The PlayStation Network has been hacked again. A post on the Sony Europe blog by Philip Reitinger, the VP and chief information security officer for Sony Group points to "another source not from our networks", attempting to test sign-in IDs and passwords against Sony's database. 

Keen not to revisit the previous joys of the last PSN outage, Sony has emphasised the fact that it was an extremely small number of accounts that actually saw successful password and username matches, all of which have been forced to do a secure password reset. 

"These attempts appear to include a large amount of data obtained from one or more compromised lists from other companies, sites or other sources. In this case, given that the data tested against our network consisted of sign-in ID-password pairs, and that the overwhelming majority of the pairs resulted in failed matching attempts, it is likely the data came from another source and not from our Networks. We have taken steps to mitigate the activity."

"Less than one tenth of one percent (0.1%) of our PSN, SEN and SOE audience may have been affected. There were approximately 93,000 accounts globally (PSN/SEN: approximately 60,000 accounts; SOE: approximately 33,000) where the attempts succeeded in verifying those accounts".

Sony is planning on posting a continuing stream of updates as to the goings on of the hackings, unlike last time which saw little information released by the company until well after the PSN outage. The company has also made it clear that no credit card details kept on accounts has been compromised. 

Those who have been affected, expect an email from Sony asking for a password reset. Anyone using Sony Online Entertainment networks accounts that have had security issues, these have been switched off. You will get an email asking you to validate account details and get the account switched on. 

Let's just hope the PSN keeps itself alive... we want to play Resistance 3. 

Bad times? Or isn't it Sony's fault? Let us know in the comments below ...