Sony playstation network attacked again by hackers

www.trickywindows.com

Sony can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to user account security, nor can the company’s customers enjoy refuge from the constant hacking attempts. The PlayStation Network has once again come under attack.
This new intrusion has compromised about 93,000 accounts, although Sony claims that there was little activity on the accounts before they were locked down. Credit card information is allegedly not at risk, but there’s been little word on what, exactly, the attack was attempting to accomplish.
Whatever the purpose, the public relations department has been quick to cover the company’s butt.



According to the Philip Reitinger, Sony’s Chief Information Security Officer, the attack was conducted using user information stolen from elsewhere. “In this case, given that the data tested against our network consisted of sign-in ID-password pairs, and that the overwhelming majority of the pairs resulted in failed matching attempts, it is likely the data came from another source and not from our Networks.”

It’s hard to know the source of the attack, but this situation is far from unheard of. Since so many people use the exact same password for all of their accounts, compromising the user name and password information of a single organization can lead to the successful attacks on others.

As always, we recommend that readers don’t use the same password across the web, and instead use different passwords for different sites and services. A password manager can be helpful for this.