93,000 accounts have been suspended in a mass hack attempt to gain entry into the PlayStation Network.
After the events that took place around April, Sony’s entertainment division took immense steps, including the hiring of a former Deputy Under Secretary with the U. S. Department of Homeland Security, to ensure that such a severe security breach, which oh-by-the-way cost the company $171 million to fix, would never happen again. Now it seems that according to reports, that new line of defense was just put to the test.
Sony has recently confirmed to both media outlets and its customers about an attempted illegal hack on the PlayStation Network that was detected by the company’s online security task force. In a no-bull post on the PlayStation Blog, Phillip Reitinger, the Senior Vice President & Chief Information Security Officer for Sony, described the incident as an unknown outside entity trying to perform a simultaneous mass log-in, using a large sum of account names and passwords acquired elsewhere online, to crack into the network’s database.
And while 93,00 accounts were compromised during this brief alarming incident, thankfully no major information, mainly credit card info, had been stolen in this case and the accounts that were effected, this includes some Sony Online Entertainment accounts too, were shut down before any true damage was done. If your PSN account was somehow in the line of fire of this tried attack, you’ll soon receive a notice via email to change your password. So please, be on the look out for such a message in the following days and make sure to report any suspicious activity that you might see with any Sony-tied account.
Lastly, and not that they need congratulations on doing a job that is, well, their job, a huge thumbs up has to go towards Sony for being immediately upfront & clear about this security breach and not ill-prepared like they were when the PlayStation Network went down for more than a month’s time. It certainly makes for sound knowledge and eased worries that the company has really been taking matters like this with the highest priority possible.
Via: Ars Technica