Spring 2011 was a nightmarish time for Sony as it struggled to recover from massive hack attacks on three separate gaming systems it runs.
Sony disclosed the first hack on April 22, saying that an "external intrusion" had breached its PlayStation Network and its media streaming service Qriocity. A week later, Sony admitted that personal information and maybe credit card numbers had been stolen. Sensitive details for a whopping 77 million customers were at risk.
On May 2, things got worse. Another division, Sony Online Entertainment, took its Web services offline after revealing that hackers gained access to its databases of subscriber information. Hackers may have also obtained financial information for international users from an outdated database from 2007.
The hack hat trick didn't end Sony's problems. In June, hacker group Lulz Security posted online snippets of data it said came from a breach of more than 1 million user accounts on Sony's website. Lulz's statement twisted the knife, saying Sony was "asking for it" by storing more than 1 million user passwords in plain text instead of encrypting them. -- Julianne Pepitone
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