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Uncategorized Saturday, April 23rd 2011 at 12:00 pm

Sony Sheds Light: PlayStation Network Outage Due to “External Intrusion”

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Sony’s PlayStation Network mysteriously went down a couple of days ago, with Sony delivering the horrifying news that the network could be down for a few days following the beginning of the outage, depriving everyone of the wonderful co-op modes of a couple of recently released, highly anticipated titles. Over on the PlayStation Knowledge Base, Sony has posted the cause behind the network’s outage, an “external intrusion” that caused Sony to shut off their network as a safety precaution while they investigate.

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.

Sony also notes that if one logs into the PSN and sees a message saying “The PlayStation Network has been suspended,” this doesn’t mean one’s account has been suspended, so do not fret if greeted with said message.

Sony has not yet identified the origin of the “external intrusion,” otherwise known has a hack. The main theory is that hacker group Anonymous is behind the attacks, as they declared war on Sony only a few weeks ago, but have claimed they stopped their attacks, as they wouldn’t want to ruin the enjoyment of innocent gamers trying to connect to the PSN. The hacker group also released a statement claiming they have nothing to do with this current outage, though the popular theory is that an offshoot of the group has decided to continue with the attacks and they are the ones behind the outage.

The PSN isn’t exactly the first major online gaming service to have a few days worth of trouble, and the outage of the network only means people have to play their games offline and stream their movies on some other device until the issue is resolved, so the outage isn’t exactly the end of the gaming world, though it is a little inconveniently timed.

(PlayStation Knowledge Center via TechCrunch)

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  • http://profiles.google.com/perrytcahall Perry Cahall

    it will still stream movies and browse the web. its just the psn that’s down,

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jeremy-J-Todd/1840771524 Jeremy J Todd

    What baffles me is Sony got threats a month ago,they were warned this was coming and what did they do to prevent this? And who do they have working on this I mean 3 days still cant figure it out,way to show youre intelligence Sony Its always nice to know that a no life group of hackers can bring you down anytime they want and you dont have the intelligence to prevent or fix the problem! Im so glad I invested money into a no brain company,should have kept my 360!!!

  • Nickshute91

    wrong. you have to logged into the psn to access netflix

  • Nickshute

    jeremy….you have to understand w ho they are dealing with….these people brought down websites and servers of people such as Paypal and amazon and visa and master card. compared to something like paypal, sony doesnt stand a chance against a group like that. they have every available resource working hard to fix the problem….but the problem is that ANON has control over the network and has severely damaged its components. thats why its taking so long.

  • http://www.facebook.com/madman24k Josh Morgan

    actually i’m on netflix right now. if you go to netflix it’ll want you to connect but netflix will still load. just try to connect, it’ll fail, bring you to the main page, ask you to reconnect again, fail, and now you’re on netflix

  • Lithlius

    I agree. We also have to note that they are not only trying to fix it, but also trying to find the people responsible. If they simply fix the intrusion and boot the network again that just leave the person free to try again. And considering we dont pay squat for online play a few days of outage in 4 -5 years of the network with barely no trouble at all. I say its a good service. I dont mind spending a week offline.

  • Lithlius

    I agree. We also have to note that they are not only trying to fix it, but also trying to find the people responsible. If they simply fix the intrusion and boot the network again that just leave the person free to try again. And considering we dont pay squat for online play a few days of outage in 4 -5 years of the network with barely no trouble at all. I say its a good service. I dont mind spending a week offline.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jeremy-J-Todd/1840771524 Jeremy J Todd

    I understand, but the fact that they new this was coming and then didnt mention what the problem was until 2 days after the fact is disturbing. I mean Sony isnt some little small time company this shouldnt be such a issue for them in my opinion. Im pretty sure if they cant figure out whats going on its almost certain they will never find out who is responsible.They recieved threats and didnt take them seriously is what this boils down to.All over what a kid hacked is PS3 big deal he bought and paid for it imo after that you should be able to do what you want with it! You know how many wiis and 360s out there are hacked and how many times have you heard microsoft or nintendo going to court over it,it doesnt matter someone will always hack.Sony should have honestly just left it alone cause i really see this being a long term problem for them now!

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jeremy-J-Todd/1840771524 Jeremy J Todd

    I understand, but the fact that they new this was coming and then didnt mention what the problem was until 2 days after the fact is disturbing. I mean Sony isnt some little small time company this shouldnt be such a issue for them in my opinion. Im pretty sure if they cant figure out whats going on its almost certain they will never find out who is responsible.They recieved threats and didnt take them seriously is what this boils down to.All over what a kid hacked is PS3 big deal he bought and paid for it imo after that you should be able to do what you want with it! You know how many wiis and 360s out there are hacked and how many times have you heard microsoft or nintendo going to court over it,it doesnt matter someone will always hack.Sony should have honestly just left it alone cause i really see this being a long term problem for them now!

  • Ifeelaclassactioncoming

    First the network shutdown over Christmas. Next it shut down over Easter. Makes you wonder whether Sony are just saving on paying staff overtime, or whether their staff just switch off and go on holidays.

  • Dr Coene

    Dude, is that image from Hackers?

    I just nostalgia’d so hard.

  • Ruckus_321

    You say we dont pay for it but if the “hackers” are supposedly still in control what about all the purchaces from the sony store that every user has made and can’t access while the network is down so if their system has a problem they can’t redownload any thing or who says purchaces will even be in your history when they get it back up? Also I am a dedicated ps consumer and am on my third ps3 in 2 years with average to moderate use becuase of ylod and various things. 70 million users is not small and any threat against the profit of any company should be taken seriously, They didn’t want to be proactive and maybe shut it down before this happened becuase of the new release of the games , thats called “GREEDY” .My suggestion is find the people responsible then hire them with a 2 mil. per year salary.

  • http://www.aandtheating.com/ air conditioning repair reston

    We gamers are at the mercy of the Playstation people and I hope they fix the problem soon. As we all know it biggest holiday weekends of the year.

  • Mike Gainer

     Way to show “You’re” intelligence. ha.

  • Curosh

    Hahahaha