Hackers are claiming to have broken into the Sony PlayStation Network (PSN), Microsoft Windows Live and 2K Games to leak over 5,500 usernames and passwords.



The hacking group called DerpTrolling claim, on Twitter and the anonymous text sharing site Pastebin, to have broken into Sony’s PSN, Microsoft’s Windows Live and 2K Games Studios and stolen millions of usernames and passwords.

A hack of the PSN would be the third intrusion into the service since a major attack in 2011, which saw 77m accounts stolen and the online gaming service taken offline for 24 days.

“Dear Internet, the following is a very small portion of Lord Gaben and the rest of his crews glorious raids across the high seas of the Internet,” the Derp hacking group said in an alleged data dump of over 2,100 PSN, 1,400 Windows Live and 2,000 2K account. “Let this be a warning to all. Nothing is safe from Derp.”

The hackers claim to have 7m more account details in their possession. They also claimed responsibility for the distributed denial of service attack on Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft servers.

‘Culled and assembled from previously leaked data’

Security experts have poured doubt on the validity of the hack suggesting that DerpTrolling could be living up to its name.

“Looking through the list, there’s certainly an awful lot of crossover with data from previous breaches, in particular the Adobe one,” explained Rik Ferguson, vice president of security research at Trend Micro. “The random sample cross-referencing I have done certainly show that the majority of data listed here has shown up already in previous breaches with a very few exceptions which seem to appear only in this particular paste.”

The Guardian was unable to verify the leaked details, while various users have reported that the leaked email address and passwords are not valid, although this could be because the passwords have been reset by the services.

“The possibility exists that all this data comes from various new hacks of course, but on balance right now I’m coming down on the side of them having been culled and assembled from previously leaked data,” Ferguson said. “Of course only the services affected can give us a definitive answer, or Derp release evidence of the hack that goes beyond simple account lists.”

Microsoft said in a statement: “We are investigating this issue and will take the necessary steps to protect customers as needed.”

Sony, 2K Games have not responded to request for comment.

Users are advised to change their passwords as a precaution and to look out for suspicious activity on their Windows Live, PSN and 2K Games accounts.

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