Why Did Sony lie about being hacked? They most likely didn't want to appear vulnerable to their customers and shareholders. They must have hoped they could call this an outage or system bug and fix it before full PS3 withdrawal set in with their loyal customers. Not only did Sony know they were hacked all along, the inability to log-on wasn't the hack itself, the PSN shut it down to prevent further damage. What's worse is they still do not appear to understand what happened or when it will be resolved.
The Playstation Site released the following statement Friday Evening:
PlayStation®Network Service Outage 4/21/2011
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.
Thank you very much for your patience while we work to resolve this matter.
During this time you may:
- Not be able to access the PlayStation®Store
- Have difficulty signing in to the PlayStation®Network
- Not be able to play online games
- See a maintenance page when attempting to access the PlayStation®Network
Note: When you log into the PlayStation Network, a message may appear which states, "the PlayStation Network has been suspended". This
does not mean that your account has been suspended; it simply means the PlayStation Network has been taken offline. Please wait until the maintenance window has passed before attempting to connect to the PlayStation Network again. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
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Shacknews.com responded, "Though it provides little information on when PS3 owners might see online services restored, the
language hints at the potential severity of the situation. Both the PlayStation Network and Qriocity have been compromised to such a degree that Sony felt it had no alternative but to pull the plug.
With both systems containing significant amounts of customer personal and credit card data, the implication that at some point that information may not have been secure gives some cause for concern.
As reported
in an earlier response to the situation, Seybold wrote that the system could be down for 'a day or two' while the company investigated the situation and effected repairs. While not untruthful, that statement came after the April 20 time given today as the time when Sony turned off the systems. Given the sensitivity of the situation it's understandable that Sony would want to be careful in what information it released; however, should customer data be involved, the company will need to act quickly to share the nature of the exposure with those affected.
When PSN first went down many presumed the hacker group Anonymous might be resuming its denial of service attack. For its part, though, Anonymous claims it has nothing to do with this round of trouble. A
post on the group's blog states, "While it could be the case that other Anons have acted by themselves, AnonOps was not related to this incident and does not take responsibility for whatever has happened."
