Sony security breaches mount as employee data confirmed stolen

PlayStation users not impacted so far

PlayStation manufacturer Sony has confirmed towards Bleeping Computer that a limited breach of a company server took place in Japan last month, confirming claims made by hackers. This is the second incident of this sort involving Sony in a relatively short time frame. In addition to this recent breach, it also seems like hackers were able to obtain personal information on several thousand employees of the company back in May 2023.

Sony sent out notifications to current and former employees regarding the data theft from May on October 3, 2023, detailing what the company’s investigations brought to light. It has also offered impacted individuals services to monitor if their stolen information is being misused.

So far, PlayStation users have not been impacted by the recent Sony data breaches / Sony

In both cases, Sony claims that no other systems have been impacted by the attacks.

“There is currently no indication that customer or business partner data was stored on the affected server or that any other Sony systems were affected. There has been no adverse impact on Sony's operations,” a spokesperson told Bleeping Computer regarding the more recent incident from September 2023.

This contradicts claims made by one of the groups that proclaimed itself to be behind that attack and stated that it was able to breach all of the company’s systems.

Even though it looks like PlayStation users are not currently impacted by these events, Sony does have a bit of a concerning history when it comes to data breaches. In 2011, a large hack compromised millions of PlayStation Network accounts, exposing personal information that was associated with them. The resulting PSN outage lasted for over twenty days – not exactly a record anyone wants to beat in the future.