“External intrusion” Causing PSN Downtime, Sony Confirm [Update]
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After two days of PlayStation Network outage, Sony has finally confirmed that an “external intrusion” caused the drop in service.
In a recent post of the official PlayStation Blog, Patrick Seybold, Sr. Director, Corporate Communications & Social Media, wrote that “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.”
“External intrusion” translated from corporate speak basically means some sort of attack. Who it is Sony hasn’t said, but there’s been some speculation that internet group Anonymous have been involved. They have denied it, however (and they’re usually pretty happy to let people know about their handy work).
There’s still no PSN though, which is the main thing. Sony have obviously come under a pretty large attack and it can’t have been helpful considering the major releases this week. (PORTAL!?)
Fingers crossed it’ll be up and sorted soon.
Update: Seybold has added another post on the US PlayStation Blog. It states:
We sincerely regret that PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have been suspended, and we are working around the clock to bring them both back online. Our efforts to resolve this matter involve re-building our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure. Though this task is time-consuming, we decided it was worth the time necessary to provide the system with additional security.
This seems to suggest that there will be even more downtime to come and gives the impression that whatever happened was pretty serious. Let’s see if it gets any better.
I just want to redeem my code for the PC-version of Portal 2!!
@stuvning, I’m exactly the same. Been playing portal offline but I need to redeem this code so I can play with steam friends.
Not to sound like a raving Fangirl, but this is why I pay for the service with Microsoft. Online has always seemed to me like Sony had it as an afterthought and this adds to that theory, that they could shut it off like that as a response.
I don’t think it was so much an after thought just very poorly managed at times. Sony needs people who are willing to communicate with the playerbase, something Microsoft is really good at. Their update says nothing at all, external intrusion isn’t specific enough. I really hate how they have handled this, Sony needs to be more transparent.
I read a rumor that the external intrusion is basically a hack on custom firmware PS3s that allow anyone to access PSN and download anything from the store for free. Steam had a similar hack way back when it first launched so I suppose this is possible but probably not that likely.
I suppose you get what you pay for though but in the over 1 year i’ve had my PS3, PSN has been a really stable and good service. I like that it’s free and all I care about is being able to use multiplayer features in games. The other plus is its allowed developers to have more freedom with how they make games on Sonys platform. Microsoft is very controlling and refuses to budge from this, hence the reason why Portal 2 on Xbox 360 is closed off from everyone else.
@Faye Lanks: I think Microsoft could shut off Xbox Live aswell. I remember in 2007 when I got my Xbox live was basically unusable for like 2 weeks. PSN has been attacked and sony have to fix it up, why did XBL go down during christmas? Microsoft didnt think the 360 would be as popular.
Both are fantastic services. This is to do with security they need to fix, nothing to do with the quality of the PSN.
And where was Valve when all this tomfoolery was abound? Admit it Valve, you broke Sony! The week Portal 2 comes out you took down the most powerful console…to power Glados! It makes sense! Run for your lives!