‘Approximately 12,700’ credit cards lost by Sony Online Entertainment

Just as Sony announces that PlayStation Network may finally be coming back this week, Sony Online Entertainment admits the extent of the latest intrusion, revealed yesterday.
All SOE game services are currently offline, and an “outside, recognized security firm” is conducting an investigation into the extent of the problem.
The latest news released by SOE is contained in a press release on their official site, and admits that “hackers may have obtained personal customer information from SOE systems.” This information includes “name, address (city, state, zip, country), email address, gender, birthdate, phone number, login name and hashed password.”

As if that were not bad enough, SOE also state that “Customers outside the United States should be advised that we further discovered evidence that information from an outdated database from 2007 containing approximately 12,700 non-US customer credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates (but not credit card security codes) and about 10,700 direct debit records.”
This issue affects users from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain and Japan.
According to the press release, “There is no evidence that our main credit card database was compromised.”
SOE provides the following advice to its users: “When SOE’s services are fully restored, we strongly recommend that you log on and change your password. Additionally, if you use your Station or SOE game account name or password for other unrelated services or accounts, we strongly recommend that you change them, as well.”