Four days after Sony admitted to it’s Playstation Network being hacked, Sony has confirmed today that its Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) PC games network has also been attacked. Hackers have stolen over 24 million SOE active accounts information as well as outdated account data of the year 2007. The account data is said to contain names, date of births, addresses, login credentials as well as passwords of SOE members. Sony says that the passwords are hashed or encrypted. Information potentially taken from the older database is said to contain non US credit card and debit card numbers along with expiry dates. However, the security codes were not stolen.
According to reports, the attacks were a part of the PSN intrusion which was made on 16th and 17th of April. However the attack was discovered on 2nd May. It also said that the PSN and SOE networks share the same structure which made it easier for the hackers to attack them. The database contained in both the networks do differ though.
It is not known when the SOE network will be back up, as the network’s games on Facebook have also gone down until further notice. The attacks come just two days after Sony extended a goodwill package for its PSN customers to win back their trust. But it looks like Sony will have a tough time doing just that after the SOE attacks came to light. Sony executives also bowed down asking for apology from its PSN customers for losing data of its 77 million customers.
The attacks are said to be a huge setback for Sony as industry analysts reveal that its losses could mount to over tens of billions of yens.
