Sega adds to the list of hacking casualties

Japanese videogame maker Sega is the latest high-profile cyber attack victim to go public. The company admitted on Friday that the personal data of 1.3m customers had been stolen from its database.

The company lost customer names, birth dates and e-mail addresses, as well as the encrypted passwords of its Sega Pass online network members. Sega Pass has been shut down since late last week.

However, the firm said that payment data, such as credit card numbers, were safe. "We express our most sincere apologies to our customers for the inconvenience and concern caused by this matter," Sega said in a statement.

"After the unauthorised entry was identified, we immediately stopped the Sega Pass service and took emergency action to prevent further damage. This action included immediately contacting all our registered Sega Pass users. We are now fully investigating the cause of the incident."

The attack is the latest in a long list of big company breaches; others include Sony, which had its PlayStation Network hacked, and email marketing firm Epsilon, which had customer email addresses stolen. Similarly, security firm RSA's security tokens were stolen in March.

In addition, reports claim financial firm Citigroup recently saw 360,000 customers' details stolen, and Lockheed Martin was also attacked last week.

Hacker group LulzSec, which claimed responsibility for the Sony hack and for taking the CIA web site offline last week, denied any involvement in the Sega breach via Twitter.

"Sega – contact us," the group tweeted. "We want to help you destroy the hackers that attacked you. We love the Dreamcast [Sega console from the 1990s], these people are going down."