Sony Corp. said hackers had taken down its PlayStation Network without compromising its 53 million users’ personal data, while the FBI was investigating a bomb scare on a flight carrying a top Sony executive in the US.

The hackers behind the PlayStation attack said they had also targeted the servers of World of Warcraft video gamemakers Blizzard Entertainment, whose website was down, and threatened to attack Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox Live network which was also experiencing problems. Sony said yesterday it was still trying to restore access to its gaming network after the attack on Sunday.

The unidentified hackers said on their @LizardSquad Twitter microblogging account that the attack was meant to pressure the Japanese tech giant to spend more of its profits on security.

Sony said no PlayStation users’ personal information had been accessed in the attack, which overwhelmed the system with traffic.

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