The hack job could have been even easier if it is proven that these two incidents have a solid connection. I was unaware of these layoffs until I read about them yesterday. I'm neither supporting this theory or denying it but it is still interesting either way.

http://psx-scene.com/forums/f6/psn-h...ide-job-85869/

one month free of PSN+ and credit for downtime: http://www.bgr.com/2011/05/06/sonys-...f-psn-service/

Friday and it’s still down

I knew that last Wednesday’s update saying it would be back up within a week from that day was a long shot but I was pretty confident it was going to be back up for the weekend at least! These people have lives also so we can’t expect them to work on weekends also! So I guess it’s going to go for next week.

It’s funny because I’ve never been a fan of multiplayer games at all, actually I was always against them since most of them were generic FPS games that I’m not good at all! But ever since getting into (and addicted!) to the multiplayer in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood I can’t go a day without playing online with it! I have such a blast playing that game online it’s not even funny. I’ve been playing online since about January.

So tell me that the PSN was down 6 months ago and I probably wouldn’t care much, except for maybe getting my demos on Tuesdays and renting movies from the PSN store, that’s about the extent I used the PSN. So now that I haven’t played in almost 3 weeks is killing me! Heh

Nevermind working the weekends...if I ran Sony I'd be threatening these employee's immediate family members until they had the shit fixed and running again.

Thank God you don't run Sony. It's not their fault that some asshat(s) decided to do some illegal stuff and hack into the network.

I believe the statement last Wednesday was "by the end of next week". A quote yesterday said they were still anticipating making that deadline.

What IS the end of the week anyway? Sunday at midnight?

is that a trick question?

No but you can most certainly keep those fuckers there that decided not to encrypt anything.

Seriously. The least they could've done would have been to put firewalls on their servers and keep the software up to date.

For the record, my extreme handling of this situation was the only thing that kept me from getting the job. The job or running Sony.

That's pretty funny given how often they force updates on the user.

Software being up to date would have done nothing. It still would have been hacked. No system is unhackable. It was a perfect storm for a hacker with bad intentions

You're right. It was inevitable, so there's no point in taking any precautions.

...

SERIOUSLY?! Sony fucked up. Yes, it's ultimately the fault of the hackers. But Sony is running a HUGE network containing personal information. They should be taking every possible step they can to protect that network. I can't believe that anyone is defending Sony in this situation.

Unless it's the weekend though.

I'm so sick of all the idiots on twitter reporting it's back when it's not. That and the spammers posting the same fake article every minute.

There's now talk of a third attack coming this weekend.

Here's the full letter from Stringer

http://www.dailygame.net/videogames/...psn-users.html

Sure, nothing is unhackable, the trick with security is to make sure you're secure "enough" that the bad guys will go after other targets. In this case, they ticked off a hacker community that went after them for other reasons, and it's still unclear if this same hacker community grabbed all this info or some other attack happened.

However, as others have stated, they were running outdated apache servers and this was discovered months ago by people posting on an open forum that Sony employees were also on. Who knows if this was even used for the breach, but it's still inexcusable if the unpatched servers were the ones holding sensitive information.

http://consumerist.com/2011/05/secur...sn-breach.html

Also, I don't think the 360 servers got hacked to the point where personal information got out, it just disrupted online play for a day or so, unless I missed something. My bank had personal data potentially leaked some time ago and offered a year of credit protection as well. This is really the least that they could do, but it is much better than their original statement which pretty much said "go get your free credit reports and check."

@ "it's the weekend"

When you have a critical production outage, there is no timeline at all other than restoration of service to your customers. People don't get coffee breaks, you don't get Memorial Day weekend off. You and the team work your assess off until it's back. Occasionally you can slip away for something important, but the rest of the team works. There's no 5pm whistle that blows. This isn't a 9-5 scenario.

Why not, since apparently Sony's IT staff won't be around.

I would think this is especially true of a company as large as Sony.

Has Sony said that they're taking the weekends off?

Aren't they working through a holiday right now in Japan. Golden Week? I know the Asian stock markets were closed Tuesday thru Thursday.

Yeah, this was just a pathetic break in security that should have never happened, poor planning and execution all around. Sony was extremely sloppy here. Nothing is uncrackable, but this was like putting up a giant neon sign that reads "Enter here, the keys are under the mat!"

Can't believe their servers are still down. But at least they're fixing the issues.

Now if only they came up with a solution for their constant updates that seem to take my PS3 4 hours (on most occasions) to download before I can watch Netflix on the damned thing.