Sony Says 25 Million More Accounts At Risk In A Second Security Hack

Sony CEO Howard Stringer faced criticism of his leadership after the consumer electronics giant revealed hackers may have stolen the data of another 25 million accounts in a second massive security breach. as reported today by Reuters.

Sony’s latest revelation came just a day after it announced measures had been put in place to avert another cyberattack like that which hit its PlayStation Network, hoping to repair its tarnished image and reassure customers who might be pondering a shift to Microsoft’s Xbox.

The Japanese electronics company said its Sony Online Entertainment PC games network had been hacked on April 18, but did not find out about the breach until the early hours of Monday and shut down the service shortly afterwards.

The breach may also have led to the theft of 10,700 direct debit records from customers in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain and 12,700 non-U.S. credit or debit card numbers, it said. Stringer has not commented on the security breach, leaving No.2 Kazuo Hirai to lead the news conference and apology on Sunday. Hirai headed the networks division and is seen as the likely successor to Stringer, who in March committed to stay in his role for the current year at least.

The attack that Sony disclosed on Monday took place a day before a massive break-in of its separate PlayStation video game network that led to the theft of data from 77 million user accounts. Sony revealed that attack last week.

Sony said late on Monday that the names, addresses, emails, birthdates, phone numbers and other information from 24.6 million PC games accounts may have been stolen from its servers as well as an “outdated database” from 2007.

Sony executives apologized on Sunday and said the company would gradually restart the PlayStation Network with increased security and would offer some free content to users, pleasing a number of its users.