Sony network ransacked in huge brute-force attack
Sony has warned users against a massive bruteforce attack against PlayStation and Sony network accounts.
The attack – which used password and user ID combinations from an unidentified third-party source – succeeded in compromising 60,000 PlayStation Network and 33,000 Sony Online Entertainment network accounts. These accounts have been locked and passwords reset.
Credit card information is not stored on the dashboard of Sony accounts but it might have been possible that unauthorised charges were made against the wallets held on compromised accounts. Sony has promised to refund any such losses, as explained in a statement by Philip Reitinger, senior vice president and chief information security officer at Sony Group, on the PlayStation blog here.
Both the motive for the latest attack against Sony network users and the identity of the perpetrator(s) remains unclear.
Sony shut down its PlayStation Network in April in the aftermath of a far more damaging hack attack. The service wasn’t restored until a month later. Personal information on 77 million account-holders was exposed as a result of the April PlayStation hack. Details including names, addresses, passwords and purchase histories was exposed by the megahack.
Sony was widely criticised for its handling of the incident, one of the biggest data breach incident (by volume of records) in history. ®
Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/12/playstation_network_brute_force_attack/