Asia-Pacific

PlayStation hacker may have millions of users' card info

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-05-01 17:27

Sony Corp's Executive Deputy President Kazuo Hirai bows his head with his executives Shiro Kambe (L) and Shinji Hasejima as they apologise for a massive security breach of its PlayStation Network at a news conference in Tokyo May 1, 2011. Hirai, the frontrunner to take over the top job at Sony Corp, apologised on Sunday for a security breach that allowed hackers to gain access to personal information on 77 million accounts for its PlayStation Network service.?[Photo/Agencies]

TOKYO - Kazuo Hirai, the head of Sony's PlayStation video game business said Sunday that there was no concrete evidence that information from 77 million credit cards registered by customers through Sony's PlayStation Network had been stolen by a hacker, the possibility did exist.

Speaking at a press conference convened by the firm at their headquarters in Tokyo, Hirai, Sony's executive vice president, conceded that the hacker may have obtained the users' credit card numbers, expiration dates as well as purchase history and password security answers.

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"While there is no evidence that the credit card data has been compromised, we also can't rule it out," Hirai said.

Sony said that two weeks ago a hacker breached the company's online video game network and Qriocity streaming entertainment service and swiped the names, addresses, e-mail addresses and birth dates of some 77 million users registered to use the firm's network.

Following the breach, which has potentially huge global implications, Sony suspended the two online services on April 20.

Hirai, while apologizing for the monumental blunder, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is looking into the matter, following Sony's request.

The consumer electronics giant said they have created a new position to better oversee the protection of consumers' private data. The measures taken include adding more firewalls and advanced encryption technology.

Following a barrage of complaints from the firm's livid global users, Hirai said the company will provide some content for games consoles free of charge.

Earlier, Hirai said that Sony had worked tirelessly to bring its services back on line and are doing so in stages, while verifying the increased levels of security across its networks are invulnerable to further attacks.

PlayStation users were initially alerted to the incident when the two services went down on April 20.

Following this, Sony issued a statement saying there had been an "external intrusion," although the full extent of the hack was not revealed until April 27.

The massive scale of the security breach became apparent on 27 April and Sony on Sunday reiterated that its network users should change their passwords as a precautionary measure.