Sony has just announced that it has detected someone trying to match "a massive set of sign-in IDs and passwords against our network database".
The company suspects that somebody has got hold of a massive list of usernames and passwords from "another source and not from our Networks", and have been caught checking to see if you use the same username and password on the PlayStation Network.
According to Sony's new Chief Information Officer, Philip Reitinger, "less than one tenth of one percent (0.1%) of our PSN, SEN and SOE audience may have been affected". In raw number terms that means 93,000 accounts names and passwords were "matched" by someone other than the account holder, and as a result Sony has "temporarily locked these accounts".
Those 93,000 accounts will now be forced to reset their passwords. In the case of Sony Online Entertainment customers, users will be emailed instructions on how to re-open their accounts.
Regardless of whether you're one of the 93,000 accounts affected or not, now's a good time to remind you to never, ever use the same username and/or password across a whole range of sites!
The company suspects that somebody has got hold of a massive list of usernames and passwords from "another source and not from our Networks", and have been caught checking to see if you use the same username and password on the PlayStation Network.
According to Sony's new Chief Information Officer, Philip Reitinger, "less than one tenth of one percent (0.1%) of our PSN, SEN and SOE audience may have been affected". In raw number terms that means 93,000 accounts names and passwords were "matched" by someone other than the account holder, and as a result Sony has "temporarily locked these accounts".
Those 93,000 accounts will now be forced to reset their passwords. In the case of Sony Online Entertainment customers, users will be emailed instructions on how to re-open their accounts.
Regardless of whether you're one of the 93,000 accounts affected or not, now's a good time to remind you to never, ever use the same username and/or password across a whole range of sites!
