9. PlayStation network
When: 2011
Number of accounts affected: 102 million records
It was April 2011 and it was Sony Corp (ADR) (NYSE:SNE) who was under attack. Targeting the PlayStation Network linking Sony’s home gaming consoles and the Sony Only Entertainment, as well as the Qriocity video and music streaming service, hackers took the information of about 102 million users.
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Login credentials, names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers – they were all exposed for the world to see. It was originally thought that only 78 million accounts had been affected, only for the number to rise in the following days after investigators dug deeper into the hack, adding the users of the Sony Online Entertainment and Qriocity to the tally. This was a hack that cost Sony hundreds of millions of dollars in clean up and lawsuits. When it comes to the company’s stock, however, not much changed, indicating investors didn’t really care about the breach, knowing that users weren’t just going to run away.
