Sony Playstation Network restored, and more info on the hack

[thewayne]

Apparently it is fully available in the US, that is, after you download a mandatory patch. According to Wired, "only some territories - the Americas, Europe, New Zealand, Australia and the Middle East - will see their PlayStation Network services restored on Saturday. Other territories’ start dates will be announced later, Sony said. It plans to have every service running in every territory by the end of May." Not all services are up, but online play is.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/14/playstation-3-system-update-3-61-available-now-psn-still-not-re/

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/05/playstation-network-online/

http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/05/15/0153219/Sony-Releases-PS3-361-Update-Ahead-of-PSNs-Imminent-Return

According to a story in Bloomberg, the attackers rented servers in Amazon's EC2 cloud to carry out the attack. They were smart enough to use fake information to get the service started, said server has since been shut down. When you get down to this, it's just a variation on the previous methods of using a compromised server to launch attacks as a level of indirection between you and your target.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-13/sony-network-said-to-have-been-invaded-by-hackers-using-amazon-com-server.html

http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/05/15/150226/Amazon-Servers-Used-In-Sony-Playstation-Hack