It would seem that Sony wasn’t content with losing only 77 million users’ details, and has now smashed the 100 million mark with another leak of personal information, this time through Sony Online Entertainment, a game development house specialising in online RPGs such as EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies.
The newest leak actually occurred before that other catastrophic hack of the Playstation Network, which loosed the personal information of 77 million users, but the SOE intrusion was only detected on Monday. In total hackers had access to 24.6 million records, putting the grand total of personal information Sony has lost at 101.6 million, or a little less than the population of Mexico.
Sony, apparently having hit their damage limitation stride, haven’t blinked and have offered SOE users a free months of play when the system is restored after it was taken down yesterday. Sony have also suspended usage of their Facebook games, which use microtransactions for the purchase of in-game items.
At a press conference held yesterday, Sony’s Executive Deputy President Kaz Hirai and a panel of executives were in a sombre, apologetic mood as they detailed the PSN attack, and offered users a middling “Welcome back” gift of “a free software download”, and 30 days free membership to the premium Playstation Plus service once normal service is restored – expected to happen this week.
This press conference obviously happened before the second intrusion had been discovered, so there may still be the need to wheel the suits out again for another round of apologies.
Worryingly, this new leak also contains the details of around 10,000 direct debits from European users – in other words, bank account numbers, sort codes, registered addresses and account holder names. Looks like its time for Sony users to panic again.
The Japanese electronics giant, for their part, dispute that a database of 2.2 million credit cards currently being hawked by hackers is as a result of the PSN hack, and say there has yet to be any confirmation of illicit financial activity as a result of the breaches.
We’re beginning to think Anonymous may have been on to something when they branded Sony “incompetent”.
