Japanese technology giant Sony Corp said yesterday its online music and gaming Web sites came under cyberattack by a hacker group that claimed there were explosives on a plane carrying a senior company executive.
The company said a US commercial aircraft carrying the president of Sony Online Entertainment had to be diverted after an online warning about the explosives.
“The PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network have been impacted by an attempt to overwhelm our network with artificially high traffic,” the company said on its PlayStation blog, adding that “no personal information has been accessed.”
A Sony spokeswoman in Tokyo said a person or group using the Twitter name @LizardSquad had claimed responsibility for the attack.
“Today we planted the ISIS flag on @Sony’s servers,” @LizardSquad tweeted with a photograph of a man carrying the the flag of the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The feed also contained a reference to a bomb on a plane.
Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley said on his microblog: “Yes. My plane was diverted. Not going to discuss more than that. Justice will find these guys.”
The American Airlines plane, bound for San Diego from Dallas, was redirected to Phoenix, the company said.
More than 150 million accounts were registered with Sony Entertainment Network as of September last year, the company said.
In 2011, Sony suspended operations on the PlayStation Network for six weeks after a hacking attack, which led to the theft of data from more than 100 million accounts.
The company said it improved security after that attack by increasing firewalls and adding software to monitor intrusions and system vulnerabilities.
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