Sony: CC details are not for sale

PlayStation Network operator Sony has dismissed claims that hackers who obtained user information from its servers have been trying to sell the data on the black market.

"We want to state this again given the increase in speculation about credit card information being used fraudulently," SCEA’s senior director of corporate communications and social media Patrick Seybold stated.

"One report indicated that a group tried to sell millions of credit card numbers back to Sony. To my knowledge there is no truth to this report of a list, or that Sony was offered an opportunity to purchase the list."

Seybold also addressed the issue of encryption, assuring users that a certain level of security was applied to their PSN password details.

"While the passwords that were stored were not ‘encrypted’, they were transformed using a cryptographic hash function," he added.

"There is a difference between these two types of security measures which is why we said the passwords had not been encrypted. But I want to be very clear that the passwords were not stored in our database in cleartext form."

The hope is that some PSN operations will be restored in the next day or two, with a complete return still a little way off.