The group of hackers, calling themselves "LulzSec," claims they were able to infiltrate servers belonging to Sony, gaining access to home addresses, user names and passwords of customers. The group published this information online Thursday. The group says the information it obtained from Sony was not secure, often left unencrypted and in "plain text."
"Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?" a press release issued by the group said.
The hackers had taunted Sony for several weeks, announcing their discovery through their Twitter account.
LulzSec was responsible for the defacement of a PBS website last week as well as the leak of e-mail addresses and passwords belonging to employees of FOX network affiliates several weeks ago.
Sony was recently the target of a denial of service attack by the hacktivist group "Anonymous" over the company's anti-piracy stance. The group resonsible for today's attack has maintained a small degree of separation from Anonymous, though members of both groups have interacted with each other online.
