PlayStation employees personal data leaked after massive Sony data breach

Sony and PlayStation recently confirmed a massive data breach within the company, which resulted in the personal data of roughly 6800 current and former employees getting leaked. While the details are still scarce regarding the extent of the breach, it seems to have only affected employees, with customer data being left untouched.

The confirmation comes courtesy of an internal document released by Sony, which has recently surfaced online. A few days back, a ransomware group by the name of ransomware.vc claimed to have breached Sony's systems and gained access to internal files. Additionally, it appears that they intend to sell this information, instead of settling for a ransom.

However, Sony or PlayStation did not confirm whether that recent breach was the result of the aforementioned ransomware group or not. However, the timing does allude to ransomware.vc being the culprit here, especially given the group was able to present evidence of the breach to the public.

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Sony confirmed the data breach to be primarily internal, affecting only employees, with PlayStation Network remaining untouched

According to Sony, roughly 6800 workers, both current and former, had their personal data affected by the security breach. However, customer information from the PlayStation Network and other related services is untouched. This somewhat coincides with the claims of the ransomware group, ransomware.vc.

The ransomware group said that they did not have any intentions to auction the data and instead threatened to sell it. As quoted by Cyber Security Connect, the hackers said:

"We have successfully compromissed all of sony systems ... We won’t ransom them! We will sell the data. Due to Sony not wanting to pay. DATA IS FOR SALE."

The news of the ransomware attack was broken by Cyber Security Connect, who, upon examining the "proof of hack" data related it to the PlayStation breach. They stated that none of it was "particularly compelling information on the face of things" since the group was only able to present roughly 6,000 files with a few internal logs.

However, it seems the data breach was somewhat severe, given the number of internal Sony employees it ended up affecting. The severity of the hack is yet to be confirmed by the console manufacturer, but given the breach is mostly limited to internal files and employee data, PlayStation users do not have much to worry about, especially regarding PSN and its services.