Last week millions of Sony Playstation 3 gamers became shocked to find out that the beloved online service 'PSN' (Playstation Network) was offline. And not only was the service down, but it was apparently suspended without any time frame for when it would return. As of this writing (4-29-11) the service is still offline. But don't be fooled into thinking that is as bad as it gets.
The service interruption for PSN seemed to follow awfully close to Sony dropping the lawsuit they brought against Geohot for modding the PS3 console. It was very apparent that Sony wanted to make a rather large example out of George Hotz (dubbed 'Geohot'). For those who don't know Mr. Hotz is very well known within the modding communities. Sony agreed to drop their lawsuit if Hotz would quit modding Sony's products. The whole GeoHot lawsuit took the web by storm. There was a distinctive line where loyal PS3 owners felt they shouldn't alter the hardware because it promotes piracy, which in turn drives up the price for services, games, and consoles for everybody else. Meanwhile, the modding communities were sounding off to the tune of our products should work the way we want them too. Why buy a product if you are restricted to only doing what the manufacturer allows. Both sides honestly have very valid points. However, neither will be appeased regardless of what Sony does (reference back to Sony removing 'OtherOS' from the PS3 to see what I'm talking about).
Now, fast forward to the current PSN outage. What do we know? We know Sony realized their system had been compromised on Tuesday, April 19th. The next day the service went offline (both PSN and Qriocity services are affected). Sony still didn't tell their customer's that the services had been compromised. It wasn't until April 22nd that Sony posted what had actually happened to their system. I realize that they had to have time to investigate what the intrusion involved. But seriously, a system that contains not just personal information but also credit card numbers for online transactions; and they didn't disclose this to the public? That's crazy. And better yet, the daily updates Sony was giving were about as vague as they could be.
But hold on to your hat, it gets better. Over the following weekend Sony posted on the PS3 Blog that they were actually having to rebuild their infrastructure. So let's get this straight, Sony offers a pretty good premium online experience without cost to their customers. This service allows customer's to purchase games and content directly through the internet. This service gets attacked from an outside party/parties; this attack causes Sony to realize that their system needs not only a major security maintenance job done, but a complete rebuild?! What the hell did the hackers do or have access to?
It wasn't until Tuesday, April 26th that Sony posted on the PS3 Blog that customer's information was stolen. Over the next several days we have seen reports that this information contained credit card information along with names, addressed, and phone numbers for millions of people. Then reports of a database containing this very information was up for sale to the highest bidder. Now word is that some of the information contained in the database was encrypted (including credit card information).
Okay, that's a little better. But seriously Sony; you're dealing with hackers here. They acquired access to your system to take the data in the first place, what it keeping them from getting around this encryption too? All the while, if you read through the numerous postings on the PS3 Blog, you'll see people more pissed off that they can't play games. Or they are trying to guess how Sony will repay all of their loyal customers. Seriously people, take a breath and look at the bigger picture. Much more than access to Modern Warfare is at stake here. Some people were suggesting that Sony "make up" for the outage and data leak by providing credit monitoring for it's customers for a year or two. Whether that's a valid option or not, Sony is definitely in the hotseat as far as their Public Relations go.
During the whole course of this outage numerous media outlets and websites have been pointing the finger at Anonymous. Meanwhile, somehow someone from Anonymous has said it wasn't them who authored the attack on Sony. According to an article at: http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/85857/hacker-group-anonymous-condemns-psn-attacks/ the person said that the attack was "against the Anonymous principles". Regardless of who is behind the attack, the attack has not only dealt a huge blow to Sony's online service/e-retail outlet, millions of customers are potentially at risk now as well. Not to mention all of the customer's of their online MMO (which is subscription based), those guys have every right to be upset at the service's downtime.
My personal opinion, the PSN access is provided free of charge. If the service is down, ok I won't be playing online until service is restored. Big deal, I'm not paying anything extra for the service; so who am I to scream and jump up and down when it's unavailable. I also understand that anytime online security is compromised (whether it be personal or business related), this can be devastating to the entity compromised and/or all of the customers or clients. It is very unfortunate that Sony has to go through such great lengths to get their service back up and running, but on the same lines. If you are rebuilding it, make sure it's rock solid second time around. From a business standpoint, I don't think Sony could get away with their Public Relations if this were sort of outage were to happen again. In the meantime, Sony has made it public knowledge that they are planning on making good on this with their customers. Somehow, I have a feeling whatever is done won't be quite what everyone is wishing for. If you read their forum, people are asking for everything from free Playstation + access to cross game chat, and some are even asking for the return of OtherOS (personally I'd opt for either the crossgame chat or OtherOS myself). But nothing has been confirmed yet from Sony on what they are planning to do.4
My only quarrel is how long it took Sony to publicly acknowledge the problem and to what extent the problem covered. And I hope Sony realizes that their customer's will not forget this outage. And before someone tries to flame me for speaking my peace on the matter, yes I have been affected by the outage. Albeit a minor issue for me, my birthday was the weekend the outage started and my wife bought me 'Mortal Kombat' so I haven't been able to play online. But for now, big deal. I've been playing Mortal Kombat offline for years anyways. So, hopefully Sony is on the upside of this issue and we can all get back to playing online again safely soon.
Thanks for listening and Happy Surfing!
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Sources:
http://bit.ly/jMKXye -Hacker Group Anonymous Condemns PSN Attack
http://bit.ly/lnH9HI -Sony Considering Make Good for PSN Subscribers, Too
http://blog.us.playstation.com/ -Playstation Blog
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