It was revealed recently that Sony's on-line services were
the subject of another significant attack. This incident, however,
did not exploit a vulnerability in Sony's security
infrastructure so much as it highlighted the cascading effect of
data breaches.
Rather than try to scale any fences or jimmy any windows, this
attack used account holders' own keys to open the front door.
According to a statement by Sony, the attackers tested a
"massive set" of log-in credentials, consisting of pairs
of user IDs and passwords, against accounts on three of its
networks. Even though the "overwhelming majority" of the
log-in attempts failed, they successfully breached about 93,000
user accounts. This indicates that the attackers used stolen log-in
credentials, and did not resort to brute force or dictionary
attacks.
