Hackers deny involvement in PlayStation Network outage

Sony’s PlayStation Network is still down today in its second day of a massive outage. So far, Sony hasn’t offered an update about when the online entertainment network, with more than 70 million registered users, will be back online.

Users trying to log into the system are getting a message that says “an error” has occurred. Yesterday, Sony warned that it may take a day or more to bring the network back up. Since then, the company hasn’t offered an update, but it will offer updates on its blog.

Sony offered no explanation for the network outage, prompting some to wonder if it was related to Amazon.com’s crash of its cloud computing infrastructure, EC 2, which has also been down since yesterday. Sony had also updated its PlayStation Home virtual world for gamers with a version 1.5 update. And others wondered if hackers, who had been angry about Sony’s prosecution of hacker George “GeoHot” Hotz, had found a way to “jailbreak” Sony’s PS 3 so that users could download unauthorized or pirated software. Sony sued him for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

But that case has been settled. And Anonymous, the hacker group that had attack Sony sites earlier, said it was not behind the shutdown. In fact, Anonymous said “Sony is incompetent.” Still, an observer of the IRC forum used by members of Anonymous speculated that the attackers likely behind this current Sony outage appear to have learned their methods from Anonymous’ activities of two weeks ago.

The network shutdown isn’t just frustrating to users. Sony has a full spectrum of entertainment on PSN, with movies, TV shows, downloadable games, and original shows too.

A Sony representative didn’t immediately have a comment on the matter.

We’re also waiting to hear back about how Sony plans on compensating paying members. While the PlayStation Network is a free service, PSN Plus is a subscription available to PSN users for $50 a year for early access to games and exclusive content.

Update 11:55 a.m. PT: Anonymous appears to be denying participation in any attack on PSN. A representative of the group posted an editorial to a news aggregation site saying they had no time to devise a new strategy against Sony and “entirely lost interest.”

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20056503-260.html#ixzz1KHRU52iY