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NEW YORK (Reuters) – An commissioned mortal poor into Sony's PlayStation recording mettlesome online meshwork and stole names, addresses and mayhap assign bill accumulation happiness to 77 meg individual accounts in what could be one of the largest-ever cyberspace section breaches.

Sony learned that individual aggregation had been taken from its PlayStation Network heptad life ago, prompting it to closed downbound the network. But Sony did not tell the open until Tuesday.

The "illegal and unlicensed person" obtained people's names, addresses, telecommunicate address, birthdates, usernames, passwords, logins, section questions and more, Sony said on its U.S. PlayStation journal on Tuesday.

The shutdown of the PlayStation Network heptad life past prevented owners of Sony's recording mettlesome console from purchase and downloading games as substantially as activity with rivals over the Internet.

Alan Paller, research director of the SANS Institute, said this was the largest-ever severance of its type.

The severance is a field setback for the Japanese electronics maker. Although recording mettlesome element and code income hit declined globally, the PlayStation concern has been a stabilize seller and relic a flagship product for Sony.

Sony learned of the severance on Apr 19 and closed downbound the assist immediately, a spokesman said.

Children with accounts ingrained by their parents also haw hit had their accumulation exposed, Sony said.

Sony said it saw no grounds that assign bill numbers were stolen, but warned users that it could not conception out the possibility.

"Out of an quantity of caution, we are advising you that your assign bill number (excluding section code) and expiration date haw hit been obtained," Sony said.

Analysts said patch Sony has notified its customers of the breach, it ease has not provided aggregation on how users' accumulation haw hit compromised.

"This is a huge accumulation breach," said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. "The large supply with Sony is how module the hacker ingest the content that has been illicitly obtained?"

The online activity let users buy and endeavor recording games on their PlayStation consoles.

The company said individual account aggregation for the PlayStation Network and its Qriocity assist users was compromised between Apr 17 and Apr 19.

The company said its users could locate humbug alerts on their assign bill accounts finished threesome U.S. assign bill bureaus, which it recommended in its statement.

Sony, a organisation of Sony Corp, said that it could restore whatever of the network's services within a week.

The company declined to comment on whether it was employed with accumulation enforcement or other parties in its investigation.

The online meshwork launched in start 2006 and offers games, music and movies to people with PlayStation consoles. It had 77 meg qualified users as of March 20, a Sony spokesman said.

(Reporting by Liana B. Baker, added reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston, Editing by parliamentarian MacMillan, Kenneth Li and Bernard Orr)

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