Sony Pictures Hacked, Users' Personal Data Compromised

Almost like clockwork, another attack on Sony has taken place. Following up on its threat from late last month, hacker group LulzSec has once again hacked Sony, and this time the damage could be more serious than its previous attack on Sony BMG. In a press release, the group claims it broke into SonyPictures.com and, among other things, compromised the personal data of more than one million users', including home addresses, e-mail addresses, passwords, and more.

The group has not taken responsibility for the attack on the PlayStation Network in April. The exact target of its recent threat was unclear, although it has since stated on its Twitter account several times that it wasn't going after gaming services. The group recently made headlines by hacking PBS and posting a spurious story about rapper Tupac Shakur being found alive.

LulzSec says it did not steal all of the personal information hosted on Sony Pictures' website due to a lack of resources. Regardless, that's not a very reassuring statement, and it's incredibly alarming that Sony continues to be targeted by hackers with repeated success. In this case, a SQL injection -- a very simple type of attack -- was successfully used to gain access to "everything." Worse yet, users' passwords were allegedly stored in plaintext, meaning they were not encrypted as one would expect them to be.

Lokelani McMichael Freida Pinto Eva Longoria Susan Ward Emmy Rossum