Sony Restores Basic PlayStation Network Services

Sony resumed basic services on its PlayStation Network and Qriocity services over the weekend for many of its markets, following a major security breach last month, but said it was hitting delays with some of its operations.

PlayStation Network provides gaming services, while Qriocity provides content and services to Sony’s connected consumer devices.

Basic services restored

Basic services were restored for users in North America on Saturday and in other markets, including Europe, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand on Sunday. Sony is delaying the relaunch in Asia while it discusses security issues with regulators. The relaunch follows more than three weeks of interrupted service.

Sony pulled the plug for the two services on 19 April after discovering that a San Diego data centre had been hacked. An investigation revealed the theft of data such as user names, email addresses, login IDs and passwords for a large number of users. Sony stored credit card information for about 10 million users in the affected database, but claims this data was encrypted.

Sony is asking PlayStation users to download a firmware update for the console in order to reconnect, and following this users must change their passwords.

Sony has restored services such as the playback of video that had already been rented, audio streaming, access to third-party services such as Netflix and Hulu, PlayStation Home and chat features. The company said it hopes to fully restore services outside of Asia by the end of May.

The company admitted the restoration of services was delayed by the large number of email messages generated by the password reset process, with some Internet service providers throttling messages from Sony due to the high volume.

Hiccups

Sony suspended the password-reset process for 30 minutes on Monday morning in order to clear a backlog of messages.

The company has said it will introduce stronger user data protection policies in order to mitigate the impact of future attacks, and has said it will introduce new security measures such as increased encryption levels, more firewalls and an early-warning system for breach attempts.

Japanese authorities are waiting for Sony to fully introduce these new measures before allowing the networks to be reactivated, according to a report from gadget website Engadget.