"This is a gold mine to break into other accounts," says Rod Rasmussen, president and chief technology officer at Internet Identity, a technology and services provider that helps guard against corporate brand-name damage and data loss on the Internet. He says the mountain of customer information gained by the Sony PlayStation Network attacker will facilitate email phishing attacks as well as attempts to break into other types of accounts, since people often use the same passwords for their various accounts. He urges anyone impacted by the Sony PlayStation Network breach to change any similar password they use elsewhere.

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Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Network Entertainment yesterday acknowledged that an "unauthorized person" has stolen the following kinds of information that was provided by its by PlayStation and Qriocity customers: "Name, address, country, email, address, birth date, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login and handle/PSN online ID." Sony took its PlayStation Network offline last week and yesterday disclosed what it knows so far about the massive breach.

The Sony division said sub-accounts for dependents were also compromised, adding, "While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility. 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 code) and expiration data may have been obtained."

Information being quietly shared by companies under contract to Sony suggest that there was a massive denial-of-service attack against the Sony network right before the actual network break-in when the data was stolen, says Paul Henry, security and forensics analyst at Lumension.