Have you got a PlayStation Network account? You might want to watch your credit card statements because from what we hear, hackers may have access to your details.
The bad news comes after a week long outage of the Sony PlayStation Network, an online system that links PlayStation 3 consoles to the web, as well as subscriptions to Sony’s new Qriocity music playback service.
Up until today, Sony hadn’t clued anyone in on why exactly its network had gone down, leaving everyone with a PlayStation stuck without online multiplayer gaming and movie downloads.
But now we have a reason: Sony was hacked.
“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 unauthorised intrusion into our network,” said Sony in a news release posted to its online PlayStation blog.
“Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorised person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state/province, zip or postal code), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity passwords and login and handle/PSN online ID. 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.”
While credit card details aren’t in the included list of things retrieved by the hackers, Sony has said that it “cannot rule out the possibility” that credit card details were stolen.
If you have an account with Sony’s PlayStation Network – and we expect that’ll be everyone with a PlayStation 3 – you may want to change your passwords, and watch your bank and credit card statements.
We’ll have word from Sony Computer Entertainment Australia with more developments as they appear.
