Sony PlayStation Network Hacked Again, Closes 93,000 Accounts
EmailSony Corp. says its PlayStation online gaming network has been hit by hackers again, and it’s suspended about 93,000 users’ accounts while it figures out how to protect itself.
In a statement from its Tokyo headquarters, the company said it had “detected a large amount of unauthorized sign-in attempts” between Oct. 7 and Oct. 10, and had temporarily locked 93,000 accounts whose sign-on IDs and passwords had been copied by whoever made the attacks.
“Credit card numbers associated with these accounts are not at risk as a result of these unauthorized attempts,” the company said, adding that there had been little activity on most of them between the attack and Sony’s decision to lock the accounts.
It said it would email account holders with instructions so they can reset their passwords.
This all matters because it has happened before, and has had Sony struggling to recover in the past. After an attack in April (the shadow group Lulz Security took credit) the PlayStation network was offline for 44 days, and spent about $170 million to restart, and try to restore its relationship with its customers.
Customers are probably not at risk from an attack like this one, the security firm Sophos says, but it’s a reminder to do the little, basic things necessary to protect yourself. If you’re one of those 93,000 Sony customers, someone has now downloaded your password, which might become a problem if it is the same password you use, say, for your bank account.
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I’m so sick of sony now! All it does is get hacked and even wii doesn’t get hacked! I’m switching to xbox.
Posted by: Anna | October 12, 2011, 3:54 pm 3:54 pm
The headline is misleading. Sony have NOT been hacked. If I knew someones user information and logged into ABC with it, ABC would not have been hacked. A website somewhere has clearly been comprised. As most people are lazy and use a single password for multiple websites, it’s not wonder so many email addresses and passwords matched those that Sony has on file.
Anna – I think you are being sensational and disingenuous.
Posted by: Chris | October 12, 2011, 5:40 pm 5:40 pm
PSN/Sony were NOT hacked, as stated.
Information from ELSEWHERE was used to TRY and access PSN accounts, because many people use the same information across their internet ‘lives’. So it’s easy to steal all their accounts, if you can just find the “weakest link” site where you can steal their information easily from.
Posted by: Seth | October 13, 2011, 7:32 am 7:32 am
Disappointed in ABC’s report of this incident. I read the official press release and a lot of the information doesn’t show up here. The information was hacked from other websites and used to attempt to access Sony servers without much success but Sony disabled those accounts just in case.
The last sentence is almost fear mongering:
“If you’re one of those 93,000 Sony customers, someone has now downloaded your password, which might become a problem if it is the same password you use, say, for your bank account.”
Posted by: msetsuna | October 13, 2011, 10:30 pm 10:30 pm
I am also disappointed in ABC. Sensational headlines makes for very bad reporting indeed. I really do not see how you can go from the linked
“What happened in April was a breach on our servers as we said in our announcements,” Yoneda said. “But this time around, there was no intrusion on our servers. This was … taking someone else’s identity and trying to use that to access our services.”
To ” If you’re one of those 93,000 Sony customers, someone has now downloaded your password, which might become a problem if it is the same password you use, say, for your bank account.” which is completely not Sony’s fault, nor the result of a Sony being “hacked”.
Posted by: Christopher Wu | October 14, 2011, 3:42 am 3:42 am