Colin Moriarty, the host of Sacred Symbols – the largest PlayStation Patreon podcast – and former IGN journalist, has seemingly lost access to his PlayStation account due to a known security flaw.
Moriarty and co-host Dustin Furman were doing a livestream of Pragmata when Moriarty learned of his account being hacked, as a series of verification emails came through. He quickly vanished from the stream to figure out what was going on.
Moriarty later appeared on X to confirm that he has lost control of his account.
“My PSN account was hacked, seemingly as part of an ongoing sophisticated series of moves against both random and “prominent” users,” said Moriarty. He then shared that he had been told by someone else days ago that he would likely be targeted, and that the person delivering the warning had also been a victim.
Moriarty shared some further details, revealing that he had not been phished, hadn’t clicked on any random links or entered his password anywhere.
He says he first began receiving hundreds of emails from sources like EA, Aliexpress, Slack, Substack and more. He then got a text message informing his PlayStation Network email address had been changed, followed by another stating that 2FA had been disabled.
Co-host Dustin Furman received a message from Moriarty’s account that said “You’re next.”
Moriarty has contacted customer support and even got in touch with people he knows inside Sony in a bid to regain access to his account. He acknowledges that the average user doesn’t have his clout and contacts: “I understand these are major advantages most people affected do not have. I acknowledge that fully.”
Sony has apparently told him that it could take up to 3 weeks to regain access to the account, although they have removed credit card information. Moriarty was understandably baffled by how long it could take so long to regain control.
They removed my credit card info, etc., from the account in the interim, but seemingly couldn’t mass-change the password and boot others off in the interim? Okay then. – Colin Moriarty
This seems to be a known security hole involving two-factor-authentication. Indeed, Moriarty and his crew have addressed it on their podcast several times. In the comments of Moriarty’s social media posts, other users shared similar stories of having their accounts stolen and having to fight to get them back. Some were able to get their accounts returned within a day; others took a week or more.
One user claimed to be a former PlayStation Support employee and said it should take about 15 minutes to get the account sorted out.
WCCFTech first reported on the story back in December of 2025, and has just updated that story in the last few days. In the update, they explain that Numerama’s Nicolas Lellouche had his account hacked twice, using a transaction number as verification to claim the account as their own. The number was believed to have been obtained from a screenshot that Lellouche shared publicly, presumably because he didn’t realise there was any risk.
More worryingly, Sony seems to have left the issue open. Speaking to WCCFTech in a new post, Lellouche says Sony tackled the problem he was having by placing a note on the account to stop support from intervening, but after 6 months, that protection seemingly vanished because Lellouche got his account hacked again using the same transaction number.
Going back to Moriarty, he’s said that if he can’t get his account back, he intends on quitting podcasting and gaming: “Needless to say, if I don’t get my account back, I’m retiring from gaming and podcasting forever. So let’s hope it all works out!”
He’s a well-known Trophy hunter, and said that the loss of the games themselves would bother him far less than the loss of the Trophies and the saves.
