A few days ago, Sony spoke out about the PlayStation Network breach in great detail, delivering potentially devastating news. It looks like there is finally some good news regarding the fiasco, though, as Sony assures us that trophies, friend lists, PS+ cloud saves and account download history remain intact and will be restored when the network goes live once again.

As for the worst potential piece of news that came out of this whole nightmare — users’ credit card information being stolen — Sony claims that the credit card information was indeed encrypted, which, even if the info was stolen and decrypted, removes some of the negativity surrounding Sony, as anything can be hacked regardless of its encryption and security, so at least Sony was responsible regarding the most sensitive information they guard.

After the earlier news of Sony shutting down the PlayStation Network indefinitely hit the masses, Sony posted their official press release, one which they claim they will be sending out to all users with a registered PSN account.

We’ve all been following the harrowing collapse of the PSN since it began just over a week ago, with rumors swirling regarding the safety of the sensitive information the network contains. Well, as detailed in the press release, one of the worst scenarios possible seems to have come true: Just about every bit of sensitive information users provided the PSN could’ve been compromised, including the usual menagerie of account creation details, (name, address, birthdate, login, password, etc.), along with profile purchase history, billing address, and security questions and answers.

Thankfully, Sony claims to have no evidence stating that users’ credit card information has been compromised, though they aren’t ruling out the possibility. Check out the full press release after the break, as it contains more detail regarding the situation, as well as cautionary advice from Sony about how one should handle the compromise.

Sony has shut down their free online service, the PlayStation Network, indefinitely. In this case, thankfully, “indefinitely” doesn’t mean forever, it simply means indefinitely. While dealing with the recent outage, Sony discovered that the “external intrusion” that compromised the PSN could have compromised secure user information as well, so they shut it down and are currently “rebuilding” the service to ensure the PSN’s integrity.

Update: Sony has explained the outage in an unprecedented level of detail, described at the link: Basically, the personal, login, and possibly credit card information of PSN’s 69 million accountholders are at risk.

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.

A mysterious outage hit the PlayStation Network last night, inconveniently coinciding with the release of a certain highly-anticipated game. The PSN is still down, and Sony has issued a statement regarding the outage:

While we are investigating the cause of the Network outage, we wanted to alert you that it may be a full day or two before we’re able to get the service completely back up and running. Thank you very much for your patience while we work to resolve this matter. Please stay tuned to this space for more details, and we’ll update you again as soon as we can.

The PSN outage was confirmed to be an international matter, as consoles around the world experienced the issue.

Federal magistrate Joseph Spero has given permission for Sony to subpoena electronic payment provider PayPal as part of the consumer electronic’s lawsuit against George Hotz, the hacker who published the PlayStation 3 jailbreak program. The subpoena would cover all transactions made over PayPal between January 1, 2009 and February 1, 2011.

Sony is hoping that the information in Hotz’s PayPal account will show that he accepted money from northern California residents. Were they to find any, it would bolster their claim that the trial should be held in San Francisco and not Hotz’s home state of New Jersey. Readers will recall that this was the same intent behind Sony’s early subpoenas aimed at Google, Twitter, and the hosting service for Hotz’s website. Many internet privacy advocates have already registered their concerns about Sony’s subpoena of social networking services.

Of course, simply finding transactions will not be enough. Sony will have to prove that Hotz accepted money for his jailbreaking tool, a claim that Hotz denies.

Hotz faces charges under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the federal law which prohibits, among other things, posting tools that subvert copyright protection. The tool Hotz created gave PS3 users complete control over their systems, allowing them to do everything from playing pirated games to installing alternative operating systems.

This is only the latests salvo in the ongoing lawsuit, and surely not the last. Remember: The trial hasn’t even started yet. The real fun is yet to come.

Ars Technica is reporting that a hacker claims to have hacked Sony’s PlayStation Network, and found some very intriguing and fairly terrifying tidbits regarding how Sony handles their online security–in that they don’t so much. Aside from Sony supposedly being “the biggest spy ever” and collecting information regarding every little thing a console is doing–including every single device connected to the PS3–users’ credit card information is supposedly being sent to Sony via a completely unencrypted text file, which can be seen in the Ars article. On top of this, according to the hacker, when a PS3 requests a download from the store, the actual URL of the request can be edited and toggled to enable free downloads.

Of course, there isn’t really any proof of this, other than what the hacker claims, but Ars points out that much of what the hacker says “links up with what [they] know from other sources about the behavior of the PlayStation Network,” so it wouldn’t be farfetched if these odd “security measures” turned out to be true.

(via Ars Technica)

Kevin Butler, a fictional character played by Jerry Lambert in Sony’s “It Only Does Everything” campaign and Sony’s Regional Manager of War, recently retweeted the METLDR root key, otherwise known as the PlayStation 3 security key. Twitter user @exiva sent Kevin Butler’s Twitter account this tweet, to which Kevin Butler’s Twitter account replied with this one (the link is a retweet of Kevin Butler’s now-removed reply).

The reason why I’m not referring to Kevin Butler’s Twitter account as simply “Kevin Butler?” Because Kevin Butler is a character played by an actor, and his Twitter account is most likely handled by various people, as one who follows @TheKevinButler and notices small deviations in writing style between different tweets probably realizes. Hopefully whichever person retweeted the security key–whether they knew what the mess of numbers was or not–doesn’t receive some kind of harsh punishment for retweeting something that can be found with a quick Google search.

(via GamersMint)

Back at E3, Valve honcho Gabe Newell said the PlayStation 3 was going to be the platform with the best Portal 2 experience available. A bit after that, it was revealed that the PS3 title would be receiving Steam integration. Now, continuing to back up Newell’s statement, Valve has announced that if one buys the PS3 version of Portal 2, they’ll receive a free voucher for the PC and Mac Steam versions of the game as well, simply by linking one’s PlayStation Network account to their Steam account. If that weren’t enough, all these platforms will be able to play and chat with one another, as well as store save files on the cloud, which can be accessed by any of the platforms. Valve also promised to add “more Steam features and functionality in DLC and future content releases.”

Portal 2 is currently set for an April 20 release. I apologize, but it has to be said. This is a triumph.

(via Ars Technica)

Hacker GeoHot is finally in a legal bind due to his notorious, hackery ways: Sony has served papers to Geohot and hacker group fail0verflow after they recently released hacks for the PlayStation 3, which basically allow anyone to run unsigned code on the system. Though unsigned code technically counts as homebrew applications – -something usually beneficial for the gaming scene — the ability to run unsigned code usually results in people running pirated software. So, one can imagine why Sony isn’t to thrilled with the hackers. Hack on past the break for more details, including the actual papers with which GeoHot was served.