John Orr of Mercury News

 

The 70 million users of the PlayStation Network have been stuck offline, knocking piteously at the door but refused admission, during a three-days-and-ongoing outage.

On blog.us.playstation.com, Patrick Seybold, the senior director of corporate communications and social media at Sony, on Friday said, "An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. In order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services going forward, we turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services on the evening of Wednesday, April 20. ...We are doing all we can to resolve this situation quickly, and we once again thank you for your patience. We will continue to update you promptly as we have additional information to share. "

Erica Ogg at CNET and Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat have both mentioned the outage in their blogs.

Speculation is rampant. Is the PSN outage related to the Amazon.com server crash? Is it a denial-of-service attack? Is it a software screw-up related to the new version of PlayStation home software? Who knows?

PSN is used for social networking, playing games, watching movies and other entertainment.

PSN is free to PS3 owners, but PSN Plus costs $50 a year. It's unknown yet if Sony will reimburse those users.

BlizShadow

Apr 23 2011, 12:27 PM

My gut reaction is to say that this in line with what Anonymous were trying to do to Sony for the whole GeoHotz debacle due to the timing, and to that I just shake my head. However, if it's simply human or network error, then I'm hoping Sony finds some way to reimburse Plus users after this long.

BlizShadow

Apr 23 2011, 12:27 PM

My gut reaction is to say that this in line with what Anonymous were trying to do to Sony for the whole GeoHotz debacle due to the timing, and to that I just shake my head. However, if it's simply human or network error, then I'm hoping Sony finds some way to reimburse Plus users after this long.

AbstractPurpose

Apr 24 2011, 11:45 AM

Well, considering the circumstances, it could be an unknown group of hackers taking advantage of the situation since everyone would naturally point the finger at Anon, but that's just my little conspiracy.

DarkOverord

Apr 24 2011, 11:59 AM

AbstractPurpose

Apr 24 2011, 11:45 AM

Well, considering the circumstances, it could be an unknown group of hackers taking advantage of the situation since everyone would naturally point the finger at Anon, but that's just my little conspiracy.

This is what I suspect too

From what Sony are saying, they either have VERY BAD servers, or it's not Anon.

Anon don't hack. They DDoS.

All the stuff they've leaked? Have been stupidly placed up when sites come back on. They get called hackers, but DDoSing isn't hacking...

Though Anon could've DDoS'd and Sony are just that shit at getting their servers back up, which if it is the case, then they deserve all the hell they get out of their customers.

Lorenzo Winfrey of zoknowsgaming.com

 

Anonymous has put out a video in which they want to make clear that they are not behind the current PSN outage. They don’t deny that it could be another component of the organization, but officially they did not authorize an attack. Personally, I believe them when they say they didn’t authorize this but I am not so sure that it isn’t some faction inside their organization. The trouble with groups, especially groups with the kind of unique personalities that hackers have is that eventually their will be differing opinions on how to achieve the goal. While the entire organization may believe in the same things they may not agree on the best way to get them done and that is where you have splinter groups come into play. The fact that Anonymous doesn’t have a real hierarchy makes this possibility even more likely since everyone would see themselves as equals.

The other possibility is that it isn’t any part of Anonymous, if that is true then there are two likely scenarios. The first one is that Sony had some major issues with PSN and as Anonymous has suggested took this opportunity to try and turn the tide against them while making major upgrades to their network. In essence, Sony gives themselves time to make necessary changes to their infrastructure by diverting responsibility to Anonymous. This is an interesting theory, but Sony would be risking a lot making that kind of move and if anything proving that case ever got out it would probably cost the company millions of dollars and I just don’t know if its worth it to them.

The other alternative is that this is a new group that is just out to get what they can. Personally, this is theory that I think is more likely. The biggest reason I don’t think that Anonymous is behind this particular outage is because up until now all their attacks have been external. Basically, their primary goal was to bring the sites down which creates an outage. If you read the wording in Sony’s recent update on the outage they used the words “external intrusion”. This is a key distinction meaning that whoever it was didn’t just block access to PSN they got into it and that’s a big difference.It would seem that whomever attacked PSN this time was looking for something and they may have gotten it. Nobody knows at this point if this is truly the case but I would keep an eye on the credit card associated with your PSN account just the same until we find out more. Anyway check out the latest Anonymous video below and listen to what they have to say for yourself. What do you think, do you believe them?

Purplehog

Apr 24 2011, 04:36 PM

Lorenzo Winfrey of zoknowsgaming.com

 

If you read the wording in Sony's recent update on the outage they used the words "external intrusion". This is a key distinction meaning that whoever it was didn't just block access to PSN, they got into it, and that's a big difference. It would seem that whomever attacked PSN this time was looking for something and they may have gotten it. Nobody knows at this point if this is truly the case but I would keep an eye on the credit card associated with your PSN account just the same until we find out more.

Neo Metallix

Apr 24 2011, 04:57 PM

I wouldn't believe Anonymous at all. Anonymous are still accessories to this as they influenced other people to attack the service and they started to make the attacks in the first place but decided not to at the time. Anonymous isn't protecting our(gamers) rights, they are out to cover their own asses. Where was Anonymous when Sony actually removed OtherOS and Backwards Compatibility years, I say again, YEARS AGO and I can't stress the word "years" enough. But you know what??? This OtherOS and Backwards Compatibility isn't actually hurting our rights as much as what Apple is doing with the iPhone 4 tracking. Not even close!!!!! That is real serious and it is an invasion of our privacy yet where the **** is Anon on this??? No where.

Anyway, Sony are working on it and rebuilding the infrastructure. I wouldn't be too worried about it. I hope they discover who did it and put them in jail though. PSN is the number 1 searched subject on google around the world though. hahaha

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/04/23/latest-update-for-psnqriocity-services/