Pieces of the network were expected to come back online this week. Maybe not?
UPDATE: The story now reflects a letter released by Sony CEO Howard Stringer. --
Nope, still not up. This week? Who knows. Given the breadth of the intrusion into PlayStation Network, it's was a little surprising when Sony outright said parts of the service would come back online this week. The company made no promises about what PSN components would be available, but as Thursday closes out and PSN remains offline, Sony took to the PlayStation Blog to address concerns about the ability to hop online soon.
"Today," said senior director of corporate communications and social media Patrick Seybold, "our global network and security teams at Sony Network Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment began the final stages of internal testing of the new system, an important step towards restoring PlayStation Network and Qriocity services."
Sony also released a letter from CEO Howard Stringer, who's been silent since PSN went down.
"Let me assure you that the resources of this company have been focused on investigating the entire nature and impact of the cyber-attack we’ve all experienced and on fixing it," said Stringer. "We are absolutely dedicated to restoring full and safe service as soon as possible and rewarding you for your patience. We will settle for nothing less."
Stringer reiterated much of what's already been said ad nauseum the last two weeks, but responded directly to criticisms that Sony did not inform its customers about the breach of personal information early enough. His comments are not likely to make anyone feel better, as Stringer doesn't budge his position.
"It’s a fair question," he said. "As soon as we discovered the potential scope of the intrusion, we shut down the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services and hired some of the best technical experts in the field to determine what happened. I wish we could have gotten the answers we needed sooner, but forensic analysis is a complex, time-consuming process. Hackers, after all, do their best to cover their tracks, and it took some time for our experts to find those tracks and begin to identify what personal information had--or had not--been taken."
As for when PSN is coming back online, Stringer said the process will begin in the "coming days."
Sony has another day to hit their end-of-week deadline--unless they actually meant Sunday, I guess!
