Sony has shut down their servers after hackers tried to gain unauthorized access to 93,000 user accounts. The hackers tried to go after Sony Online Entertainment, The PlayStation Network, and Sony Online Entertainment. Sony chief information security officer Philip Reitinger said “a massive set of sign-in IDs and passwords against our network database, [and while] the overwhelming majority of the pairs resulted in failed matching attempts.” The hackers did have some success.

The police in Spain announced today that they have arrested three suspected men for hacking the PlayStation Network. The National Police said that the three arrested people were part of the hacker group Anonymous. During the time of the hack, Anonymous denied responsibility for it.

Sony Corporation CEO Howard Stringer said that the hacker that knocked out the PlayStation Network that exploited 100 million customer accounts was a hiccup in the company’s strategy. “Nobody’s system is 100 percent secure,” stated Stringer. “This is a hiccup in the road to a network future.”

The PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have been restored after a major hack attack led to personal data being compromised. Sony took down the network at the end of April to upgrade their security. As an apology, Sony is offering two PS3 or 2 PSP games for free. Below is an excerpt from the PlayStation blog:

As the investigation for the Sony PlayStation Network hackers continues, another interesting piece of evidence is that they used the Amazon EC2 service. The hackers used an alias to sign up for a server through Amazon and they launched the hack from there.

An observer in an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel has reported to CNET that a group of hackers are planning to hit Sony once again. Sony is still recovering from an attack that was made on the PlayStation Network. The hackers involved in the case are interested in selling off some of the credit card data they stole from the PlayStation Network. The hackers plan on publicizing some or all of the information that they stole from Sony’s servers. This includes customer names, credit card numbers, and addresses. And the hackers are also claiming that they still have access to some of Sony’s servers.

Anonymous is a hacker group that often performs network attacks on major corporations or over political reasons. They have publicly stated today that they were not responsible for stealing credit card data from the Sony PlayStation Network.

[image credit: NYT]

According to security researchers, the hackers that penetrated the Sony PlayStation Network has gotten their hands on credit card numbers and they want to sell them off. They have a database that contains the information on about 2.2 million people, including names, addresses, usernames, passwords, and credit card numbers.