Sony Says Hacker Stole 2,000 Records From Canadian Site

The problems keep coming for Sony. On Tuesday the company confirmed that someone had hacked into its web site and purloined about 2,000 customer name calling and e-mail addresses.

More or less 1,000 of the records have already been posted online by a hacker calling himself Idahc, World Health Organization says atomic number 2's a "Lebanese grey-lid hacker." Idahc found a common World Wide Web programming error, called an SQL injection flaw, that allowed him to turn up the records on the Canadian interlingual rendition of the Official Sony Ericsson eShop, an online store for mobile phones and accessories.

The hack got access to records for virtually 2,000 customers, including their names and e-mail addresses and a hashed version of users' passwords, said Ivette Lopez Sisniega, a Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications spokeswoman. "Sony Ericsson has out of action this e-commerce website," she said in an e-mail message. "We can substantiate that this is a standalone website and information technology is non connected to Sony Ericsson servers."

Otherwise the names and e-mail addresses, nary personal or banking information was compromised, she said.

Sony Ericsson is a mobile-phone company run jointly by Sony and Ericsson.

Sony has been low-level continual cyber-attack since April, when its PlayStation Mesh was hacked and so pulled offline. Over the past week Sony BMG Japanese Archipelago, Sony BMG Greece, the Sony-run So-clear Internet service provider, and a company server in Kingdom of Thailand all have been compromised, in what's becoming a free-for-wholly online attack on anything belonging to Sony.

Earlier this twelvemonth Sony raised the hackles of hackers by suing George Hotz, a well-respected hacking partizan, who'd plant a way to give way Sony's controls and install Linux happening his PlayStation 3. Sony eventually set with Hotz, but to many it came off as a bully in the affair.

Now, increasingly, Sony looks like a caller where security was merely an reconsideration.

Earlier this week, Sony same the attacks will be information technology at the least US$170 1000000.

Sony's continued problems reflect a cavalier attitude toward electronic computer security, said Scott Borg, CEO of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit of measurement, a Washington-based think tank that studies cyber-attacks. "It's a pretty unmistakable conclusion that they weren't managing their protection well," he said.

Henry M. Robert McMillan covers computing device protection and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Henry M. Robert on Chitter at @bobmcmillan. Robert's email address is robert_mcmillan@idg.com