Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Sony Attacked Again, 93,000 Accounts Compromised

Sony PlayStation LogoYikes, it seems Sony’s PSN, SEN, & SON accounts are a hot commodity in the hacking world.

Sony’s Chief Information Security Officer, Phillip Reitinger posted on the PlayStation blog yesterday, stating that 93,000 accounts were compromised in a massive hacking attempt that involved testing a HUGE set of sign-in IDs and passwords against their network database.

Of the 93,000 accounts broken into, approximately 60,000 of them were PlayStation Network (PSN) & Sony Entertainment Network (SEN) accounts while the remaining 30,000 were Sony Online Entertainment accounts. As big of a number 93,000 is, it only makes up for less than one tenth of one percent of Sony’s PSN, SEN, & SON client base.

Thankfully, only a small number of the 93,000 accounts broken into showed any signs of activity before Sony locked them. The owners of the accounts that were compromised in this recent attack can expect an email from Sony instructing them to change their passwords.

This most recent attack only adds to the string of security breaches that Sony has suffered this year.

Back in April, Sony announced that their network had been breached, resulting in millions of their members’ personal information – including credit card numbers – winding up in the hands of the intruders and the Sony PlayStation Network being taken offline.

Due to the number of failed attempts to access accounts in the most recent attack, Sony believes that the login credentials used by the culprits were obtained from a source outside of Sony. This should serve as a reminder to everyone that it’s a bad idea to use the same passwords between multiple websites!

Hopefully cybercriminals will back off of Sony and all of these security breach newsbreaks will become a thing of the past.

To read the message posted by Phillip Reitinger, wander on over to the PlayStation blog.

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