Sony has been hit by a second major data breach in as many weeks, after it admitted the personal details of 24.6 million PC games accounts may also have been stolen from its servers.
The Japanese electronics company said its Sony Online Entertainment PC games network had been hacked on April 18, but did not find out about the breach until the early hours of Monday and shut down the service shortly afterwards.
Sony Online Entertainment runs online games such as “EverQuest” and is separate from the PlayStation video game console division. Hacked details include names, addresses, emails, birthdates, phone numbers and other information.
Sony’s latest revelation comes as it plans to resume some services on its PlayStation Network early this week following the theft of personal information belonging to about 77 million users worldwide. The FBI in the US has begun an investigation into the breach.
At a lengthy news conference in Tokyo earlier this week, senior executives from the electronics giant made their first public remarks on the massive security breach and apologised to customers.
The company said it would offer some free content, including 30 days’ free membership to a premium service to some existing users and reduced credit card fees to others as long as they did not abandon it in favour of its rivals in the online gaming space.
Sony insisted there was no evidence credit card data had been compromised in the original breach, which took place between April 17 and 19 but Sony executive deputy president Kazuo Hirai said he was “deeply sorry for the great anxiety and trouble” inflicted on the network’s users.
“This criminal act against our network had a significant impact not only on our consumers but our entire industry,” said Hirai. “These illegal attacks obviously highlight the widespread problem with cyber security.”
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