Sony says 400 customer names, emails from mobile division leaked in China

IDG News Service - Sony said Thursday that hackers accessed about 400 names and email addresses of its mobile customers in China and Taiwan, but that no credit card or banking information was compromised.

The company said it became aware of the hack several days after a message was posted on the popular text-sharing website Pastebin by a group called "NullCrew" claiming to have accessed Sony servers and listing logins and email addresses.

Sony said the information was taken from at least one server run by a third-party service provider based in China. The company is still investigating the details of the breach, but it appears no servers operated directly by Sony were compromised, company spokesman Hiroshi Okubo said.

"We became aware of the incident late last night or early this morning," said Okubo, referring to Japan time.

The information was on customers of Sony Mobile Communications, the company's mobile arm, in the Asian countries.

The message posted on Pastebin on Sept. 3 claims to have hacked Sony Mobile and lists hundreds of what appear to be login IDs and email addresses from the company's site.

"Sony, we are dearly dissapointed in your security. This is just one of eight sony servers that we hve control of," it reads.

The Japanese electronics firm, which is pouring resources into expanding its online services, was the target of several large-scale attacks last year.

In October, the company suspended 93,000 user accounts on several of its gaming and entertainment networks after a large number of unauthorized login attempts on those accounts.

In April, Sony was the victim of a massive attack on its online properties, in which 100 million accounts were stole from company databases. The company shut down several networks for a month and a half.