Sony's turn as the whipping boy for Internet hackerscontinued over the weekend. Two hackers posted a list of e-mails they say they took from the Sony Pictures France Web site.
The two hackers who claim responsibility are a Lebanese student who goes by the handle Idahc, and a French friend of his who goes by Auth3ntiq. The two say they copied 177,172 e-mails from the entertainment company's site, but posted only 70 of them on the code-sharing site Pastebin. They say they will not be posting all of the e-mails they found.
Jim Kennedy, Sony Pictures executive vice president of communications, said in a statement, "We are currently investigating this claim."
The brief Pastebin posting says the pair managed to lift the e-mail addresses through an SQL injection.
It's the same method that was used to extract personal data of customers from SonyPictures.com, Sony Pictures Russia, Sony Ericsson, and Sony Music Entertainment Japan in recent weeks.
Idahc isn't a stranger to attacking Sony's sites. He was the one who claimed to have taken data from a Sony Ericsson eShop Web site last month, leaked a database from Sony Europe, and compromised a Sony Portugal site.
Idahc said in an interview with Forbes last week he began hacking for "justice," but now says he's trying to prompt companies like Sony to improve their security.
Attrition.org has been keeping track of the spate of attacks on Sony. It says this is the 20th breach of a Web site or network related to the company in two months, starting with the PlayStation Network breachin April that put the gaming service out of commission for more than three weeks.
This story was updated at 2:28 p.m. PT with comment from Sony.