Sony has confirmed that hackers are to blame for its PlayStation Network being taken offline over the Easter weekend, an attack that could have put the details of 73 million gamers worldwide at risk.
The outage of Sony Corp.’s PlayStation Network has now run into its sixth day as the company said it has no timeframe for restoring the Internet-based system that links users in live game play worldwide.
In a blog post Monday, Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold said he couldn’t predict when rebuilding work would be completed, but that it’s a “time intensive process.”
The company said on Thursday that it would take a “full day or two” to restore service after it first shut down the system that serves both PlayStations and its Qriocity entertainment services the previous day.
It subsequently blamed the outage on an “external intrusion” and said it would have to rebuild its system to add security measures and strengthen its infrastructure.
Users trying to connect have been met with error messages stating that the network is “undergoing maintenance” or is “suspended”.
The PlayStation Network is used by owners of PS3 and PlayStation Portable machines to download games, films and music, as well as to play online with friends.
According to Sony, it has more than 70m accounts registered worldwide.
In a blog post, the company thanked users for their patience and assured them that it was working “around the clock” to strengthen the network infrastructure.
“Though this task is time-consuming, we decided it was worth the time necessary to provide the system with additional security,” wrote Patrick Seybold, the company’s senior director of corporate communications and social media.
The statement did not address the issue of personal information, including credit card details, stored by PSN.
In recent weeks, Sony has been targeted by hackers’ group Anonymous.
In a message posted on the AnonOps blog, it said “for once we didn’t do it”.
However, it suggested that some members may have acted on their own without the group’s knowledge.
Anonymous has been critical of the Japan-based entertainment giant over its treatment of George Hotz, an American hacker who unlocked the PS3’s closed operating system.
Sony filed a lawsuit against the 21-year-old, arguing that his hack had allowed pirated games to be played on the machine.
The case was dropped earlier this month after Mr Hotz agreed to an injunction banning him from similar behaviour in future.
In denying responsibility for the attack, Anonymous said: “A more likely explanation is that Sony is taking advantage of Anonymous’ previous ill-will towards the company to distract users from the fact that the outage is actually an internal problem with the company’s servers.”
As well as gaming, the outage has affected other services running over the PlayStation Network.
UK-based film rental site LoveFilm confirmed to the BBC that its customers are currently unable to stream films on the service. In the US, some users of Netflix – another movie streaming service – have also reported problems.
This outage is the latest in a series of problems for the network which has suffered extended periods of downtime over the past few weeks.
Angry gamers have flooded blogs, forums and Twitter with complaints.
Read the official Playstation blog here:
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/04/23/latest-update-for-psnqriocity-services/
