Sony Admits PlayStation Taken Down by Cyberattack

[Omaha Steve]

Source: NBC News

Sony has appeared to admit for the first time that the disruption to its PlayStation network that ruined Christmas for untold children was the result of a cyberattack.

"The video game industry has been experiencing high levels of traffic designed to disrupt connectivity and online gameplay," Catherine Jensen, vice president of consumer experience, said in a blog post Saturday. "Multiple networks, including PSN, have been affected over the last 48 hours."

Sony and Microsoft, whose online network for its Xbox game system was similarly crippled by what hackers claimed was a targeted attack on Christmas Day, have declined to say what was behind the outage. But a "denial of service attack" that is sometimes used by hackers operates in the same way that Jensen described, by flooding networks with traffic.

A hacker group called "Lizard Squad" gleefully claimed responsibility for knocking the services offline, saying on Twitter on Thursday that it had overwhelmed Sony and Microsoft's servers with bogus user traffic. The service went down just before Christmas.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sony-admits-playstation-taken-down-cyberattack-n275681

[vanamonde]

1. Call me a grumpy old Luddite fart

But other than blacking out Fox News I can't think of much else that hackers could do to improve this country than getting kids away from their stupid game consoles for a few hours. Maybe while it was down they had to go read a book, or play with the dog, or go outside for a while.
"Ruined Christmas for untold children" my ass.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. You are a grumpy old Luddite fart

Well, you DID say to cal you that.

I don't know anything about those games, at all, but it appears they have to be hooked into the internet to play?

All this "cloud" stuff seems very vulnerable to me.

[vanamonde]

3. I'm proud to carry the flag. n/t

[vanamonde]

4. I don't think you have to be online to play

You do have to be online in order for them to gather as much information about you as they possibly can. It's all just a hook for corporate invasiveness.

[JonLP24]

9. Only to play the online version of the game

but there are many other services and apps you can download. Online you can watch Youtube, HBO Go, Amazon TV, NBA League Pass, NFL Sunday Ticket, NHL Center ICE, MLB, and much more.

[christx30]

5. Grumpy Luddite?

You and I should have tshirts made.
And I agree 100% with you. If the game network being down is enough to "ruin Christmas", then you need to get your priorities in check.

[blackcrow]

6. Exactly

Christmas can only be improved by getting people's faces out of electronic devices. Phone calls to families being the exception.

[Sunlei]

7. "bogue user traffic" millions of gamers hitting the logon button thousands of times

[JudyM]

8. Good one. nt

[JonLP24]

10. I doubt it

I never had a problem for months. It didn't log in the morning & afternoon of Christmas but I was able to hook later that night. It was down all day on the 26th. 27th I was able to and haven't had any problems since.