By Ryan Krause –
Just because it’s free, doesn’t always mean it’s reliable.
Picture this: You come home after a long day at school, sit down to relax and play some “Portal 2” in co-operative mode with a friend via the PlayStation Network (PSN) and you find out that the network isn’t up. You think, “Oh, must just need some maintenance and it’ll be up fairly soon.” So you continue on through your daily routine without your Play Station 3.
Well, this isn’t the case.
At the time of this article being written, we’re dragging on to three weeks that the network has been down. And people are, well, they’re pretty upset about it.
Penn Manor senior Trevor Troop said, “I feel that whoever is responsible for this should pay.”
Troop is a PlayStation 3 owner and enjoys his free online experience.
The PlayStation Network is the online hub for PS3 gamers to access online multi-player and other applications for download. The PSN is largely popular because of the fact that it’s free, and Xbox Live is not.
What caused the PSN to be down?
There’s speculation that because Sony sued George Hotz, the creator of the PS3 firmware hack aptly titled “GeoHot” for infringing copyrighted material, the online group titled “Anonymous” is the source of the cause. The GeoHot mod is a gateway for allowing pirated games to be downloaded and played on a modded PS3 console, of course Sony did not approve of this publicly released program.
Troop said, “I blame whoever did it, not Sony.”
But who is this “Anonymous?”
Wikipedia defines the group “Anonymous” as, “An Internet meme originating 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, representing the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, digitized global brain.”
Rumors point towards them because two things.
One: it’s assumed that they want to get back at Sony for suing a fellow hacker.
Two: They’ve “claimed” that they did it.
Since the group is made up of thousands of people connected via the Internet, there will probably never be a legit answer. But many from that community have claimed to have done it. Sony has said otherwise.
MaximumPC writes, “Sony’s PlayStation Twitter account, however, claims the service is undergoing ‘sporadic maintenance.'”
Members from the online community have come up with their own “solution” titled “Codename: Rebug.” It was a workaround that allowed users who had a modded PS3 to connect to the PSN even though it was blocked from the regular users. But don’t buy into it; the mod actually stole information from the user. The trouble began when users found out that stolen credit card information from others could be used to download applications from PSN.
Now, Sony “believes” there is a possibility that subscribers to the PSN could possibly have vital personal information stolen.
“Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state, zip), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained,” Sony stated in a recent Play Station Blog post.
Will Sony be able to recover from this downfall?
Troop thinks so, “Oh yeah, they’re a good company with loyal customers.”
Remember that whole red ring of death thing? Yeah, that was way worse.
That’s what you get for owning a Ps3. Red ring of death, seriously? I remember 5th grade.