-to-exploit weakness in how account recovery or support interactions are handled. the cost is immediate. In a world where the PlayStation ecosystem has moved almost entirely away from physical games. stealing an account can mean losing access to purchases worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Moriarty made that scale part of his warning, too. After his account was restored, he wrote, “Rest assured I am already bending (and will continue to bend) the ears of who I can to hopefully help convince the powers-that-be that this is a real issue they have to contend with.”
For now, the contradiction at the center of the case is hard to ignore. Two-factor authentication didn’t stop the breach. support timelines stretched to weeks. and Moriarty’s ability to get help fast appears—at least in his own telling—to have depended on who he is in the PlayStation community. For players without similar reach, the threat isn’t theoretical. It’s a locked library. a disrupted history. and a message that says the next account may already be in the queue.
PlayStation PSN account hacking two-factor authentication Sacred Symbols Colin Moriarty Dustin Furman Nicolas Lellouche Numerama PayPal
PSN 2FA means nothing apparently.
So Sony sent him a warning and then his account got hijacked right after? That’s wild. How is that even possible if they already know it’s compromised?
I saw this on X too, like the “you’re next” message, and honestly it sounds like Sony knew it was happening and still took forever. 3 weeks is crazy, like why would they not immediately lock it down.
Two-factor authentication and still got hacked?? That’s basically the whole point, so either his password was leaked or PSN security is fake. Also the part about “advantages due only to my stature” like… yeah maybe he got fast-tracked because he’s famous, not because Sony is just good at fixing stuff.