Sony still in the crosshairs of hackers: between October 7th and 10th, a total of 93,000 accounts were compromised. Here’s how Sony management noticed the problem and what needs to be done to reactivate frozen accounts.
We return to discussing hacker attacks against Sony because it is very recent news – and officially confirmed – that a new wave of cybercrime has hit the Sony network.
According to the latest internal company findings, it appears that approximately 93,000 accounts were affected, with data stolen from the Sony Entertainment Network, PlayStation Network, and Sony Online Entertainment.
At the moment, Sony has decided to freeze approximately 24,000 accounts as a precautionary measure, pending the completion of the necessary investigations.
Philip Reitinger, Sony’s chief information security officer, stated that anomalies were noticed because the network began receiving numerous attempted access requests to Sony services, with sometimes incorrect passwords. Given the volume of information sent to the system, Sony became alerted and opted to block the accounts.
The hypothesized causes for this new attack appear to be external in origin: there was not, in fact, a data theft, but rather access using usernames and passwords obtained from third-party companies.
Could these be the effects of the previous hacker attack that occurred a few months ago?
Perhaps some companies actually purchased the previously stolen data to attempt an illegal incursion now.
Sony clarifies that in a limited number of cases, access to accounts was successfully gained, indicating that users – at the time – actually changed their passwords, rendering their usernames unusable from the outside.
This time too, Sony not only suggests changing passwords but also makes it mandatory: only in this way, in fact, can one’s account be unlocked and reactivated, given that all profiles are currently frozen to avoid problems.
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