PSN Welcome Back Programme for Australia
Posted Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 10:46 pm by Nick Ayre
After PSN outrageously long down time Sony is welcoming back Australian PSN users by offering free games and other services.
You can choose from two PlayStation 3 games from the following list:
- LittleBigPlanet
- InFamous*
- WipEout HD/Fury
- Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty
- Dead Nation*
For those with PSP accounts, you will also be eligible to download two PSP games from the following list:
- LittleBigPlanet PSP
- ModNation Racers PSP
- Pursuit Force
- Killzone Liberation
and more.
For more information check out Sony’s post at: PSN News
PSN restored. DLC, demos from PS Store still unavailable
Posted Monday, May 16, 2011 at 7:08 pm by Jason Cartwright
The PlayStation Network was finally restored today but not without issue. After switching the service back on, Sony servers were quickly swamped with thousands of users trying to reset their account passwords. After switching the PSN off once again, the servers recovered and were brought back online later in the day.
As explained in previous posts, the PlayStation Store was not part of the phase one restoration. This means users are still unable to download DLC, game demos, or anything from the PlayStation Store. This is bad news for game developers, still left without a way to deliver important profitable content for their work.
Its still unclear if the game updates system is available to developers.
The new security measures now in-place mean that you need to provide your password to do, well pretty much anything in the account section. When you do set a new password, it’ll need to be a strong password. PSN passwords now need to be at least 8 characters in-length, mixed cases, can not use characters 3 times in a row, different to your PSN ID and different than your previous password. These requirements make PSN passwords the strongest of almost any online service. Lets hope Sony’s new security systems on the backend now encrypt passwords, otherwise password strength will be negated.
Check out a gallery of images of PSN coming back online.
Now go enjoy that Portal 2 multi-player, albeit a month later than expected.
PS3 FW 3.61 now available in Australia, PSN still down. [Updated]
Posted Monday, May 16, 2011 at 12:00 am by Jason Cartwright
Turns out the PlayStation 3 update rollout is progressing faster than expected. I’m happy to report that it has now reached Australian, UK and no doubt the shores of many other countries around the world.
The download is going pretty fast, currently at 42% after only a couple of minutes. Lets hope Sony’s servers can cope with the big demand. After changing the password for PSN, I’ll be investigating if its possible to pull your credit card details from the system. I suspect many of you may want to do the same. Hopefully its not as painful as removing it from Xbox Live.
Update
The download is now complete, only took around 5 minutes on ADSL2 connection. Now for the installing phase.
Update 2
So while the firmware is available it seems the PlayStation Network is still down here. Upon signing into the PlayStation Network, users still see the message “PlayStation network is currently undergoing maintenance, even after the new firmware. Grrrrr. So frustrating. Back to waiting.
Update 3
You can at least get info on changing your PSN password.
PSN coming back online slowly, Australia still waiting
Posted Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 10:18 pm by Jason Cartwright
After being offline for 2 days shy of a month, the PlayStation Network is beginning its relaunch. The PSN Relaunch comes with a pre-recorded video from Sony CEO, Hazuo Hirai in which he apologies for the outage and thanks you for being patient. You’ve all been patient right ?
The first of a multi-phase relaunch has begun. Currently PlayStation and PSP owners in the US are able to use some services, with other countries due to receive PSN Relaunch phase 1 over the next few days. Phase 1 of the PSN Relaunch will include:
- PlayStation and Qriocity sign-in
- Online gameplay (PS3 and PSP)
- Music Unlimited (PS3 and PC)
- 3rd party services – (Netflix, Hulu, Vudu + MLB tv)
- Friends list
- Trophy comparisons
- PlayStation Home
What’s not included in phase one..
- Sign up for new accounts
- PlayStation Store
To prevent future attacks, Sony have implemented a number of new security protections. They include Advanced Security Technology, Increased Levels of Encryption, Additional Firewalls, Early Warning Systems. While these vague and borderline comical explanations of increased securities at Sony, only time will tell if they are enough to stop future attacks.
When the PlayStation Network is back online in your region, you will be forced to download and install a new firmware for your PS3/PSP. You will also be forced to change your account password. Given that these were taken in the hack, it makes sense to force people to change their password, but its equally important for users to change it anywhere else those same credentials have been used.
Sony are offering users a welcome back package, details of which will be made public in the next few days. Hirai says that it will include content and services. The initial compensation package discussed was to include 1 month of free PlayStation Plus and some kind of game. Given the PSN downtime stretched from a week to a month, the ‘welcome back package’ will likely be more substantial in an effort to keep customers.
More info @ PlayStation
PSN shut down because your details were stolen
Posted Wednesday, April 27, 2011 at 8:55 am by Jason Cartwright
Sony have finally come clean about why they had to switch off and are rebuilding the PlayStation Network. What is now a PR disaster for the company, they say they discovered the “illegal and unauthorized intrusion” between April 17th and April 19th. However this first consumers knew of the breach was on Thursday 21st when PSN went offline.
Sony say:
As soon as we learned of this issue, 1) we temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services in order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services
But that just isn’t the case, we know there were multiple days in between. With almost a week where the PSN was compromised, what information did the hackers obtain ? Cue the bad news..
How many were effected ?
Our investigation indicates that all PlayStation Network/ Qriocity accounts may have been affected.
Does that mean all users’ information was compromised?
In terms of possibility, yes. We believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state/province, zip or postal code), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password, login, password security answers, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data may have been obtained, including purchase history and billing address (city, state/province, zip or postal code). If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, it is possible that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may also have been obtained.
When will the service resume?
We will keep the service down to allow us to conduct a thorough investigation and verify smooth operation of our network services but are working hard to resume the services as soon as we can be reasonably assured security concerns are addressed.
Wow. Just wow. When PSN’s multi-day outage worsened, many jumped to point out Xbox Live suffered an extended outage during Christmas 2007, but its clear that outage was more of technical one, the PSN compromise is much more serious.
This downtime just turned into a serious breach of trust and personal data, worse yet is the time it took Sony to come clean about it.
What you should do now
The best thing to do now is check your credit card account for any unauthorised transactions, then keep checking, once compromised, there’s no telling when the info will be used. As for email and physical spam to your home addresses, we’re all used to dealing with that.
What we’re not in a position to protect against is identity fraud. PSN owners trusted Sony with the most important data, after all they are Sony. There was a level of security and trust implicit with a company of that size and reputation. That has now been irrevocably broken.
Once PSN is back online, will you trust it ?
No Happy Easter for PlayStation Network. PSN still down
Posted Sunday, April 24, 2011 at 12:13 pm by Jason Cartwright
Image credit: Flickr and Flickr
Sorry PSN users, news on Easter Sunday is not good. With another update on the PlayStation blog, Sony identify the cause as an ‘external intrusion’ as the outage enters its third day.
An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. In order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services going forward, we turned off PlayStation Network & Qriocity services on the evening of Wednesday, April 20th. Providing quality entertainment services to our customers and partners is our utmost priority. We are doing all we can to resolve this situation quickly, and we once again thank you for your patience. We will continue to update you promptly as we have additional information to share.
While on the surface the downtime just seems like a major inconvenience, especially to new Portal 2 owners, but in reality some users are paying for PlayStation Plus. Complaining when a free service is down is one thing, complaining about not getting a service your paying for is entirely another.
While Sony doesn’t commit to any service level agreements, you can be sure this outage will affect subscriber numbers. Also spare a thought for anyone who rented a movie the day before the outage and was charged for something they couldn’t watch. Hopefully Sony gets on top of the issue soon and things can return to normal, but you can be sure there’ll be claims for compensation that arise as a result the shut down.
Sony’s revenues will also be significantly impacted as a result of this, every hour that goes by is costing them revenue. Everything from rented movies, margins on games and add-on content, purchased items in HOME and revenue from music service Qriocity are all frozen since Thursday. It is likely this shut down as a result of the intrusion / hacking / botnet is likely to cost Sony hundreds of thousands of dollars. For the perpetrators of the attack, I hope you covered your tracks, the Sony lawyers will be on your doorstep.
More information @ PlayStation blog.
