حملات سایبری شدید به سرویس PlayStation Network سونی

(Reuters) – Sony Corp’s PlayStation online store was hacked on Monday, leading to a two-hour outage, the Financial Times reported, without citing sources.

Sony confirmed the outage and said it was investigating the cause.

The company has not received any report that information has been leaked or stolen, the FT said.

Sony said users faced difficulty accessing the PlayStation network between 8:52 a.m. and 11:18 a.m. Tokyo time on Monday (6:52 p.m.-9:18 p.m. ET on Sunday) and the issue had been resolved.

The outage follows a denial-of-service attack on the PlayStation network in August. A Twitter user with the handle @LizardSquad claimed responsibility.

A tweet on Monday from a user with the handle @LizurdPatrol and account name Lizard Squad said: “50 RTs (retweets) and we will hit off PSN (PlayStation Network). 50 FAVs (favorites) and we will hit off XBOX LIVE.”

The Financial Times said that some visitors to the PlayStation online store were greeted with the message: “Page not found. It’s not you. It’s the internet’s fault.”

Last month, Sony’s Hollywood studio, Sony Pictures Entertainment, was hit by a massive hack that shut down most of the studio’s network for more than a week.

Following that attack hackers released sensitive data over the Internet, including employee salaries and social security numbers along with high-quality digital versions of several unreleased films.

This isn’t Sony’s first tryst with hackers. The company ‘s PlayStation network suffered a major attack in 2011, resulting in the theft of data belonging to 77 million users.

Sony’s U.S. listed shares were down 3.3 percent at $21.40 on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday. The stock had fallen as much as 3.9 percent in early trading.

(Reporting by Abhirup Roy in Bengaluru and Reiji Murai in Tokyo; Editing by Don Sebastian)