Sony Rebuffs New Hacker Attempt
Hackers access thousands of PSN accounts. Sony locks down compromised accounts.
Sony Chief Information Security Officer Philip Reitinger posted this morning on the Official European Sony Blog that a mass attempt at logging into thousands of PSN and SOE accounts was rebuffed last night. Suspected of culling the list from other companies, the hackers used large amounts of username-password combinations to attempt access to Sony users. 93,000 accounts appeared to be successfully accessed by using these username-password sets. In response Sony locked all of those accounts until their proper owners could confirm authenticity and reset passwords. Of those accounts, "a small fraction" had transactions on them before being locked down. Sony is reviewing all account activity and offering to assist anyone who may have had purchases made in their name.
Readers who are PSN/SOE users can expect email correspondence from Sony mandating password changes if their account was affected by the attack. Reitinger assured gamers that all credit card information remained undisclosed and secure during the incident.
Press Release
We want to let you know that we have detected attempts on Sony Entertainment Network, PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment (“Networks”) services to test a massive set of sign-in IDs and passwords against our network database. These attempts appear to include a large amount of data obtained from one or more compromised lists from other companies, sites or other sources. 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. We have taken steps to mitigate the activity.
Less than one tenth of one percent (0.1%) of our PSN, SEN and SOE audience may have been affected. There were approximately 93,000 accounts globally (PSN/SEN: approximately 60,000 accounts; SOE: approximately 33,000) where the attempts succeeded in verifying those accounts’ valid sign-in IDs and passwords, and we have temporarily locked these accounts. Only a small fraction of these 93,000 accounts showed additional activity prior to being locked. We are currently reviewing those accounts for unauthorized access, and will provide more updates as we have them. Please note, if you have a credit card associated with your account, your credit card number is not at risk. We will work with any users whom we confirm have had unauthorized purchases made to restore amounts in the PSN/SEN or SOE wallet.
As a preventative measure, we are requiring secure password resets for those PSN/SEN accounts that had both a sign-in ID and password match through this attempt. If you are in the small group of PSN/SEN users who may have been affected, you will receive an email from us at the address associated with your account that will prompt you to reset your password.
Similarly, the SOE accounts that were matched have been temporarily turned off. If you are among the small group of affected SOE customers, you will receive an email from us at the address associated with your account that will advise you on next steps in order to validate your account credentials and have your account turned back on.
We want to take this opportunity to remind our consumers about the increasingly common threat of fraudulent activity online, as well as the importance of having a strong password and having a username/password combination that is not associated with other online services or sites. We encourage you to choose unique, hard-to-guess passwords and always look for unusual activity in your account.
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