Sony has reported another hacking attack attempt on 93,000 accounts. Of the accounts, PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network make up 60,000, plus 33,000 Sony Online Entertainment users. Sony claims the hackers used "a massive set of sign-in IDs and passwords" to carry out the attack, but that only a "small fraction" of the accounts accessed displayed any activity before the company locked them. "These attempts appear to include a large amount of data obtained from one or more compromised lists from other companies, sites or other sources," writes VP & chief information security officer Philip Reitinger in a post on the official PlayStation Blog. "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."

Reitinger goes on to say that Sony will work with any users who report unauthorised purchases on their accounts in order to reimburse them, and stresses that, "Less than one tenth of one percent (0.1%) of our PSN, SEN and SOE audience may have been affected."


All affected customers can expect to receive an email from Sony and will have to reset their passwords yet again.


"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," Reitinger explains. "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."


This attack is the latest in a string of hacking attempts on Sony's user databases which began in April this year when 75 million account details were stolen from PSN, resulting in the service going offline for six weeks in order to bolster security.

Posted: Oct 12, 2011 1:07 pm

Source: http://www.next-gen.biz/news/sony-hacked-again-93000-accounts-breached