HACKERS have attacked Sony and stolen the private details of more than a million people in the latest security breach to hit the electronics giant. The names, birth dates, addresses, emails, phone numbers and passwords of people who had entered contests promoted by Sony were all published on the internet. LulzSec, a hacker group, said it had infiltrated the firms systems to prove how vulnerable they were to simple attacks. The data was apparently stolen from Sony Pictures, the companys entertainment distribution arm. The group has previously launched hacking attacks on the US broadcasters PBS television and Fox.com. In a message on Twitter, the group said: 1,000,000+ unencrypted users, unencrypted admin accounts, government and military passwords saved in plaintext. #PSN compromised. @Sony. A longer statement posted on the posted on the pastebin.com website explained the action, saying: Greetings folks. Were LulzSec, and welcome to Sownage. Enclosed you will find various collections of data stolen from internal Sony networks and websites, all of which we accessed easily and without the need for outside support or money. We recently broke into SonyPictures.com and compromised over 1,000,000 users personal information, including passwords, email addresses, home addresses, dates of birth, and all Sony opt-in data associated with their accounts. Among other things, we also compromised all admin details of Sony Pictures (including passwords) along with 75,000 music codes and 3.5 million music coupons. The group said they had been unable to copy all the information due to a lack of resources but pasted samples online. The statement added: Our goal here is not to come across as master hackers [ but] Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks? The group said Sonys security systems were disgraceful and insecure: they were asking for it. TG f3