'OurMine' hacks into Sony PlayStation's social media accounts

New York, Aug 22: Days after taking over the social media accounts of US television network Home Box Office (HBO), notorious hacker group “OurMine” has hit again, this time claiming to have hacked Sony PlayStation’s official Twitter and Facebook accounts.

The hacker group is known for breaching into high-profile figures and companies’ social media accounts, including, those of HBO.

According to a report in IBTimes.co.uk late on Monday, in a series of posts, OurMine wrote: “Hi, it’s OurMine, we are a security group, if you work at PlayStation then please contact us.”

Though “OurMine” claims to be a security group, its official website describes the group as “an elite hacker group known for many hacks showing vulnerabilities in major systems.”

According to a report in Business Insider, “OurMine” hacks services operated by major corporations, publicises those hacks and then sells its security services to the company it hacked.

The hacker group hacked PlayStation Brasil’s account too and posted similar messages, trying to get the hashtag #PlayStationLeaks trending.

According to an OurMine member who was quoted in the report, they pulled off the breach using the gaming giant’s Sprout Social magement account. “OurMine” also claimed that the PlayStation Network database was also potentially compromised. If true, it would mean that the user registration information such as mes and email addresses can be exposed at the will of the hackers.  However, the hacker group has said it was not intending to release the data, claiming “we are a security group”.

“We choose the people who have bad security to hack them and notify them about their security,” the hacker group was quoted as saying.

Sony quickly regained access to the social media accounts and the posts have since been taken down. “A pre-emptive move of running a bug bounty programme may have aided Sony in avoiding the hack as it does for organisations that handle precious data including Facebook, Google and even the US Department of Defence running ‘Hack the Pentagon, Army and Air Force’ programmes,” Ankush Johar, Director of BugsBounty.com told IANS. (IANS)