'External Intrusion' Cause Of PSN Outage, Hacker Group Denies Involvement

Sony Computer Entertainment America this weekend said that an outside party has caused recent issues for PlayStation Network and Qriocity, resulting in Sony pulling down the online services. "An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services," said Patrick Seybold, senior director of Corporate Communications and Social Media at SCEA in a PlayStation Blog post Friday. He said the company turned off PlayStation Network and streaming content service Qriocity on Wednesday last week "In order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services going forward." In a new update on Saturday, he added that the company is still working around the clock to fix the issues, and is updating the service's security measures. The company said PSN and Qriocity services "have been suspended" and didn't offer a firm date when they would resume normally. "Our efforts to resolve this matter involve re-building our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure," he said. "Though this task is time-consuming, we decided it was worth the time necessary to provide the system with additional security." Earlier this month, hacker collective Anonymous threatened Sony's network with a distributed denial of service attack in protest of the company's treatment of a group of PlayStation 3 hackers in court. But the group claimed it halted its attack days later, postponing its efforts "until a method is found that will not severely impact Sony customers," the group said. A new video message posted on Saturday, purportedly from the group, denied any involvement with the current outage. Sony's latest updates have not named Anonymous specifically as the group behind the attacks on PlayStation Network. The video message stated, "A more likely explanation [for the outages] is that Sony is taking advantage of Anonymous' previous ill-will towards the company to distract users from the fact that the outage is actually an internal problem with the company's servers."