Japan's Sony said today that some 1.6 million of its Bravia flat panel televisions were at risk of overheating due to defective parts, but the electronics giant did not issue a recall.
The company said it would exchange a defective part in about 189,000 of the televisions which were sold domestically since September 2007.
Sony has so far received about a dozen complaints from customers in Japan whose televisions partly melted due to overheating, but it said there were no reported injuries.
A total of 1.6 million Bravia liquid crystal displays equipped with the same defective parts were sold worldwide, a company spokesman said, adding that Sony may take similar measures to repair units sold overseas.
Sony also said today that it had suspended 93,000 accounts on its online entertainment networks after detecting a wave of unauthorised sign-in attempts, months after a huge breach forced it to halt some services.
The attack took place between October 7 and 10 and succeeded in matching valid sign-in IDs and passwords from about 93,000 accounts on its PlayStation Network, Sony Entertainment Network and Sony Online Entertainment services.
Sony said credit card details associated with those accounts were not compromised as a result of the hacking incident.
The entertainment giant has temporarily locked the accounts and said it is continuing investigations into the extent of the access attempts. It said it would notify affected account holders to advise them to reset their passwords.
A Sony spokesman said that as it moved to shut down the accounts after detecting the hacking bid, "a small fraction" of the 93,000 accounts were accessed and information such as names, birthdays and gaming achievements could have been seen.
However, spokesman Sean Yoneda said the latest setback was not on the same scale as a data breach in April that compromised over 100 million accounts and forced it to temporarily halt its PlayStation Network and Qriocity services.
At the time, Sony said it could not rule out that some users' credit card information could have been compromised. "This time nothing was taken or potentially taken from our data servers," Yoneda said.
The latest attack saw large sets of usernames and passwords launched at Sony's online services, with 93,000 matches confirmed. The information had been obtained through other companies, websites or through phishing practices, Yoneda said.
"We know for a fact that (the information) is not from our data servers," he said.
In a statement, Sony said that "less than one tenth of one percent" of consumers across the three networks may have been affected.
The entertainment giant has been battling to restore consumer trust after April's security problems, when it faced criticism for not disclosing the intrusion into its PlayStation Network until a week after discovering it. Sony later suffered attacks on websites including in Greece, Thailand and Indonesia.
This year's attacks have hit Sony as it looks to recover from the impact on production of Japan's March 11 earthquake, with it incurring additional costs for security upgrades and compensating consumers.
