Why is the de facto standard way of email exchange plus old password plus maybe a birthday not workable? Unless psn stored the passwords in plaintext, the hackers modified data, and Sony does not have a clean backup.
Another option would be to send out a new password via mail to the billing address if they had no other way to do it electronically. Out of luck if you moved since then. Make the old password a requirement so mail thieves cannot steal your account.
I was pissed that I needed to change my credit card number because of these clowns. If someone wants to make a cool startup make a credit card number that is a one off that will only work for a certain time frame(extendable), dollar limit, and business name(though this one might be tougher because the business name given to the credit card company might be different than the business name I would enter).