PSN Outage - Down for a day or two

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/04/21/latest-update-on-psn-outage/

Thats the most up to date information I see. No real word on what the cause is but of course, rumors abound. They seem to range from the integration of Steam into the PSN to Anonymous resuming attacks again to something to do with an Amazon outage (I don't get the connection on that one but I've seen it a lot). I first noticed it early last night when I tried to get Dungeon Hunter and the store would not let me purchase it. After that though, I did some Borderlands multi-player with Ninjaneer and that went fine (well... except for us getting our asses kicked a few times, heh). Later, around 1:00am Denver time (shit... WTF time zone do I live in? Mountain or central... Crap, I gotta look that up so I know what time zone I live in now) I tried to buy DH again and could not even log in. As of now (2:54 my time, heh) it is still down and may be for a few days. I'm thinking if it is not up by end of day Friday, it may be down all weekend... We shall see.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4822742

It's Amazon Web Services, which apparently rents out server space.

That could be then. A lot are speculating that the real culprit is Anonymous because of a statement from Sony:

http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/4/21/sony-psn-down-amid-rumours-anonymous-ddos/#ixzz1KCDvpAID

Anonymous is denying they are behind it and my guess is they are not. I bet Sony is using whatever is wrong to try to get people even more pissed at Anonymous (because of how people got pissed at them a few weeks ago when they did attack PSN). Regardless of what anyone thinks of Anonymous, they are not shy and not only take credit for their actions, they announce them before hand.

netflix either. Apparently I need to be signed into PSN to make that work on my PS3...

It is now early Monday morning... or real late Sunday night :) and PSN is still down. I'm seeing some stories that are claiming it will be down until Tuesday some time. Sony is claiming it is a LIOC attack (Low Orbit Ion Cannon):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOIC

Assuming wiki is correct, this makes little sense to me as a good firewall should be handling it. To me, it just seems like Sony trying to point the finger at Anonymous without saying their name. meh... who knows, maybe they had shitty firewalls.

Comments at a lot of the articles are really amusing to read. Watch the Sony and Xbox fan boys going at it and trading insults. heh, good times :D

One interesting thing. I decided to play some GT5 as it has been sitting on the shelf for a month or so. When I put it in, it required an update... and was able to get it... WTF? It must do at least that portion without using PSN and going directly to PD to get it. None of the in game options that require online worked though and wanted you to sign in to PSN. That just struck me as really odd.

:cry:

If so, are you looking for someone to play with? = ) I'm not that great, but I have been looking for people to play it with online. Send me a PM if you're interested.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4828320

OhioChick just posted this in LBN. Seems like a lot of our PSN info was accessed including... perhaps... our credit card info, for some odd reason they are not certain of that... oh joy.

From what I've read, the reason for the outage is straight forward. Hackers were somehow able to load a dev bios that allowed them to access PSN content for free. The dev bios connected to the dev part of PSN, where I guess CC authorization is not enabled. So hackers were able to enter bogus CC info and download the material. Sony saw all the leaching going on that it decided to bring the network down until they can harden the dev zone.

While it could be done, it would not have given them access to secure databases and thats what has happened by Sony's own admission. In my opinion (and it is just opinion, I have no facts to back it up) this screams inside job to me. The breach seems to have been discovered fairly quickly (according to Sony... So that may not be true) and to unload and then download data for 70+ million people you need time... and a good amount of it. Whomever did this was both fast and efficient... kind of like they knew exactly where to go and find what they wanted and had all their scripts ready before hand.

I expect we may never know exactly what happened though, companies do not like to talk about these things.

I don't know about inside job though, certainly plausible. I think it's the San Diego facility that's ground zero. If it is.. I know those guys are taking home big cash, not sure they'd have the incentive to risk all of that. But you're right, we'll probably never know the full story. It does smell a bit like the Network Solutions intrusion. Someone infiltrated and was working server-side unnoticed for way too long.

Welcome to day 8 of.... The PSN Incident

heh

Some new news today. It looks certain that CC info was stolen though Sony claims the entire database was encrypted (which it had better fucking have been) so not too much danger there. They are targeting May 3rd to get some services back up... Some? Who wants to lay bets it's the store thats back first? Still no ETA for everything being up but they do say that once it is up, everyone will be forced to change their password.

There are a few items in todays announcement that I think bolster my theory of "inside job" (or perhaps I've just been spending too much time in the 9/11 forum, heh).

1st - "All of the data was protected, and access was restricted both physically and through the perimeter and security of the network," (from the link below) Well, yes Sony, I expected a person would at least need a badge to get into your offices.

2nd - "Moving forward, we are initiating several measures that will significantly enhance all aspects of PlayStation Network’s security and your personal data, including moving our network infrastructure and data centre to a new, more secure location, which is already underway." They are moving their data center to a "more secure" location? I thought it was already secure? I guess not.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/44108/Sony-dates-speculative-PSN-return

OK, enough tinfoil :D

In other news douchebag geohotz has decided it is not nice to steal other peoples data... Thanks for your concern asshole, now STFU.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/44114/Geohotz-PSN-hack-is-not-cool

Enough on this for today, we will see what happens around May 3rd. I gotta go write another rant, heh.

http://videosift.com/video/PS3-It-Only-Does-Identity-Theft

heh, it's funny because it's true :D

Sony gave a press conference this evening. Apologies, excuses, more apologies, some vague offering of free stuff, a vague promise of restored service in the coming week and yet more apologies. You can read the whole thing here:

http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/30/psn-outage-apolog/

"Following up on this morning's news that Sony Online Entertainment servers were offline across the board, Japanese newspaper Nikkei reports (via BGR) that the company has lost 12,700 customer credit card numbers as the result of an attack. The company apparently took SOE servers offline after learning of the attack last evening, but has yet to issue a statement confirming that customer information has been lost."

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/02/sony-hit-with-second-attack-loses-12-700-credit-card-nu/

Sony has sent a letter to congress detailing the time line of the PSN outage. Nothing really new except that Sony seems to now be officially blaming Anonymous for the attack. They claim a text file was left behind titles "Anonymous" and that it contained the words "We are Legion".

http://videogameblog.net/featured/sony-answers-congress-questions-details-psn-attack/

No update on an ETA for PSN coming back up, so I assume they are still targeting some time this week.

They are in the final stages of testing... yay! Of course, Anonymous is planning another attack, this time with promises of releasing the personal data they obtain... douchebags. Sony is offering a year of credit protection for free from Debix, details in the article:

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2011/05/05/psn-outage-update-final-stages-of-internal-testing/

OhioChick posted the Anonymous threat in LBN, here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4841381

PSN was running on unpatched Apache server with no firewall:

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/psn-was-running-on-unpatched-apache-server-with-no-firewall-2011055/

Well... Time to go looking for a lawsuit here in the states to join.

Ars Technica is saying that Sony is now looking at the end of May to bring PSN back up... End of May? Holy fuck! Now, granted, this is supposed to be for ALL functionality but for some reason I am suspecting that they are just preparing us for the even longer wait to be back online.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/05/billion-dollar-psn-outage-may-not-be-fully-remedied-until-may-31.ars

OK, OK, It has to be secure, lots of testing, new data center, free service, blah blah blah... My panties are now officially in a bunch :P

on, I think, Wired's Threat Level blog, that Sony was running various versions of unpatched Redhat on all their servers, and that the security was abysmal.

:cry: :argh:

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/145395/20110513/sony-speaks-to-japan-about-playstation-network-outage-full-text.htm

A Sony statement given yesterday in Japan.

Some experts:

"
As we said the other day regarding the future of the service and its restart, restoration will be conducted in stages on a regional basis to ensure the safety of our customers"

Regional basis? And the next sentence suggests to me Japan is first.

"We are preparing to be able to resume service as soon as possible in Japan, and are now entering the verification stage for ensuring the safety and security of the network. Servers are going to be completely relocated to more secure facilities, and have further strengthening the encryption, firewalls and to give new customers peace of mind on the "PlayStation Network" and "Qriocity.""

Now entering the verification process? A week ago they said they were already doing that. Servers still have not been relocated? I've helped relocating small data-centers and it takes a long ass time, PSN has got to be huge and they have not begun yet... This is going to be a long wait.

My PS3 came in the mail today so I'm paying attention to this now. I know I bought a PS3 with this going on but I didn't care. I never used internet for XBox 360 and I couldn't because of no wireless. So not being able to play games online isn't a big deal for me. I do like that PS3 has wireless so I look forward to seeing this up and running.

It seems this morning there are reports that it is back up for developers:

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/05/13/rumor-psn-back-up-for-developers.aspx

The odd part of the report is that new accounts are disabled... Which seems strange to me. I seem to recall that part of the initial hack was that they got in the same way developers do so... If the developer entry way is not completely secure, why bring it up? I do not know the answer... Maybe to try and catch them entering that way... Who knows.

As an aside, if you ever want to play online, PM me what games you have and I'll let you know what I have.

As soon as I can figure out a good spot for reception. I'm hitting 32% signal tops, I tried watching Netflix with that and I couldn't even get through a movie without it retrieving. I imagine gaming will be impossible. Anyways, don't have any games at the moment. Was trying to get The Show through Gamefly but it was on low availability for 2 days so I added Masters and Fallout 3. I got Fallout 3 and from what I've read, it is strictly offline and read that it takes up a lot of hours so I probably won't have to worry about online gaming for awhile.

I'll let you know though when I have some online games and have good signal.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-13/sony-network-said-to-have-been-invaded-by-hackers-using-amazon-com-server.html

Who ever did this seems to have almost had to have known a lot about how Sony had their shit set up.