Sony Corp’s online PlayStation network has suffered a massive data breach with illegal hacker stealing names, addresses and possibly credit card data belonging to about 77 million user accounts.
The company revealed this to public after the recent launch of its new tablet computers in Japan, though it learned about this issue on April 19.
Sony wrote on its official PlayStation blog said that an unauthorised person obtained names, addresses, email addresses, birth dates, usernames, passwords, logins, security questions and more.
However, the Japanese company stopped access to the network last Wednesday.
Sony head of communications for Europe Nick Caplin said in a statement posted on the blog, "We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19 2011, certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network."
Caplin added, "It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained."
Meanwhile, users came to know about the unavailability of the service on 20 April, and they are not happy with the response of the company on this issue as the company took almost seven days to inform about this data breach to users.
The company has not divulged a date for the availability of the service, but anticipated that the it could restore some of the network’s services within a week. The company has hired a security firm from outside to investigate the matter.
Launched in 2006, the Sony PlayStation offers offers games, music and movies to people with PlayStation consoles, and had 77 million registered users as of March with almost 90% of them in the US or Europe.
