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Digital Top Stories
Sony suspends 93,000 online accounts amid new security scare
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 13 October 2011
Sony Corp announced yesterday that it was suspending 93,000 accounts across its Sony Entertainment Network (until last month known as Qriocity), PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment networks, after fraudulent attempts were made to log into them. Passwords on all these accounts will have to be changed, or other details may have to be validated before users can access them again.
In a post on the official PlayStation blog, Sony’s Chief Information Security Officer Philip Reitinger said: “These attempts appear to [utilise] a large amount of data obtained from one or more compromised lists from other companies, sites or other sources. 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 [own] networks. We have taken steps to mitigate the activity”. He added that “less than one tenth of one percent of our PSN, SEN and SOE audience may have been affected”.
As previously reported, Sony revealed in April that user information held by the company’s PlayStation Network and its Qriocity music service had been accessed by a hacker, who had stolen a great deal of personal information, possibly including credit card numbers. Access to both the PlayStation Network and Qriocity was suspended on 20 Apr, with users notified that this was due to an “external intrusion” two days later, though the database compromise was only announced when it was uncovered by a security firm assessing the scale of the attack. Sony’s management of and communication during the hacking attack were widely criticised.
Sony blamed hacker group Anonymous for that data grab, because it happened while the conglom’s security teams were dealing with one of the group’s largely pointless Distributed Denial Of Service attacks. Various Sony websites have been victims of the increased trend of late among hacking communities to stage DDoS and other hacking attacks against companies they believe too draconically enforce their copyrights. Some recent arrests of alleged Anonymous members have related to attacks on Sony’s servers.
Also suffering network problems at the moment, of course, is Blackberry, whose servers have also been up and down this week, leaving users without access to emails and that BBM messenger thing (which will be why there have been no riots in the last few days). Similar bad management and poor communication by Blackberry owner RIM during its network crisis has led to speculation it too is dealing with, and hiding, a hacking attack and possible data grab, though RIM has denied this is the case, and techie experts seem to think the phone firm’s alternative explanation is more plausible.
