PSN Account of Podcaster Colin Moriarty Hijacked

Colin Moriarty, host of the Sacred Symbols podcast and a former PlayStation editor, reported that his PlayStation Network account was taken over in a suspected social-engineering attack after his account email was changed and two-factor authentication was disabled.

Moriarty said he received a text hours before losing access notifying him the email had been changed and 2FA had been turned off. After the account was compromised, it was used to message co-host Dustin Furman with the words “you’re next.”

Moriarty posted that he did not enter credentials on a malicious site and did not fall for a phishing link. “I’m positive of this,” he wrote, and later confirmed the account had been recovered hours after going public about the incident.

He acknowledged that his public profile and industry contacts likely helped speed the recovery and noted that other listeners and PS5 players have contacted his podcast over the past year reporting similar takeovers.

A 2023 investigation by a French journalist described a method in which attackers persuade customer support to reset account credentials by supplying limited but verifiable details, such as a transaction ID. That report linked publication of such details to account compromises.

Moriarty said he may have shared receipts or transaction IDs in the past and cannot be certain when that information might have been exposed. Other affected players have reported cases in which small pieces of account information were enough for attackers to regain access.

Security observers and affected users have pointed to weak verification processes at customer support as a possible factor that can allow account recovery without stolen passwords or phishing. Sony has not publicly announced changes to its account-recovery or support verification procedures in response to these reports.

PSN accounts can contain years of play history and large libraries of digital purchases. Moriarty’s report and similar complaints describe incidents where limited account details were used to bypass protections rather than exploitation of password leaks or malware.