If you're a PlayStation 3 owner who enjoys online gaming, odds are you've already experienced PSNs downtime first hand. PlayStation's online network has been FUBAR all weekend in what most thought would be a service blip, but has turned out to be a failure of catastrophic proportions, with no end in sight. WTF mate?
To be honest, I don't think anyone has a clue to what's ailing PSN. Sony is blaming hackers for disabling the system, which is plausible seeing as how hacktivist group Anonymous had threatened Sony and PlayStation with action as retaliation against their persecution of Geohotz (great hacker, horrid rapper). Anonymous, always ones to soak up the limelight, would never shy away from accusations this large. Though they haven't claimed responsibility for the latest attack, they haven't ruled out the actions of other off-shoot groups. WTF mate?
The latest on the topic comes from Joystiq (via Reddit, of course) where some dude who claims to be someone he may or may not be - a mod at PSX-Scene - has the whole scoop. "The truth is, there was a new CFW (custom firmware) released known as Rebug (link omitted). It essentially turns a retail console into a dev console (not fully, but gives you a lot of the same options that usually dev's only have access to)." No big deal right? The redditor continues, "well, it also turns out that some people over at NGU found out that you could provide fake CC# info and the authenticity of the information was never checked as you were on Sony's private developer PSN network (essentially a network that Sony trusted). What happened next was extreme piracy of PSN content. Sony realizing the issue here shut down the network." He also states that personal information is not in jeopardy, so don't go canceling your mom's credit card yet.
It doesn't sound unlikely, but Sony, WTF mate? If true, why couldn't you say something along those lines instead of spewing garbage about hackers attacking PSN. If this is the case, hackers did take anything down, they found their way into the network, and with no real security in place, Sony has taken down the network themselves.
This whole ordeal is frustrating for me, and I don't even use PSN that frequently. I can only imagine what the Killzone 3 faithful are going through right now. I don't know what the underlying cause is, but I do know that PlayStation needs to make good on this outage one way or another, especially to the people who are paying $50 a year for a service you can't render due to the inability to provide a secure network.