Sony Relaunches the PSN
posted Saturday May 14, 2011 by Scott Ertz
It is official - just a few hours ago Sony finally relaunched the PlayStation Network. The relaunch was accompanied by a firmware update for the PS3 as well as a mandatory password change. Of course, not all functions are back online yet and it is not available to the entire country. If you are interested in finding out what states are back up and working, hit the source link.
This restoration comes after weeks of outages because of an attack on Sony's PSN infrastructure. Much of the personal data was accessed, possibly including credit card data. Sony has assured their customers that even if the billing data was compromised, it is all encrypted. Of course, if someone is capable of breaking through Sony's defenses, they are probably capable of decrypting a little billing data.
The attack was initially blamed on AnonOps, the group behind many of the DDoS attacks we have talked about in the past, who even threatened Sony over the treatment of GeoHot. They have, however, said they were not involved and this is an organization that claims every attack they are involved in proudly.
To find out about Sony's resolutions, hit the break.
Sony has literally rebuilt the PSN - both software wise and hardware. They have moved to entirely new data centers which might have some security involved, unlike the past locations. They have also changed the way the consoles connect, hence the firmware update. What they have not said but is pretty much expected is that their new system will encrypt all of their data. We know, however, that this is a fairly simple process to reverse.
This outage has cost Sony in the millions so far, with more to come. Reports show there could be several lawsuits against the company, probably culminating in a class-action that they will surely lose. Add to that revenue from subscriptions and store purchases. Now, they will be giving away games and free months of Plus service. Add to that the fact that retailers are reporting higher than average PS3 trade-ins and you have yourself one mega Sony disaster.
For Sony's sake, I hope they are able to weather the storm. My guess, however, is that after all is said and done, there will be only 2 major players in the gaming industry.
