A New Reality? Sega Reports 1.3 Million Customers Affected by Cyber Attack

The dramatic increase in cyber attacks showed no signs of slowing Sunday, as video game company Sega announced that 1.3 million customers were affected by a recent breach.

Sega's attack is only the latest in a long string of compromises at corporations and government entities. Organizations from the IMF and U.S. Senate to Citigroup (NYSE: C) and Sony (NYSE: SNE) have fallen to anonymous hackers.

Names, birth dates, e-mail addresses and encrypted passwords of users of Sega Pass online network were compromised, and the network was shut down. According to Reuters, payment information, such as credit card numbers, wasn't stolen.

"We are deeply sorry for causing trouble to our customers. We want to work on strengthening security," a Sega spokeswoman, Yoko Nagasawa, said.

A number of separate hacking organizations have been attributed to the recent attacks. Anonymous and Lulz Security, among others, have had large organizations playing defense in recent weeks. Especially vulnerable are corporations with large user bases and highly sensitive information.

Interestingly, Lulz Security has offered to track down and punish the hackers who broke into Sega's network.

SEGA is a multinational video game software developer company headquartered in Japan.