Sony unable to say when PlayStation network will restart

TOKYO — Sony Corp. said Tuesday it is still unable to say when its PlayStation Network will be back online, as the electronics company continues to address security issues stemming from two hacking incidents.

The Japanese entertainment giant said May 1 it aimed to resume some of the PlayStation Network and Qriocity online services within a week, after hackers stole the personal information of 77 million customers.

Sony’s failure to set a new deadline for the resumption of its network may put it under more pressure from already frustrated customers, who have been waiting for weeks since the company abruptly shut down the services April 20.

Sony said it is taking extra care as it prepares to restart the services to make sure no more security problems occur. The delay is due partly to the additional data breach found after Sony set the initial deadline May 1, the company said.

“We are making doubly sure that our systems are secure before restarting them,” said Satoshi Fukuoka, a spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

On May 3, the company said hackers had breached security at another online service run by its San Diego-based unit, Sony Online Entertainment, which makes multi-player games for personal computers, with the hackers gaining access to personal data on another 24.6 million customer accounts.

In its May 3 announcement, Sony stopped short of confirming a theft, saying the data “may have been stolen.” But the company confirmed Tuesday that personal data from those accounts was stolen, bringing the total confirmed number of accounts that details have been stolen from to more than 100 million.

As hackers had access to the information “we have to assume that it has been stolen,” Fukuoka said.