Sony struggles to get PSN back up, says hack was "highly sophisticated"

(CBS/AP) WASHINGTON - As Sony continues to struggle to get its PlayStation Network up and running again, the company claims that the data breach that hit PSN was "very professional."

Sony said in a letter released by members of the House Commerce Committee Wednesday, that the incursion resulted from a "highly sophisticated criminal cyber-attack designed to steal personal and credit card information for illegal purposes."

Sony first disclosed the attack last week, saying the that credit card data, e-mail addresses and other personal information from 77 million user accounts may have been compromised.

On Monday, Sony said data from an another nearly 25 million online gaming accounts also may have been stolen from its Sony Online Entertainment service.

In the letter, the chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment America defended the company's handling of the breach, but gamers are not taking the outage lightly.

"I think what bothers me the most is it took Sony almost a week to tell us," blogger and gamer Jamila Rowser told CBS News' Crimesider. "We could have canceled credit cards and put fraud alerts on our cards days ago."

The company said it will grant players 30 days of additional time on their subscriptions, along with one day for each day the system is down.

Complete coverage of the PlayStation network attack on Crimesider