And we were just starting to feel secure. Sony’s online services have suffered a second attack, a hacking of Sony Online Entertainment seemingly related to the earlier outage of the Playstation Network. The electronics company had to take down the service around Monday morning, and has since issued a press release stating that 24.6 million accounts have been confirmed compromised. An estimation by Japanese site Nikkei (registration necessary) claimed that around 13,00 credit card numbers had been accessed, a figure Sony later confirmed at 12,700, with the caveat that 11,800 of those numbers were inactive at the time.
The response from Sony, in terms of compensation, has been much swifter than the first time, with the SOE Station.com portal already shut down, and players of one of its games (DC Universe Online) already promised a free month of service and a character wardrobe item for the trouble. The latest news was featured in an earlier Elder-Geek report, in which Sony claims to have found evidence of hacker group Anonymous’ involvement in the attack. A class-action lawsuit is already being proposed by Canadian law firm McPhadden Samac Tuovi, asking for $1 billion in damages.
The two attacks together have set off new privacy laws in the country of Australia, which aims to force companies to reveal important information related to hacking as quickly as the data becomes known. The law comes in addition to letters sent to Sony by Australia’s Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim demanding explanation for the attacks, similar to requests sent in by United States officials early last week.
How does this second hack affect your views of Sony, E-Gs? Will this affect the amount of time players will have to wait for PSN to be restored? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!
All this does is make me have even less respect for hackers…
Yes, we know, you can get into anything you want. Stop tampering with our gaming experience. We don’t care how good you are. Sigh.