Sony Music Ireland’s Japanese parent company has suffered several high-profile hacking attacks undermining confidence in the group after millions of customers’ personal information were accessed.

“In this incident in Ireland they are satisfied it wasn’t hackers,” a source close to the company said.

Fake news stories, including one that claimed members of a local Irish pop group were dead, were posted on sonymusic.ie on Tuesday.

The website is currently offline and the company declined to comment.