Okay Geek Farm
PSN down due to "external intrusion" a.k.a. hack attack
Ricardo Trejo
Playstation owners just can’t catch a break now can they? First, the hacktivist group known as “Anonymous” decides to take down PSN in some sort of backwards move to show Sony who’s boss, in effect restraining the customers they were fighting for in the first place from playing online. And now, it appears that another hack has made it impossible for PS3 players to use the online service yet again. Problem is, this time Sony doesn’t know who’s after them and how to stop it.
UPDATE (04/26): For those of you still following this story, Sony has issued another statement regarding the status of the PSN and it looks like you guys won’t be getting back to your Call of Duty games or Portal 2 Co-Op anytime soon, since well… PSN is being shut down indefinitely. Wait, what?! Yep, sorry to break the news like this to you but the official Playstation blog stayed mum on any sort of time frame that might indiciate when the service would go up again:
“I know you are waiting for additional information on when PlayStation Network and Qriocity services will be online. Unfortunately, I don’t have an update or timeframe to share at this point in time. As we previously noted, this is a time intensive process and we’re working to get them back online quickly. We’ll keep you updated with information as it becomes available. We once again thank you for your patience.”
Wild scale panic is what we’re hearing from Kevin Butler’s camp… well, not really. But hey, he can’t be the “VP of awesome-whatever” if PS3 ownners can’t get online to pwn some n00bs — they still say that, right? From what we’ve been following the attack on PSN started roughly 3 days ago and is still crippling the service down to this very moment. Heck of a time for Portal 2 to be released and have players incapable of linking their PSN and Steam accounts together! Not to mention that Mortal Kombat owners can’t get on any online matches. Though, the one thing that still works are title updates for games for some reason.
Here’s the official statement the official Playstion blog released:
“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 & Qriocity services on the evening of Wednesday, April 20th. Providing quality entertainment services to our customers and partners is our utmost priority. 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.”
Anonymous isn’t claiming responsibility for the attack either, even releasing a video letting PSN users not to blame them for the attack. Though the video does go on to essentially let people know that it’s not completely out of the question to assume that some zealous ‘anon’ disciple has continued the fight despite the group, as a whole, standing down.
In terms of what exactly the attack was is a little foggy, but an anonymous source close to Sony unofficially has shed some light on the subject; explaining that Sony was done in by a LOIC attack, which essentially means they were DDOS’d hard. Not only that, but a separate attack went straight for servers holding vital user account information. Heck, not even Admin Dev accounts were safe as they were compromised as well, which perhaps may be the reason for why the service has been down this long.
The anonymous source that cleared up some of the questions about the attack also went on to say that PSN should be up and running in Japan as soon as tomorrow, and as early as Tuesday for Europe and the US. So just a little while longer and you’ll soon be able to hang out back in Playstation HOME.
