Sony PlayStation Network creeps back online
Sony has begun to resurrect the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services, which were taken down after the entertainment company suffered a major cyberattack.
Sony announced that the services were being restored on a country-by-country basis on Sunday, with restoration beginning in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East and the Americas.
"Working closely with several respected outside security firms, [Sony] has implemented new and additional security measures that strengthen safeguards against unauthorised activity, and provide consumers with greater protection of their personal information," Sony said in a statement on Sunday.
Initially, North America and Europe will gain access to sign-in for the PlayStation Network (PSN) and Qriocity services; online gameplay across the PlayStation 3 and PSP consoles; the playback of rented content from PlayStation Store Video Store on PS3, PSP and Media Go; Q Music Unlimited for subscribers on PS3 and PC; the VidZone and MUBI services and the 'Friends' category on PS3 and PlayStation Home.
The company hopes to complete the restoration of services by 31 May, Sony said.
The PSN network was taken down on 20 April in response to a hack that compromised the personal data of over 70 million users of the service.
The hack, which occurred between 17 and 19 April, gave hackers access to names, usernames, addresses, email addresses, birthdays and PSN and Qriocity passwords of consumers of the services, Sony disclosed in late April.
Little is known about the technical specifics of the hack, though a recent unnamed source, quoted by Bloomberg, indicated that rented hardware from Amazon Web Services may have been used as a staging point for the hack.
Additional PSN safety measure
Before being able to access PSN consumers will need to update their PSN account passwords, Sony said. PS3 owners will be able to do this by updating the console to version 3.61 of its software — which was issued on 14 May — and then signing in to PSN from the XMB (XrossMediaBar) menu. Otherwise, passwords can be changed by visiting a Sony link from PCs.
Any queries from UK consumers should be directed to Sony via the contact details on its UK PSN-outage page, the company said.
As a consequence of the hack Sony has made "considerable enhancements" to the security of its services by adding additional software monitoring, increasing levels of encryption and rolling-out additional firewalls. The company has also added various security services to its network infrastructure, including an early warning system for identifying symptoms of services being probed by prospective hackers.
Update:2:44pm
While various US-based users of social network Twitter have confirmed to ZDNet UK that their PSN services came back online in the USA late last night, multiple UK consumers report that they are still unable to access the service.
Update:5:47pm
The official Sony Twitter account for the European region has said it will tweet on a region-by-region basis as PSN services resume.