For those of you who own a Playstation 3, you may have noticed that access to the Playstation Network has been down since late Thursday last week. There’s been plenty of rumour and speculation over exactly what happened, however here is the official statement from Playstation in Australia (Sony Computer Entertainment).
STATEMENT FROM SCE AUSTRALIA
“Recently PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorised intrusion into our network. In response to this external intrusion we have responded quickly and are behaving responsibly.
As soon as we learned of this issue, 1) we temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services in order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services, 2) we have also engaged an outside, recognised security firm to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened, and 3) quickly taken steps to enhance security and strengthen our network infrastructure by re-building our system to provide greater protection of personal information.
We greatly appreciate the patience, understanding and goodwill of our account holders as we do whatever it takes to resolve these issues as quickly and efficiently as practicable.
For the security of our valued customers, we are encouraging all account holders to be aware of email, telephone, and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. Sony will not contact you in any way, including by email, asking for your credit card number, or other personally identifiable information. If you are asked for this information, you can be confident Sony is not the entity asking. When the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are fully restored, we strongly recommend that you log on and change your password. Additionally, if you use your PlayStation Network or Qriocity user name or password for other unrelated services or accounts, we recommend that you change them, as well.”
