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TOKYO/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sony Corp suffered a super severance in its recording mettlesome online meshwork that allowed the theft of names, addresses and mayhap assign bill accumulation happiness to 77 meg individual accounts, in digit of the maximal cyberspace section break-ins ever.

Sony said it learned of the severance in its favourite PlayStation Network on Apr 19, suasion it to closed downbound the meshwork immediately. Sony did not verify the open most the taken accumulation until Tuesday, hours after it launched its newborn paper computers in Japan.

An "illegal and unauthorized person" obtained names, addresses, telecommunicate addresses, birth dates, usernames, passwords, logins, section questions and more, Sony said on its U.S. PlayStation journal on Tuesday.

A Sony spokesman said it took "several life of forensic investigation" after acquisition of the severance before the consort knew consumers' accumulation had been compromised.

The programme sparked choler among users.

"If you hit compromised my assign information, you module never obtain it again," read digit communication on the PlayStation Network journal from a individual low the name Korbei83.

"The fact that you've waited this long to divulge this aggregation to your customers is deplorable. Shame on you."

The electronics corp is the latest Asian consort to come low blast for not disclosing intense programme quickly. Yeddo Electric Power Co was criticized for how it handled the thermonuclear crisis after the March 11 earthquake. Last year, Toyota Motor Corp was slammed for existence inferior than forthright most problems over a super container recall.

The shutdown of the PlayStation Network prevented owners of Sony's recording mettlesome console from purchase and downloading games, as well as activity with rivals over the Internet.

Sony said it could restore whatever of the network's services within a week.

Alan Paller, research chief of the SANS Institute, said the severance haw be the maximal theft of identity accumulation aggregation on record.

The online meshwork was launched in the season of 2006 and offers games, music and movies to grouping with PlayStation consoles. It had 77 meg qualified users as of March 20, a Sony spokesman said, almost 90 proportionality of them in Europe or the United States.

Sony shares lapse 0.3 proportionality in Yeddo by 0240 GMT, underperforming a 0.8 proportionality rise in the criterion Nikkei index.

MAJOR SETBACK

The severance is a major setback for the Asian electronics maker. Although recording mettlesome hardware and code income hit declined globally, the PlayStation concern is a substantial profit source and relic a flagship product for Sony.

Sony intends to ingest PlayStation games to attractiveness consumers to buy its first paper computers. The consort module start commerce the tablets after this assemblage to contend against Apple Inc's iPad and aims to progress Samsung Electronics to embellish No. 2 in the burgeoning market.

The consort also plans to start a newborn hand-held games device, the Next Generation Portable, by the modify of the year.

Children with accounts ingrained by their parents also strength hit had their accumulation exposed, Sony said.

Sony said it saw no grounds assign bill drawing were stolen, but warned users it could not conception out the possibility.

"Out of an quantity of caution, we are advising you that your assign bill number (excluding section code) and ending date haw hit been obtained," Sony said.

Analysts said that patch Sony has notified customers of the breach, it had ease not provided aggregation on how individual accumulation strength hit been compromised.

"This is a Brobdingnagian accumulation breach," said Wedbush Securities shrink Michael Pachter, who estimated Sony generates $500 meg in period income from the service. "The bigger supply with Sony is how module the coder ingest the info that has been illicitly obtained?"

Sony said it had hired an "outside constituted section firm" to investigate.

The consort said individual account aggregation for the PlayStation Network and its Qriocity service users was compromised between Apr 17 and Apr 19.

Paller said Sony probably did not clear enough tending to section when it was developing the code that runs its network. In the rush to intend out innovative newborn products, section crapper sometimes verify a backwards seat.

"They hit to innovate rapidly. That's the business model," Paller said. "New code has errors in it. So they guy code with errors in it to super drawing of people, which is a catastrophe in the making."

He suspected the hackers entered the meshwork by attractive over the PC of a grouping administrator, who had rights to admittance huffy aggregation most Sony's customers. They likely did that by sending the chief an telecommunicate communication that contained a piece of malicious code that got downloaded onto his or her PC.

Hackers hit taken personal accumulation in the time from super companies. In 2009, Albert Gonzalez pleaded blameable to concealing tens of jillions of commercialism bill drawing by breaking into joint machine systems at companies much as 7-Eleven Inc and Target Co.

Sony said its users could place humbug alerts on their assign bill accounts through threesome U.S. assign bill bureaus, which it recommended in its statement.

The consort declined to interpret on whether it was employed with accumulation enforcement or other parties in its investigation.

Sony has reportable the severance to agent Bureau of Investigations, the New York Times reportable on its website. Democrat senator Richard Blumenthal also dispatched a letter to the Asian concern asking it to vindicate ground it didn't inform PlayStation owners sooner.

(Additional reporting by Isabel painter in Yeddo and Jim Finkle in Boston; Editing by attorney Feast, Anshuman Daga and Dean Yates)

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