Sony BMG Greece hit by hacker

For the fourth time in about a month, hackers have broken into a Sony network.

In the latest intrusion, hackers hit the Web site of Sony BMG in Greece and pilfered a database containing the usernames, real names and email addresses of users that registered with the site, according to security firm Sophos.

The stolen data was passed on to Hacker News, which posted a copy of it on pastebin.com, Sophos said.,

Chester Wisniewski, senior security advisor at Sophos today said that the intrusion was enabled by a SQL injection flaw that allowed the intruders to inject malicious code into the Greek Sony BMG site.

According to Wisniewski, the attacker appears to have used an automated SQL injection tool that searched for vulnerabilities in the site

"This looks like it was an old school hacking," Wisniewski said. "It surprised me that Sony missed this one considering how easy it was to find. This was not sophisticated at all."

The breach didn't require strong hacking skills, he added.

The breach was the third into Sony systems in recent days.

Last Thursday, Sony disclosed that an intruder has broken into So-net, an Japanese ISP subsidiary and stole about $1,200 worth of virtual tokens.

The same day, security firm F-Secure announced that it had discovered a phishing site being hosted on a Sony server in Thailand.

Those attacks were far smaller in scope than intrusions last month into Sony's PlayStation Network and Entertainment Online sites that compromised data on almost 100 million account holders.

The April attacks prompted Sony to shut down both networks for several days while its internal security team, as well as consultants from three external security firms worked to fix the problems.

The company restored limited service on both networks about 10 days ago. Sony has yet to fully restore all previously availability functionality.

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at @jaivijayan, or subscribe to Jaikumar's RSS feed . His e-mail address is jvijayan@computerworld.com.

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