PlayStation Network outage to last indefinitely
PlayStation owners are unlikely to be smiling about the issue, which doesn't seem set to end any time soon.
In an announcement yesterday, Sony stated that the outage will last for an indefinite amount of time as the company has to entirely rebuild the system, which is a 'time intensive process.'
As if PlayStation owners haven't suffered enough, Sony also says that it's yet to determine whether or not any personal details were stolen by the outside intruder. These details could be anything from names and addresses to credit card information used to pay for products or services on the network.
Although some PlayStation owners view the outage as simply an inconvenience, its wider effect is already being felt. It has already affected the launch of Valve’s Portal 2, with PS3 gamers unable to connect to each other to play the game’s excellent co-op mode. The outage also has the potential to play merry hell with games that require online authentication, such as Capcom’s Bionic Commando: Rearmed 2, as you may not be able to reach the online servers to verify that your copy of the game is genuine.
Are you a part of the 75 million regular users of the PlayStation network that’s been affected? Have you had any problems playing older games that require online authentication? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
Previous Article
82 Comments
Discuss in the forums Replyhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2011/apr/26/games-playstation
In all seriousness, this is a good example of why "call in" copy protection should NEVER be used.
Yours in PC Gaming Plasma,
Star*Dagger
So this wasn't quiet unexpected and actually announced long ago to happen by anonymous.
Hell, look at Ubisoft's DRM, that was torn apart for valid reasons, yet this is allowed to toddle off just because it's a console.
I miss the days of my PS2 and it's internet-free DRM system.
*Waits for all the "Well Sony deserved it" comments
The outage is inconvenient, but I'd rather they got it sorted properly. Portal 2 co-op will just have to wait.
Yes, Sony deserved it in regard to their actions taken against GeoHot.
Yes, it's the payback for the lawsuit against GeoHot.
Sony needs to develop new mechanisms to prevent this to happen again, now that the attackers know how to shut down the system.
No he broke the law. So Sony was correct.
They've denied any involvement, and Sony haven't blamed them for it either.
Everyone just seems to have assumed they are to blame since they said they were going to target Sony, but it doesn't make sense as they said they would not do anything that directly harmed or affected consumers, which is obviously what is happening now the PSN has been down for nearly a week.
I'm more inclined to believe the above explanation that it's due to people exploiting the Rebug firmware to access items from the PSN store for free.
I whole heartdly agree that this is one of the big reasons why I am vehemently against online copy protection. One time activation is one thing, but DRM that requires a constant connection to play just frankly sucks. If you connection goes down you can't play it, if the servers go down you can't play it. Especially for single player only games or ones where there IS single player it sucks. Online only games it makes sense, because frankly, you have to have the servers up or an internet connection to play anyway.
This is a wakeup-call for the customers of wrong-doing corporations actually.
It's a shame, as now I'll never know where my mad drumming skillz rank in Rockband 3. Hmmph. On a serious note, will this affect PS3 game updates as well, or are those delivered through a different system? We've yet to play Lego: Indiana Jones because the 2 player mode is broken. We've been hoping for an update because right now the game is collecting dust.
So what, we just shouldn't buy products from companies which have actually done something when someone doesn't follow their terms & conditions? (not that anyone reads them anyway, but they're still there)
And this is more like a "you've done nothing wrong, but something you had no control over means that I'm going to stop you from playing games online" kind-of-thing.
Exactly his point, if I was buying a product from a company with this attitude I'd be reconsidering my next purchase from them.
Frankly I'm quite disgusted that Sony and other companies are allowed to tell people how they must use their products.
It's delivered through the same system, no updates 'til we can get back online I'm afraid.
As far as I've heard, it was a variation of a DOS attack that also crippled the server somehow, and Anon has said this time it wasn't them.
I will say though; Sony are a victim of their own sucess. 75million users? That's alot of records to check who's have been tampered with, if any.
It's not the fact that he broke the T&C and they did something about it, its the way they carried out their action. They got the courts to give them lots of information including IP addresses of people who had visited his site, and also his paypal account details, which is a breach of privacy in my (and many others) opinion. This is where the problem is, not in them going after him, though that is also a problem due to the way they advertised the ps3 at first it seems a bit hypocritcal.
On one side, yes I understand that you could/should have access to the hardware and be able to install home brew.
On the other, look what has happened - modded firmware allows free downloads. So Geo's version would have finished by allowing hacked copies of games - was this his intention, no, would that be the main reason people would hack their PS3? - Yes
But yes I also have PC for gaming needs, so I'm not too fussed about the PSN !
I would cancel my cc used since this was a hack.. no reason to end up with a surprise
I'll jump on that band wagon when a company like Koch Industries gets targeted. Not some online service ran by a company trying to establish legal grounds for moving their case to California (the reason why Sony sought the IPs in the case against George).
When he jailbroke the iPhone I don't recall him handing out the security key behind the entire DRM of the system to everyone.
[tinfoil hat]
Probably a bit of a stretch but didn't Amazon's Cloud service go down right around the same time Sony took PSN offline to address the breach? I recall Sony did enable cloud based storage of save files on the PS3 about 2 patches ago. [/tinfoil hat]
Sucks the service is down. Hasn't really impacted me though. Freed up some much needed time for Dragon Age II/Rift on my PC. :D
IMO Sony should also be punished by the full force of the law for the bait-and-switch that was advertising OtherOS as a system feature and then removing it from customers without any other reasonable alternative.
But Sony is a large corporation, so there is no chance...
Explain that to the 12 year old kid who's been dying to play Portal 2 with his friends.
Congratulations assholes.
Not very likely, more likely is that they have shut the network down to try to fix the exploit, though why its taking the this long... Incompetence is a word that springs to mind...
Anonymous have denied it being them. Now if it was them surely they would want Sony and the world to know about it. After all Anonymous are hacktivists who want to get a message across, not just screw up Sony's servers.
Anonymous also after DDOSing Sony's Playstation Network servers, said that they would stop this because it was inconveniencing the end user to greatly.
You mean the back up with the same flaws/issues as the original?
For this, it certainly sounds like it wasn't santioned by the great Anon hackisphere...though that doesn't preclude it from being someone who is associated with the group still bringing down PSN. That isn't even conjecture, just a possiblity.
Personally I doubt it, the length this has been down feels more like hardware/software failures. anonymous tend to disrupt service short term with DOS attacks most of which goes unnoticed by many or fixed within a day. Sony prob screwed up somewhere and its just convenient anonymous had threatened them. Who knows, I could of underestimated them or they may have a member or sympathiser on the inside.
for what its worth im not a ps3 owner, im an xbox 360 owner but i know how pissed i would be if xbl went down so i cant really poke fun or anything its just not right
Just figuring out how the heck it occured could take some time, let alone potentially having to rearchitect maybe the whole dang thing, and certain at least a small part of it, code it, test it and put it all back online.
*EDIT*
I also advise PSN users go read this
http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2011/04/26/psnqriocity-service-update/
Link here.
Go hard copy! :D
What. The. F****.
I kinda like it when things fall appart, puts things into perspective and stops people becoming complacent.
I do hope this wasn't some attempt to get user information though. I've found xbl to be totally lacking in payment management and security. they failed to remove my card from my xbox, my account then got hacked and £120 of xbl points and they didn't give a f**k.
Name
Shipping address
Billing address
Country
E-mail address
Birthdate
PSN/Qriocity ID
PSN/Qriocity password
PSN/Qriocity security question and answer
Purchase history
was a nice thought while it lasted : )
Was about to say GET OUT!!! but then I saw this, I think you might be right.
This is what happened when someone's mum cancelled his World of Warcraft account.
Ha amazing! I've seen my friends 16 yo brother do something similar when his patents canceled his xbl subscription because he was about to do his GCSEs he ran away, returned home with a fist full of 48hour xbl trails from games his friends had bought.
slightly more related though, I do hope it wasn't anon (even though its looking likely). id like to think its a noble act for the user base rather than trying to rip people off.
'I Fight For the Users' sorry had to be done..
This is how I feel as well.
I've been extolling the evils of Sony since the rootkit fiasco to everyone I know. And yet, even friends and family who normally take my tech advice as law, they continue buying Sony products, even though I explain to them that continued purchasing only encourages them that such activities are accepted. But they dont care, because they mistakenly still believe Sony makes good stuff like they once did in the 80's-90's. And so they deserve it as much as Sony; and for those who were not aware of Sony's misdeeds, perhaps more of them will be made aware after this incident and will not purchase Sony in the future.
I understand, few corporations are "good", and many made mistakes. However, Sony has never admitted any wrongdoing and has thumbed their nose when confronted. THIS is why they deserve it, because they do things willfully and intentionally. But if you are aware of their misdeeds, and their willingness to give customers the finger, and there are plenty of viable alternative products... then you get what you deserve if you still continue to support that company.
Considering the size of the PSN network one would think that the issue would be isolated and fixed by now. I mean its a multi-billion dollar company... Surely they have more than one Japanese engineer/programmer...
I digress...
Shame on you Sony for having a network running on a 486 computer with a dialup modem in your moms basement.... seriously
Seeing as I know what the real problem is (developer access to psn via rebug) rebuilding the system is probably the only way they'll get anything up again.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/update_personal_data_of_70_million_sony_customers.php
anon says sony is incompetent
http://www.anonnews.org/?p=press&a=item&i=848
But no, this was a combination of some haxoring and Sony realizing they screwed the pooch when they wired up the network. Now that data has been compromised in a spectacular fashion, some manager is jumping on the grenade to keep the network down, trying to ensure they don't further embarrass themselves a week after they bring it back online, only to be taken down again. Not that that manager will be rewarded, naturally. Since he isn't 'contributing to shareholder value' in a way immediately obvious in the next five minutes, he'll be lucky if he doesn't get fired, once he's taken all the bullets and the system is back up.
If I had my way, there wouldn't be 75M people to get hosed out of playing on PSN, as every customer would have jumped ship after the rootkit fiasco years back. Or the payola scheme. Or the GeoHot case. Jebus, people, stop giving Sony your money!
That is actually incredibly scary. And mostly because I've been doing security wrong.
I hope that is the case. I'm love Sony products, and other then mobile phones and their great but overpriced TV's I rate their tech very highly.
But I want Sony to be blumbering idiots in this case, I hope it was just shear incompetence and complacency that lead to this turn of events. Because if it was not, the Steam servers could be next. Imagine that if you were unlucky enough not to have your details stored on your PC at the time (no offline mode for you!)
Sony are no doubt well aware of the massive damage every hour of PSN being offline is doing, so to be resorting to taking it down without even a clue as to how long they will be down is worrying. Also, it almost goes without saying that things are normally WORSE then a big company will admit, and they have already pained a really bleak picture of the events.
Gonna love the MS statement saying they don't take any joy in this, whist in the same breath reminding everyone of the free gold member ship weekend. I bet there is a lot of high fiving going on at MS right now (as well as rechecking their own security, mind).
BTW, if you just brought Portal 2 and didn't get chance to redeem your free PC version yet either, my thoughts are with you.
I am sure I had to put my email address into sign up to PSN, so why are Sony relying on us to find a page buried on their site.
They should be sending communication out like this via email, or at very least a link to their site with the news on it
and expect to restore some services within a week
Some services within a week ! wow whoever did break into their network did a really good job they had access to all user information apart from credit card numbers (hopefully) and knocked the service on it arse for what looks like 2 weeks
Given they initially thought the whole of PSN and Qriocity (which I was about to sign up for...) would be restored by the weekend, I'd take any timeframe they specify with a huge dollop of salt.
It would have been in the terms and conditions that they can do that. It's quite simple if you don't like the T&C don't buy it.
In my opinion if its the latter then if it wasn't a free service they wouldn't have just pulled the plug like they did.
it was a breach and data was taken
The servers were taken down (and damaged) by the attack, data was taken, Sony are keeping the servers offline while they rebuild the servers (and fix the security hole that was exploited in the first place).
Hackers broke PSN security, parasites just took whatever they could from the PSN store.
Sonys reputation gets even more tarnished and legitimate players dont get the service they expect. The parasites are laughing.
I, too, will be sticking to PC gaming. It just sucks when developers use DRM on PC games! :(