SOE Comments on Station Security Breach

When Sony Online Entertainment announced yesterday that it had suffered the same fate as Sony's PlayStation Network, it baffled many in the community. You may recall one week ago that SOE claimed it had not been affected by the major security breach suffered by PSN because its services were separate. But if those services and data of SOE customers were separate from PSN data, how did SOE get hacked too - and at the same time as the PSN attack as the company claimed yesterday?

Joystiq managed to track down a representative of the company willing to talk about it on the record. According to that staff member, the security breach on SOE's servers occurred because of "overlap."

"While the two systems are distinct and operated separately, given that they are both under the Sony umbrella, there is some degree of architecture that overlaps," an SOE rep told Joystiq. "The intrusions were similar in nature," indicating that the same party perpetrated both thefts.

SOE also insisted that this was not a second attack on Sony's services as a whole, but part of the original intrusion that forced Sony to take down PSN nearly two weeks ago.

The source went on to say that yesterday's announcement was a result of "new information" that was discovered on May 1 "as part of [an] ongoing investigation of the external intrusion in April."

No word on when SOE will have its online games and services back up and running.

Source: Joystiq