Hackers Crack Official PlayStation Site

Researchers over at computer security firm, Sophos, have found that hackers have sunk their teeth into the official US PlayStation website.

Unauthorised code planted on the God of War and SingStar Pop pages falsely tells visitors that their computers have been infected by various kinds of malware in the hope of scaring them into purchasing a bogus security product. Sophos states that “it would be trivial for the hackers who have compromised the webpages to alter the payload so that it became more malicious, and installed code designed to turn Windows PCs into a botnet or to harvest confidential information from users.”

Very unpleasant stuff. "There are millions of video game lovers around the world, many of whom will visit Sony's PlayStation website regularly to find out more about the latest console games. Most would never expect that surfing to a website like this could potentially infect them with malware. If users do not have sufficient protection in place then they might find that before they know it they have been scared into handing their credit card details over to a bunch of cybercriminals", uttered Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.

"It is essential that all websites, especially when they are high profile like this or receiving a large level of traffic, have been properly hardened to prevent hackers from injecting malicious code on to what should be legitimate webpages", he continued.

Not that Sophos hopes to profit in any way from the infection, of course... It certainly didn't add in to the report on its website the words, “Sophos customers are automatically protected against the threats (which Sophos identities as Troj/Iframe-AG and Mal/Badsrc), and users of other vendors' products are advised to update their software.” Oh, wait...

Anyway, watch where you click.

This isn't the first time Sony's PlayStation business has been targeted by hackers of late. Back in March unauthorised users accessed personal data from PlayStation Store accounts.

^{Source: Sophos}