We are coming back online!

Not only that, but we are getting compensated for the downtime!

New posts on the U.S. Playstation Blog go into detail about new developments regarding the Playstation Network outage. First of all Sony made absolutely certain that no cases of identity theft have yet been reported. To Sony’s knowledge, the reports alleging that millions of PSN users’ credit card info has been put up for sale on forums and IRC networks is false. Sony has been investigating every single rumor regarding PSN user credit card information, and everything so far seems to point toward our credit card info being safe.

Secondly, Sony has clarified a few things regarding our other personal info, specifically our passwords. While they weren’t encrypted, they were scrambled using a “cryptographic hash function”. They were not actually stored in clear text form. Even so, Sony recommends we change our PSN passwords as soon as we get the chance to, as well as change the password to any other online account that used the same password as our PSN account.

Thirdly, Sony has said that some PSN service will come back online this week. Specifically, Sony plans to get online play, music services, friend lists, online chat, exiting movie rentals, and (most importantly) account management and password reset up and running by the end of the week. PSN users will be forced to choose a new password that differed from their old password when signing on for the first time after the new PSN update. The password will only be changeable on the PS3 that originally created the PSN account. (Yes, this means that people who have migrated their PSN accounts to a new PS3 are in trouble. Most likely you can call Sony customer service to get this cleared up.

Sony has said that the new PSN infrastructure will include:

• Added automated software monitoring and configuration management to help defend against new attacks
• Enhanced levels of data protection and encryption
• Enhanced ability to detect software intrusions within the network, unauthorized access and unusual activity patterns
• Implementation of additional firewalls

They have also said that they have moved the physical location of the PSN servers to a new undisclosed location from their previous station in San Diego.

When the PSN comes back online, PSN users will be offered certain “welcome back” rewards. These rewards include 30 days free membership to Playstation Plus, 30 days free membership to Qriocity, and a free Playstation Store download of some sort that has not yet been revealed. The Playstation Store itself will remain offline until Sony is certain that the network is totally secure.

Sony executives Kazuo Hirai, Shinji Hasejima and Shiro Kambe publicly bowed, apologized, and asked for forgiveness in a recent Sony press conference. They also assured us that things would return to normal shortly.

It’s a shame that Sony Online Entertainments PC portal went down recently as well. A second hacking attempt? That’s another story for another time.

Related posts on 30ninjas.com:

• Sony Network Outage Now a Global Incident
• Playstation Network Outage Goes from Bad to Worse
• The Sony Playstation Network Outage Updates
• Playstation Network Goes Down Hard
• Sony Outage Updates — We Aren’t Out of Hot Water Yet
• The Big PSN Outage Weekly Update