Number of Sony hack victims passes 100 million

Sony has admitted that an extra 25 million of its users' details may have been stolen, bringing the total to over 100 million.

Yesterday Sony said it had taken the Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) service offline following a recent security breach that affected 77 million users.

The company initially believed that SOE users' details were safe, but its investigations into April's breach proved otherwise.

In an announcement on its web site, the company said: "We had previously believed that SOE customer data had not been obtained in the cyber-attacks on the company, but on May 1st we concluded that SOE account information may have been stolen."

Some financial details were stolen as part of the breach.

"We further discovered evidence that information from an outdated database from 2007 containing approximately 12,700 non-US customer credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates and about 10,700 direct debit records listing bank account numbers of certain customers in Germany, Austria, Netherlands and Spain may have also been obtained."

On the PlayStation European blog, Nick Caplin, Sony's European head of communication, denied reports that the hackers had offered to return the stolen details in return for cash.

"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."

Sony had previous stated that some online gaming services would be available this week, having been taken offline on 20 April after the attack.