PSN Still Down, No End In Sight

Yes folks, this is what still greets you when trying to sign in to the PSN.  Today marks the fourth consecutive day that the network has been down, and while Sony admitted last night on it's official US blog that an "external intrusion" was the cause of the outage we've yet to hear any details of the intrusion.  No info such as if credit card information had been obtained, user information leaked, or accounts being compromised has been detailed.  On top of this, there's no end in sight either.  No ETA to restoration of service has been given.  Not even a nebulous "we'll have it back up this weekend".  The utter lack of communication here has been extremely troubling.  The fact that their own statement has them voluntarily keeping their own network down says a lot for the severity of what has occurred.  You would think (HOPE!) that they would see the value in informing their customers as to what exactly has happened, rather than continuing to allow rampant speculation to continue on unabated.  So I'll do what any good blogger would do in this situation.  Let's piss some gasoline on the fire!  Here are my theories as to what's happened, and they're in order of most to least scandalous, but with a likelihood factor on a scale of 1 (least) to 10 (definite).  I'm not limiting myself to only one of them being on the money... more than one could provide explanation for the delay.

Anonymous Succeeded In "Making Information Free" - Likelihood 2/10


Given that some of the group Anonymous's point was that the information that Geohot made public should be free, and that anyone should be able to do what they like with their system, imagine this scenario.  Geohot provides all the information he has on the PS3 to Anonymous despite it breaking the rules of his settlement, or he'd already provided this information to the group beforehand as an ace in the hole to cause Sony anguish if things went south in the legal department.  Anonymous finds a way to jailbreak *ALL* PS3's simply by logging on to the PSN.  Sony is then forced to keep the network down until they're able to ensure no PS3's end up jailbroken once they hit the PSN.  In addition to being a pretty spectacular feat, it would likely provide more "lulz" than the group has probably ever had at anyone's expense.  Combining the fact that, again, Sony voluntarily has the network down and won't say why, this is *almost* plausible.

Hackers Have Crippled the PSN, Sony Themselves Can't Get It Working Again - Likelihood 1/10


I put this likelihood at one of ten, but yet, part of me thinks this is more plausible than I'm giving it credit for being.  The geek in me realizes we live in an age of change control, constant backups, offsite disaster recovery sites and the like.  The other side of me can't help but wonder that since the PSN is free to all if Sony didn't skimp on these types of protections and is now really and truly in a world of hurt.

User Accounts Have Been Compromised - Likelihood 7/10


This is way more likely than I'd like to actually admit.  But like a broken record, I keep coming back to the fact that Sony is the one keeping the network down at this time.  A good reason to do this would be if account information was compromised that would allow the hacker group to log in as any of these accounts.  Sony would want to notify these users (maybe?!?) and let them have the ability to change their password to prevent the theft of any of their information or credit card numbers that have been assigned to the account before turning the network back on.  If this one is true, we will certainly be notified.  Much like the emails that went out detailing the failings of the email provider for several major corporations earlier this month, we will be notified if any of our information has been thieved.

Sony's Intrusion Detection Alerted Them To An Issue, But They're Still Investigating If Any Damage Actually Occurred - Likelihood 9/10


My money is personally on the fact that the red alert went up from Sony's intrusion detection systems, and it was serious enough to warrant investigation.  Rather than risk any potential for harm to the users, they've shut everything down until they're certain that there's nothing now hiding in the system that could bite users (and them) in the tuckus later.

Sony PR Has No Way to Spin This Positively, Kevin Butler Is Firing People At Will - Likelihood 10/10


At this point, Sony pretty much has its pants around its ankles.  They have a lot of explaining to do, and three statements with next to no information to the public in four days of outage aren't going to quell the rage of a consumer base that just bought Portal 2 or Mortal Kombat on Tuesday and now cannot play them online as they'd planned.  On top of that, with the 4/22 statement that they themselves took the network down, it makes their statements on 4/20 and 4/21 outright lies.  Which is it guys?  You don't know why it's down, or you took it down?  I really hope a journalist with more clout than my tiny little blog will take them to task for their lack of/conflicting information.  PR's only move at this point can be damage control and it will be very interesting to see what track they will take.  Will it be free stuff to the masses?  Will it be a giant middle finger and "Thanks for your patience during our downtime"?  Only time will give us that answer.