Following the recent hacker attack that kept Sony Online Entertainment offline for two weeks in May, Sony has "detected a large amount of unauthorized sign-in attempts on PlayStation Network (PSN), Sony Entertainment Network (SEN) and Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) services." The activity occurred between October 7-10 and was an attempt to validate account information that was apparently stolen from other sources. Credit card numbers associated with these accounts are not at risk.

Here are the main details from Sony's press release:

"Less than one tenth of one percent of our PSN, SEN and SOE consumers may have been affected. There were approximately 93,000 accounts (PSN/SEN: approximately 60,000 accounts; SOE: approximately 33,000) where the attempts succeeded in verifying those accounts’ valid sign-in IDs and passwords, and we have temporarily locked these accounts. As a preventative measure, we will be sending email notifications to these account holders and will be requiring secure password resets or informing consumers of password reset procedures."

To reiterate, these unauthorized sign-in attempts were to verify account information that appears to be taken from other sources. According to Philip Reitinger, Sony's SVP and Chief Information Security Officer, "the overwhelming majority of the pairs resulted in failed matching attempts."

"We want to take this opportunity to remind our consumers about the increasingly common threat of fraudulent activity online, as well as the importance of having a strong password and having a username/password combination that is not associated with other online services or sites," Reitinger said. "We encourage you to choose unique, hard-to-guess passwords and always look for unusual activity in your account."