PlayStation Podcaster Colin Moriarty Loses PSN Account Due to Persistent Security Hole – WGB

NOTE: Colin Moriarty regained control of his account successfully, admitting that his industry friends and Sony insiders were essential.

“With the help of my friends and contacts at Sony, I got my account. I want to thank everyone for their kind words, advice, and guidance! It meant a lot,” Moriarty wrote on X.

“I am well aware that I have used the benefits only because of my status and specifically in the PlayStation community and a lot of my players for being a mother. These are not privileges that many other people have. I have to admit that.”

Moriary promises to get into the whole story in the next episode of his podcast, and says “I’m already bending (and will continue to bend) the ears of who I can help convince the powers that be that this is a real issue they need to deal with.”

TRUE STORY: Colin Moriarty, host of Sacred Symbols – the largest PlayStation Patreon podcast – and former IGN reporter, appears to have lost access to his PlayStation account due to a known security flaw.

Moriarty and his manager Dustin Furman were live streaming Pragmata when Moriarty learned his account had been hacked, as a series of confirmation emails arrived. He quickly disappeared into the stream to see what was going on.

Moriarty later appeared on X to confirm that he had lost control of his account.

“My PSN account has been hacked, it appears to be part of an ongoing series of actions against random and “prominent” users,” Moriarty said. He then explained that he was told by someone a few days ago that he might be targeted, and that the person who presented the warning was also a victim.

Moriarty shared some details, revealing that he wasn’t scammed, he didn’t click on any random links or enter his password anywhere.

He says he started getting hundreds of emails from sources like EA, Aliexpress, Slack, Substack and more. He then received a message informing him that his PlayStation Network email address had been changed, followed by another saying that 2FA had been disabled.

Host Dustin Furman received a message from Moriarty’s account that said “You’re next.”

Moriarty has contacted customer support and even reached out to contacts within Sony in an attempt to regain access to his account. He admits that the average user does not have his own power and contacts: “I understand that these are great benefits that many people involved do not have. I fully accept that.”

Apparently Sony told him it could take 3 weeks to regain access to the account, even though they had deleted the credit card information. Moriarty was understandably confused by how long it would take to regain control.

They have removed my credit card information, etc., from the account yet, but they seem unable to bulk change the password and delete others in time? Oh well. – Colin Moriarty

This appears to be a known security hole involving two-factor authentication. Indeed, Moriarty and his team have talked about it on their podcast many times. In comments on Moriarty’s social media post, other users shared similar stories of their accounts being hacked and struggling to get them back. Some were able to recover their accounts within a day; some took a week or more.

Another user said he had been a PlayStation Support employee and said it should take about 15 minutes to set up an account.

WCCFTech first reported on the story back in December of 2025, and just updated that story a few days ago. In this update, they explain that Nicolas Lellouche of Numerama had his account hacked twice, using the transaction number as verification to claim the account as his own. The number is believed to have been found in a screenshot that Lellouche shared publicly, possibly because he didn’t realize there was a vulnerability.

More worryingly, Sony seems to have left the issue open. Speaking to WCCFTech in a new post, Lellouche says that Sony solved the problem he had by putting a note on the account to stop support from intervention, but after 6 months, that protection seemed to disappear because Lellouche had his account hacked again using the same purchase number.

Back to Moriarty, he said that if he can’t get his account back, he intends to stop podcasting and playing: “Needless to say, if I don’t get my account, I’m going to stop playing and podcasting forever. So let’s hope it all works out!”

He is a known Trophy hunter, and he said that losing games would bother him more than losing Trophies and saves.