Sony warns of almost 25 million extra user detail theft
Baku, May 3 (AZERTAC). A further 25 million gamers have had their personal details stolen as a result of security breaches at Sony.
As well as the Playstation Network, which has been down since 20 April, the company has now taken its Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) service offline.
It said credit card details and other personal information have been taken from an "outdated database".
Last week, Sony admitted that the personal details of 77m Playstation users may have been stolen by hackers.
Since the breach was revealed, shares in Sony have dropped by 4% amid calls for the company`s CEO Howard Stringer to stand down over the crisis.
In a message to its customers, Sony said: "We had previously believed that SOE customer data had not been obtained in the cyber-attacks on the company."
However, it added that "on 1 May we concluded that SOE account information may have been stolen".
Sony was quoted by the Associated Press (AP) news agency as saying that the latest incident occurred on 16 and 17 April.
This was earlier than the larger Playstation user security breach, which occured on 20 April.
Sony admitted the scale of the problem to users on 27 April.
This new attack goes beyond users of Playstation hardware, affecting PC and Facebook gamers - potentially an additional 25 million people.
Sony said that names, home addresses, e-mail addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and gender information was taken.
Additionally, direct debit details of around 10,700 customers in Austria, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany were stolen, as were the credit or debit card details of some 12,700 non-US customers.
Sony explained that the information included card numbers and expiry dates, but said that it was taken from a 2007 database which was securely encrypted.
The company added: "There is no evidence that our main credit card database was compromised. It is in a completely separate and secured environment."
Spokeswoman Taina Rodriguez told AP that there was no evidence as yet that the stolen information had been used for illicit financial gain.
However, in its statement, Sony has warned customers to be aware of any contact via e-mail, telephone or postal services purporting to be official Sony correspondence.
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