Rather than continue with constant esoteric updates in the vein of "We're working on it," Sony has come out and stated that the PSN will be down "indefinitely" while they're "rebuilding" the service. This is according to the Wall Street Journal and Reuters. The news comes after a hacking attack that "may have compromised user information." In an email the corporate giant stated:
(Sony) is also trying to figure out if any personal information, such as credit card numbers, may have been compromised in the attack.
It appears that they still don't know exactly what happened. Game forums (including ours), have erupted with the speculation of concerned gamers. Some gamers are offering words of encouragement, some are irritated, and others are acting as if Sony has declared Prima Nocta. If it turns out that credit card numbers have been compromised, hold on to your butts.
Sony has been tight-lipped about the outage, but to acknowledge that they don't even know if personal information may have been breached is staggering. I don't know much about, well, anything, really. I do know that "rebuilding" seems like an all-encompassing term. What's the over-under on rebuilding a network that connects 75 million PlayStation users? What do you think, readers? And please keep it civil, XBLers.
UPDATE Heads up PS3 users! It's getting serious. Sony just released a statement, saying that: "we have a clear path to have PlayStation Network and Qriocity systems back online, and expect to restore some services within a week." Apparently telling the public that they didn't have a time frame, as they did in yesterday's update, didn't go over very well. What's alarming is this latest statement:
Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state, zip), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained.
Uh-oh. Now it MIGHT be our problem. They're not saying credit card data was accessed, but they're definitely not saying it wasn't, either. Then it gets worse. They actually list the three major credit bureaus and instruct us how to place a "fraud alert" on our files. That's just great. They "cannot rule out the possibility" that 75 million PSN members' credit card data may have been taken. What a mess.
Please remember, Sony didn't hand this information out, they were illegally hacked. But this is a very alarming turn of events.
Source: Blogs.wsj.com