Sony suspends user accounts upon detecting hack attempts

Sony has identified attempts to gain unauthorized access of 93,000 user accounts in the United States and Europe. 

According to a Bloomberg report, Sony spokesperson Satoshi Fukuoka said the attempts were made between Oct. 7 and Oct. 10, during which the hackers tried to break into 35,000 accounts in the U.S. and 24,000 accounts in Europe using the correct combination of passwords and users names.

The Tokyo-based executive added that the company had not received any complaints from customers and no credit card information had been leaked. The affected accounts comprised less than 0.1 percent of customers who use Sony's online services, Fukuoka added. 

Philip Reitinger, vice president and chief information security officer of Sony Group, explained in the PlayStation blog: "These attempts appear to include a large amount of data obtained from one or more compromised lists from other companies, sites or other sources." The majority of user ID-password pairs resulted in failed matching attempts, Reitinger said, noting that based on this information, the data appeared to originate from a source outside of Sony's networks. 

He added that the company had temporarily suspended the accounts and informed affected customers by e-mail to rest their passwords.

When contacted, Sony reiterated Reitinger's blog post. "We have taken action to mitigate this activity, and are taking steps to notify the legitimate owners of accounts that had matching pairs of usernames and passwords," said a Sony spokesperson. 

The maker of PlayStation game consoles in April suffered a security breach that compromised over 100 million user accounts, allowing hackers to make off with the personal data of customers of Sony's PlayStation Network, Qriocity entertainment service, and online games network Sony Online.