Foster City, Calif. - Sony (NYSE: SNE) has acknowledged that the now weeklong outage of its PlayStation Network online game service was due to a security breach, during which its 70 million users' credit card information may have been accessed. "While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility," the company wrote in a blog post. "If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained."
The company said that data including users real names, birthdates, physical and email addresses, and usernames and passwords associated with their PlayStation Network and Qriocity accounts were accessed by the hackers.
As a result, Sony is encouraging users "to be especially aware of e-mail, telephone, postal mail or other scans that ask for personal or sensitive information."
The company is currently engaged in an investigation of the incident, and said access to some of the downed services could be restored within a week.
In a statement, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said he wrote to the president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, calling on the company "to provide PlayStation Network users with financial data security services, including free access to credit reporting services for two years, the costs of which should be borne by the company."
Read more: DigitalMedia wire