HackersSony hit by hackers again, 93,000 accounts compromised

Published 14 October 2011

Once again Sony has been the victim of a major cyberattack. This time as many as 93,000 accounts have been compromised from Sony Entertainment Network, PlayStation Network, and Sony Online Entertainment

Once again Sony has been the victim of a major cyberattack. This time as many as 93,000 accounts have been compromised from Sony Entertainment Network, PlayStation Network, and Sony Online Entertainment.

According to a post on the official PlayStation blog, hackers attempted to access accounts using a “massive” set of sign-in IDs and passwords. Philip Reitinger, Sony’s CIO, said the majority of passwords did not work and that customers’ credit card information was not at risk.

Only 0.1 percent of accounts were affected and as a precaution, the company has temporarily suspended 93,000 accounts.

Reitinger maintained that the latest cyberattack originated from data stolen from third-parties and not Sony.

These attempts appear to include a large amount of data obtained from one or more compromised lists from other companies, sites or other sources,” Reitinger said.

“In this case, given that the data tested against our network consisted of sign-in ID-password pairs, and that the overwhelming majority of the pairs resulted in failed matching attempts, it is likely the data came from another source and not from our Networks,” he explained.

The latest attacks on Sony’s networks come after the company’s PlayStation Network service was taken down for several weeks in April following the revelation that the account information of nearly 70 million gamers was compromised.

PlayStation subscribers were incensed by Sony’s delay in alerting them that their information had been compromised. In addition, just one month after the initial cyberattacks, the hacking group Lulzsec claimed that it had obtained sensitive information for more than 1 million users from Sony Pictures websites.

Learning from its past mistakes, Sony appears to have alerted customers almost immediately, and Reitinger assured users that their accounts would be carefully monitored for unauthorized access.