93,000 PSN ACCOUNTS LOCKED BY SONY DUE TO HACKING ATTEMPT

In addition to having to recall 1.6 million Bravia TVs, it's also been forced to temporarily lock 93,000 customers out of their PSN and Sony Online Entertainment accounts. You won't be surprised by the reason: an attempt by hackers to "test a massive set of sign-in IDs and passwords" against Sony's network database. Some of the affected accounts showed "additional activity prior to being locked" and are being investigated. On the flip-side, Sony's Chief Information Security Officer, Philip Reitinger, stressed that most of the hackers' details resulted in failed logins and in any case credit card details are not at risk. Users are being told to expect an email if they've been affected, which will contain further instructions.

CITIGROUP HACKED, ACCOUNTS COMPROMISED

On Thursday Citigroup announced that hackers had breached its systems in May and accessed personal data from 200,000 accounts — about 1% of its customers. The hackers managed to steal customer email addresses, contact information and account numbers, but Reuters reported that other information such as birth dates, Social Security Numbers and credit card expiration dates were not accessed. “We are contacting customers whose information was impacted. Citi has implemented enhanced procedures to prevent a recurrence of this type of event,” Citigroup spokesperson Sean Kevelighan, said. “For the security of these customers, we are not disclosing further details.”

GOOGLE ADMITS SOME SENSITIVE EMAILS HACKED; BLAMES CHINA

The Contagio security blog posted evidence back in February of targeted attacks against government and military officials on Gmail. Today, nearly four months later, Google has finally admitted this is true: hundreds of personal accounts have been compromised by hackers it believes to be working out of Jinan, the capital of China's Shandong province.

The accounts include those of "senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists." The hijackers' aim appears to have been to spy on their targets using Google's automatic forwarding function. But unlike the PSN fiasco, Google insists its internal systems "have not been affected." Instead it seems the hackers used a phishing scam, possibly directing users to a spoof Gmail website before requesting their credentials.

Google says its own "abuse detection systems" disrupted the campaign -- but in a footnote right down at the bottom of their official blog page they also credit Contagio and user reports.

China's Foreign Minister, Hong Lei responded with a statement saying "Allegations that the Chinese government supports hacking activities are completely unfounded and made with ulterior motives."