Great. Today was going quite nicely in terms of ‘normal’ news that won’t get us called names. Unfortunately the following message has been posted by Sony Online Entertainment:
“We have had to take the SOE service down temporarily. In the course of our investigation into the intrusion into our systems we have discovered an issue that warrants enough concern for us to take the service down effective immediately. We will provide an update later today (Monday).”
Fantastic. We will keep you updated with any further news, although apparently some SOE games are still playable offline.
The Lone Steven
I thought SOE had already taken down their services due to the PSN outage? i hope it is not another hacker trying to hack into it.Damm hackers.
Dan Lee
I thought that also, but this sounds like a new thing.
Foxhound_Solid
Interesting. Hackers are super tossers.
aerobes
Just as the cloud above Sony seemed to be lifting …. this happens.
I do hope it’s just a precautionary measure.
bully1990
Me too, let’s hope the announcement later clarifies things.
By the way, nice new avatar but I miss the old one ! Recently I’ve started just reading comments from names and avatars I recognise….. :-(
aerobes
It blends a little doesn’t it? Catface might be back someday. :)
bully1990
Hooray!
hazelam
they say bad news comes in threes, what’s next?
InternationalGamer
No fucking way…
The Irony baffeles me.
TURRICAN-808
Apparently, the PSN in Japan is back up?
http://news.vgamers.co.uk/playstation-network-psn-online-status-%E2%80%93-japan-live-dates-us-uk/
Those of us with JP accounts might want to give it a go….
TURRICAN-808
Just tried my JP account, unfortunately, it didn’t work…
TURRICAN-808
My JP account wouldn’t work because of the firmware update:
http://n4g.com/news/755288/playstation-network-psn-online-status-japan-is-live-possible-dates-for-us-uk
muted
isnt it tuesday in japan already, so hopefully they are trying to stick to what they said.
Smallville2106
Some ‘members’ need banning from this site.
FrusciantesGhost
Seems the PSN being down has turned many people a tad loopy… In the past 2 weeks there has been so many idiotic comments I’ve lost count.
colmshan1990
I can think of a few names in particular.
Not sure about banning though, a warning would probably suffice.
Bladesteel
To me this sounds more like they are closing them (new) barn door before the horse bolts. Eg they discover that some part of the system they are using has a known issue and shut it down to upgrade instead of waiting for it to be exploited. I’d wait for more details before I throw a fit over this one.
marshaal5
So according to the latest blog post passwords were NOT stored in plain text but were “they were transformed using a cryptographic hash function” coupled with credit card table being encrypted just what did sony do wrong again ?
thought this would have warranted a headline ?
http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2011/05/02/playstation-network-security-update/
Bladesteel
That is good news, but people should still change their passwords on PSN and other sites, especially if their password is an actual word. The passwords can still be found through what is known as a dictionary attack.
If they have a database of a few million hashed passwords they can take a word, run it through the hashing function and see if any of the hashed passwords stored match. That process can be automated by picking words from an electronic dictionary, and given the amount of date we’re talking about the crackers should get some passwords. If your password was a single word (in any language) you should assume they have it, and change it if you use it at any other sites where you use your email address as a login.
On the other hand if Sony has/had used a “Salt” the security is stronger. A salt is a random value that is stored in plaintext and hashed along with the password. If they’ve used it a cracker would have to calculate the hash of the word again for each salt+password pair they wanted to check against in the database, instead of once to check against all of the database. This makes a dictionary attack on the base a _lot_ slower.
I would love it if Sony could confirm or deny if they used (random) salts or not when they hashed our passwords.
(read about rainbow tables and cryptographic salts on wikipedia if you want to learn more)
E8_BALL_
a link in that article, which gives info re: Hash vs Encryption.
i found this quite helpful & interesting, not being the most computer literature & i’m sure i won’t be alone.
Encryption- the process of converting information from its normal, comprehensible form into an obscured guise, unreadable without special knowledge.
Hash – a special form of encryption often used for passwords, that uses a one-way algorithmthat when provided with a variable length unique input (message) will always provide a unique fixed length unique output called hash, or message digest
examples given… http://www.infocellar.com/networks/Security/hash.htm
Ten98
You can play online with a PS3:
GAME and Gamestation are now offering a brand new Xbox 360 when you trade in a PS3.
New Xbox 360s come with a 30 day free trial to Xbox live!