Most Recent: PS3

Day four of the second PlayStation Network outage of 2011 is here and Sony still doesn’t have very many answers for us.

The latest statement from the company reveals they “are working around the clock to bring them both back online,” but that there’s still no timetable on when the PSN will be operational again. Apparently, part of the reason for the continued downtime is Sony’s desire to protect the PSN from future attacks as they are also “re-building [the] system to further strengthen [the] network infrastructure […] to provide the system with additional security.”

However, PlayStation Universe received an email from “a source with close connections to Sony Computer Entertainment Europe” discussing the latest round of attacks in a little more detail. According to the source, the PSN was hit with a LOIC attack, a specific type of denial-of-service attack that was previously used by Anonymous in their operations against Scientology websites and organizations that disapproved of WikiLeaks. Anonymous has denied responsibility for these attacks and claimed OpSony is over.

PSU’s tipster also gave a timeline for when we might see the PSN back online. He said “Japanese servers may be restored tomorrow while the U.S. and E.U. servers will likely be operational the following day.”

We reported yesterday on the PlayStation Network outages and even speculated that it may have been self-righteous hackers seeing us as collateral damage yet again. It looks like we might be right: a new message, posted last night on the PlayStation Blog, cites an “external intrusion” as the interruption to services on both the PlayStation Network and Qriocity. Sony shut off both services in order to conduct a full investigation, calling us their utmost priority, and asking for our patience.

“Hacktivist” group Anonymous has come out with a statement of their own and announced “For Once We Didn’t Do It.” The group was responsible for the previous PSN outages and promised their next attack on Sony would be much bigger and grander.

But if it’s not Anonymous, then my guess is it’s most likely a copycat. They assured the public that we wouldn’t be in the line of fire anymore. But there’s really no honor among thieves, and that’s all hackers really are. And yes, that reference is to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, because I am super pissed that this weekend’s Hammer-only Lab event and Triple Cash were both postponed due to the outage. Thanks a lot.

The PlayStation Network is down, and some people are really pissed off. Namely, all the people who purchased Mortal Kombat, Portal 2, and SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs and expected to be able to actually play those games online. While the PlayStation Blog says they’re investigating the outage, it also says it might take a full day or two before they fix the problem. Could this be Anonymous striking again, considering us to be collateral damage, taking advantage of crushing online capabilities during a peak time? I sure hope not, because I know that whether or not those kids are ever unmasked, they’re going to Internet hell. It’s a special hell for people who troll on 4chan, prevent people from playing video games (Microsoft timed exclusivity deal writers are on this list), and the people who convinced me Damnation was a good game before it shipped.