Sony's PlayStation Network Attacked, Senior Executive's Plane Diverted After Bomb Threat

Update as of 7:00 a.m. EDT: Sony’s PlayStation Network was back online on Monday, the organization said in a statement released on its official blog, reiterating that there was “no evidence of any unauthorized access to users’ personal information.”

Sony Corp's (NYSE:SNE) PlayStation network was successfully breached Sunday by a group of hackers, who in a series of posts on Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) expressed sympathy for the Islamic State. The group also triggered a bomb alert on a plane carrying a senior company executive.

The PlayStation network was taken down by a group called “Lizard Squad” with the help of large-scale Distributed Denial of Service, DDoS, attacks, which bombarded it with traffic and prevented users worldwide from getting online, according to media reports.

A plane carrying Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley was also diverted after the group claimed that the plane was carrying explosives on board. The flight from Dallas/Fort Worth to San Diego was diverted and landed safely in Phoenix, USA Today reported.

The group, on Sunday, taunted Sony and the FBI with a number of claims and said that it was attacking the company for its corporate greed. They also tweeted their support for the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which has taken over large swathes of Syria and northwestern Iraq in a bloody offensive over the past several weeks.

Last week, ISIS killed an American journalist, James Foley, as an act of revenge for U.S. air strikes on its positions in Iraq.

Sony, meanwhile, said in a statement posted on the PlayStation blog that no personal information of users had been accessed by the hackers. “We will continue to work towards fixing this issue and hope to have our services up and running as soon as possible,” the statement said.

This is not the first time that Sony's PlayStation Network has been shut down by outside forces. In 2011, in what is considered to be one of the largest online data security breaches to date, the network was down for over a month after hackers compromised the service and reportedly exposed personal data, including credit card information from over 70 million accounts.