X

Sony: We're 'rebuilding' PlayStation Network

Company's efforts to get its PlayStation Network back online are proving time consuming. And for another day, the service is not available to gamers.

Don Reisinger
CNET contributor Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has covered everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Besides his work with CNET, Don's work has been featured in a variety of other publications including PC World and a host of Ziff-Davis publications.
Don Reisinger
2 min read

Sony's PlayStation Network is still down, and there's no telling when it might come back up.

Over the weekend, Sony Computer Entertainment America's senior director of corporate communications and social media, Patrick Seybold, said that his company is currently "working around the clock to bring [the PlayStation Network and Qriocity] back online." He also shed some light on exactly what Sony is doing to ensure such an outage doesn't occur again.

"Our efforts to resolve this matter involve re-building our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure," Seybold wrote. "Though this task is time-consuming, we decided it was worth the time necessary to provide the system with additional security."

Sony's PlayStation Network, which has over 70 million users worldwide, and allows people to download content and play video games over the Web from their consoles, went down in the middle of last week. As of this writing, when people try to log in to their PlayStation Network accounts, an error message appears, saying the service is "currently undergoing maintenance."

When the outage first occurred, some reports suggested that the hacker group Anonymous was behind the attack.

In early April, the group posted a statement on a forum, announcing its decision to target Sony for the company's legal battle against hacker George Hotz. Anonymous said that Sony would "now be trodden on" by its group. Shortly thereafter, Anonymous temporarily took down Sony sites.

Sony and Hotz have since reached a settlement.

Anonymous has not claimed responsibility for the PlayStation Network outage. Last week, a representative from the organization posted on a Web site that that the group's members have "entirely lost interest in wasting their time on Sony."

On Friday, Seybold wrote that the outage was due to an "external intrusion." He didn't provide any further details beyond that.

Sony did not immediately respond to CNET's request for comment on when the PlayStation Network might be back up.