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It looks like gamers aren’t the only ones that can’t believe Sony waited as long as they did to inform consumers about their lost personal information. Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal has written a letter to SCEA President and CEO Jack Tretton demanding that consumers be compensated for the security breach and Sony’s failure to notify PlayStation Network users in a timely manner.

The Senator is asking Sony to provide PSN users with free access to credit reporting services for two years (this service is actually already provided by the federal government) and asked that “affected individuals [..] be provided with sufficient insurance to protect them from the possible financial consequences of identity theft.”

While I’m sure gamers everywhere appreciate Blumenthal going to bat for them, Sony is actually claiming that they just learned of the user information theft on Monday, April 25th. A Sony spokesman posted the following timeline of events on the PlayStation.Blog late last night:

There’s a difference in timing between when we identified there was an intrusion and when we learned of consumers’ data being compromised. […] It was necessary to conduct several days of forensic analysis, and it took our experts until yesterday to understand the scope of the breach.

The forehead-slapping stupidity of that statement makes me think the Senator might have a point. Sony’s failure to admit it was a strong possibiliy that hackers accessed the personal information of 77 million PSN users on the 19th is inexcusable.

Maybe it really is the “ApocalyPS3” for Sony…

First, the good news. Sony has “a clear path” to bringing the PlayStation Network back online. The software giant expects some services to be back online within a week. It’s not much, but a preliminary timetable is more than we knew before.

Now the bad news… HACKERS HAVE STOLEN YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION FROM SONY! According to Sony, during the intrusion, an outside party obtained the following information from PSN users:

[N]ame, address (city, state, zip), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained. […] If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained.

While Sony states they are still investigating the security breach, I can’t believe they just learned what personal information (and possible credit card information) the hackers gained access to today. Sony should have notified PS3 owners about this possibility a week ago and I’m shocked that they, quite literally, said nothing over the holiday weekend.

More information is available at the PlayStation.Blog.

It’s been a rough couple days for PlayStation Network users, and despite rumors of the service coming back online soon, there’s really no end in sight. The latest update from the PlayStation Blog claims there’s no “update or timeframe to share at this point in time,” but that they’ll let us know as soon as new information becomes available.

Satoshi Fukuoka, spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment in Tokyo, stated that a full investigation is underway to resolve the problem, which still is not being disclosed to the public. Even more alarming is that the company doesn’t know the scope of the security breach, stating that they don’t know if credit card information has been stolen. Fortunately, Fukuoka assures everyone that PlayStation will disclose such a breach immediately if it turns out to be true.

This is getting really bad, but I’m sure we all know who’s really behind this, despite them claiming they wouldn’t attack the PSN anymore. I guess they’ve gone back to looking at gamers everywhere as collateral damage.

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.