Sony Playstation Network still down after hack attack

The company pledged the service, which enables PlayStation 3 (PS3) and Playstation Portable console users to buy and play games online and chat together, would be restored with a couple of days.

Users are currently greeted by a series of error messages. In his latest blog post, Sony’s James Gallagher apologised that the network continued to remain down, despite continued efforts to work on a fix.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have an update or timeframe to share at this point in time. As we previously noted, this is a time intensive process and we’re working to get them back online quickly,” he wrote.

Hack denial

Sony admitted the problem was caused by an “external intrusion”. Speculation centred on the hacktivist group Anonymous, which had pledged to target the company last month after a group of hackers were threatened with legal action.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an update or timeframe to share at this point in time. James Gallagher, Sony

However Anonymous denied having any involvement, and accused Sony of using the situation to hide its own technical problems.

Under the title “for once we didn’t do it”, the group wrote that Sony was “taking advantage of Anonymous’ previous ill-will towards the company to distract users from the fact the outage is actually an internal problem with the company’s servers”.

PS3 users have expressed frustration at the continued problems.

SlapnutzUK posted on Sony’s website his fears that personal details may have been stolen.

“I work for an IT solutions company and if this happened to one of my customers and I gave no time scale on when service would be resumed we would end up getting fined and losing a contract,” he wrote.

“Not only this but we still don’t know if our details personal and banking have been stolen? Surely after 5 days you must know what was and wasn’t affected?”