Proverbial Poop Hits Fan for Sony PlayStation Network

Sony is slooooooowly letting the public in on just how bad the PlayStation Network outage really is… and still has no clue of when the Network might be back up (or if, as rumor have it, it is being rebuilt to be a bit more– hackerproof).

This afternoon the news finally hit the bigger newspapers as rumors became reality and the actual situation went from being bad to worse.  Hey, if the Japanese can escalate their nuclear radiation warnings daily (it’s fine… no it’s bad… no it’s horrifyingly terrible!), they can certainly do it with updates on a network outage for a gaming device.

Earlier in the week, after a few days of the PS Network being unavailable, Sony made it seem like this was just a simple network maintenance that might prevent a few gamers from hopping on the Network to slay each other multi-player style.  Things then became a bit more detailed as Sony finally admitted (after a run through the Interwebs rumor mill) that the PS Network had been hacked.  Unknown was the fact if the network was tinkered with by a hacker collective called “Anonymous” (since they recently had a beef with Sony) or if it was something related to other, more insidious groups of rouge criminals… The Anonymous group says, “wasn’t us“, and today we come to find out it actually was some rouge criminal faction that got into the Network for the altogether common purpose of stealing consumer information stored on the Network’s servers.  Sony, via spokesman Patrick Seybold [Sr. Director, Corporate Communications & Social Media], said that “We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19, 2011, certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity [music service] user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network.”

This means, of course, that if you’re one of 77 million PS account holders with stored credit card info and other personal information on the Network, you’ve got a good chance at having your info stolen in what amounts to a Lufthansa-style data theft.  Ouch!  This is going to seriously screw up Sony’s fairly decent reputation at best, and really piss off a lot of folks at worse…  meaning those that recently subscribed to PlayStation Plus might reconsider their subscription altogether.  At least Sony seems to be doing all they can to now address the issue, offer solutions for consumers (with handy credit bureau contact numbers) and really does seem as perplexed and upset by this turn of events as your average Black Ops player might on discovering he can’t hook up with his deathmatch team and might have to go outside and breath fresh air.  I kid… but as a PS3 owner and an MLB.TV junkie, I’m having a tough time coping with missing out on bigscreen games and being forced to use my MLB subscription via the ol’ laptop.  It just ain’t the same experience.  But, not all apps have the network issue, and good ol’ Netflix can still be accessed if you don’t mind logging in a few times (back n forth a few times, then bang– there’s you’re queue and other movie selections).

Good luck Sony technicians…  we all hope you can work your elfin magic on the Network, and not only get it back up and running smoothly but also make it much, much more secure.