May 3rd, 2011
Second Sony Videogame-Service Is Hacked
The Wall Street Journal
Sony Corp. said computer hackers breached security for a second online service, gaining access to personal information for 24.6 million customer accounts as part of a broader attack on the company that has compromised data for more than 100 million accounts.
Sony Online Entertainment, a San Diego-based subsidiary that makes multiplayer games for personal computers, said it shut down its services Monday amid concerns a hacker may have accessed names, birth dates and addresses for its users.
The company said it doesn’t believe credit-card information on those accounts was accessed, but said hackers may have stolen credit-card data for about 12,700 non-U.S. accounts and 10,700 bank-account numbers from an “outdated database from 2007.”
The company, which has come under fire for its handling of the security breach, said it detected the latest intrusion early May 2, Tokyo time, as part of an ongoing investigation of the attacks.
On April 20, the company shut down its PlayStation Network, which lets console owners play against each other online. It later disclosed that a hacker had stolen names, birth dates and possibly credit-card numbers from 77 million accounts on the network.
Sony said the shutdown of Sony Online Entertainment, which hosts the popular “EverQuest” role-playing game, followed an intrusion on April 16 and April 17.
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