Sony revealed today that the famous security breach which forced it to take the PSN and Qriocity services offline was more extensive than originally thought, and that hackers have managed to gain access to databases containing subscriber information for Sony Online Entertainment.
Sony Online Entertainment serves 2406 million PC users who play some popular games such as "EverQuest," "DC Universe Online" and "Free Realms."
Sony Online Entertainment infrastructure is separate from that of the PlayStation Network, but "there's a degree of architecture that overlaps" according to Michele Sturdivant, a spokeswoman for Sony Online Entertainment.
For most SOE users, Hackers managed to steal their personal info only (including: users' names, home addresses, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, login names, encrypted passwords, birth dates and genders) and not their financial info or answers to security questions.
However, hackers managed to breach a database that was retired in 2007, but still contained records for an unlucky 12,700 SOE users. The data stored in the retired database included credit and debit-card numbers and expiration dates, but not security codes, for non-United States residents, as well as direct-debit banking records for some customers in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.
As an apology for the security lapse and for the ongoing outage, Sony will give all PSN users a 30-day voucher for the PlayStation Plus service which allows them to download free and exclusive games. Similarly, Sony Online Entertainment will receive 30 days subscription for free along with additional play time for each day the service is down.
