Feldon From Yahoo News:
TOKYO (AP) — Sony said Wednesday intruders staged a massive attempt to access user accounts on its PlayStation Network and other online entertainment services in the second major attack on its flagship gaming site this year.
The Tokyo-based company temporarily locked about 93,000 accounts whose IDs and passwords were successfully ascertained by the blitz. Sony sent email notifications and password reset procedures to affected customers on the PlayStation Network, Sony Entertainment Network and Sony Online Entertainment services.
Credit card numbers linked to the compromised accounts are not at risk, Sony said. It has “taken steps to mitigate the activity” and is investigating any wrongful use of the accounts themselves.
“Less than one tenth of one percent” of the service’s customers may have been affected, Sony said in a statement.
The announcement follows an embarrassing data breach in April, which compromised personal data from more than 100 million online gaming and entertainment accounts and forced PlayStation Network to be shut for a month.
Sony was subsequently criticized for lax security and acting too slowly to inform customers as it grappled with one of the largest-ever security thefts.
Sony confirmed the latest incidents after its security systems detected an unusually high number of login attempts that failed, said Sony spokesman Sean Yoneda. The company suspects that those responsible obtained large data sets from other companies or sources, which were then used to try to access Sony accounts.
“What happened in April was a breach on our servers as we said in our announcements,” Yoneda said. “But this time around, there was no intrusion on our servers. This was … taking someone else’s identity and trying to use that to access our services.”
The unauthorized access attempts occurred between Oct. 7 and Oct. 10 and targeted accounts globally. The company said it is unclear whether the attempts were carried out by a single individual or multiple parties.
Sony’s customer service centers around the world have not seen a spike in user calls related to the incidents, Yoneda said.
Under Chief Executive Howard Stringer, Sony aims to more deeply connect its hardware, content and services. Executives have said the hacker attacks in the spring did not derail that core strategy.
The PlayStation Network bounced back relatively quickly, with the vast majority of subscribers returning after Sony began restoring online gaming services in May.
One after another people got dumped to character select but could then log straight back in again with no trouble other than a bit of irritation. This was at about 3-4am CET. The post from Philip Reitinger of Sony appeared on the EQ2 forum within about an hour, a vast improvement on their period of stony silence after the hacking in April. What is disturbing though is that for some days already, many have been experiencing username/password issues.
Just read this on massively. I was hoping SOE would have gotten this under control as I’ll most likely be interested in EQ Next. ATM or until then i wouldn’t touch this company with any CC. They said that no CC was compromised last time is utter BS.
I used one card for EQ and mainly for EQ2, after i had the card for 9 or 11 years, never used it anywhere else.
I get a call from my cc company about 2 to 3 months ago that they are sending me a new one??? I called and they said their is firm reason it could be compromised, they lowered the limit until i receive the new one. They wouldn’t tell me exactly why though and the card never was compromised, however i’m really glad that SOE has no valid CC with me on file, sleep allot better knowing that, especially now.
Blockhead, your credit card company did it “just in case” your card was compromised. This also happened to a few friends of mine, whose cards were never compromised.
I have a second bank account card with my bank. I use it for on-line purchases. I NEVER use my other cards for anything on-line. When I know I am going to buy something on-line, I just transfer that amount to the extra card. So if it is comprimised I can just cancel it (no fuss no muss), I only keep a minimum balance of cash in it, it can be cancelled and re-issued, and it does not inconvience me too much. I highly recommend this method to everyone.
Pay for your gaming communities via game cards whenever possible. Buying a $15 card at Walmart yields 500 bonus Station Cash. So it’s not only safe, it’s a better investment of your money!
Never use your actualy birthday anywhere online. These companies dont need a credit check or other type of verification that would have adverse effect if your personal information was compromised.
Create another email account and use that address from now on. Free communities like Yahoo can offer a lot more security than you might imagine. A google search of your current email address might give away some valuable personal information to those those that have malicious intent in mind. Facebook for example, will show up on a search and a LOT can be learned about you. So be careful about what you put on the internet!
SOE, you still /fail