Sony hit with new hack attack, game developers angry

Sony's struggle to re-launch its online PlayStation Network service continues to hit snags. A new report suggests the Herculean effort exerted by unnumbered experts might not be enough to combat malicious hackers, and that gamers eager to get back to killing friends online in "Killzone 3" could be waiting a big longer.

A brazen third attack was carried out over the weekend after hackers published personal information on a Sony site.

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Reuters pointed out that around 2,500 names and addresses were published for a brief period of time on Saturday at an unnamed and inactive Sony site. The info, which Sony said was from a 2001 contest and did not contain credit card numbers, was promptly removed.

The report contrasts one from CNET today that claims Sony noted a previous article the site published that mentioned the impending attack and subsequently took action to prevent further damage to the already battered online infrastructure.

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"There goes our window," said one of the alleged hackers in an IRC posting found by the site. "Apparently Sony saw that article because the last server that I could access is offline now."

The unnamed hacker surmised that the previously vulnerable servers were patched.

Ultimately, it's difficult to ascertain just how successful Sony was at limiting the scope of the planned attack. The hackers seem to have somewhat succeeded, but considering the relatively small amount of information published - and the fact it was done so at an effectively dead site - lends credence to the belief the company stopped an attack that could have been much, much worse. It's possible, however, that this could be another roadblock for a company still dealing from fallout from over two weeks ago.

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Sony's earlier assessment that the PlayStation Network would begin its slow but sure recovery on May 3rd was squashed last week, leaving gamers clinging to the company's much more nebulous timeline: "sometime this month," according to a statement made by executive deputy president Kazuo Hirai at a Japanese press conference last Sunday.

Hirai apologized numerous times at the event and laid out several steps the company would take in the coming weeks to mend fences with frustrated consumers, including identity theft protections services and free games.

On May 5th, Sony's head honcho Howard Stringer issued his own apology. Stringer also claimed some aspects of PSN would be up "in the coming days."

A day later, Sony's Senior Director of Corporate Communications and Social Media Patrick Seybold posted a disheartening update on the official U.S. PlayStation blog.

"We were unaware of the extent of the attack on Sony Online Entertainment servers, and we are taking this opportunity to conduct further testing of the incredibly complex system," he said. "We will update you with more information as soon as we have it."

Seybold reiterated that security was the company's "utmost priority," and refrained from offering his own timeline.

A outlying question amongst gamers and insiders alike is, how exactly is the PSN outage affecting third party companies that sell their content over the service.

One publisher spoke up today.

Christian Svensson, Senior Vice President of Capcom, said in a post at the company's "Capcom Unity" forum that he was "frustrated and upset" by the PSN shutdown.

"The resulting outage is obviously costing us hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in revenue," Svensson said. "These are funds we rely on to bring new games to market for our fans."

Svensson ruminated that the attack may seek to "'punish' Sony for some perceived injustice," but that consumers are actually taking the brunt of it.

"They're also punishing millions of other consumers and businesses which makes it impossible to be sympathetic to their 'cause,'" said Svensson, suggesting the executive believes the attacks are indeed related to Anonymous' anti-Sony operations.

"OpSony" started as retaliation for the company's legal tactics against PS3 hackers George "GeoHot" Hotz and Alexander "graf_chokolo" Egorenkov. But after a less-than-stellar follow-through which Sony called merely "annoying," Anonymous called off its dogs. A real-life boycott planned by the group also failed to garner much interest.

The hacker collective has now twice denied having any involvement with the PSN outage, though some reports now suggest otherwise.

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