Earlier this week, activist group Anonymous threatened to go after Sony's online presence in retaliation for the company's legal actions against PS3 hackers. The next day, the PlayStation Network went down. Coincidence?
It may be, but then, it doesn't sound like it was, Sony today conceding the possibility of the obvious and in a statement issued to GameSpot admits that it is "currently investigating [the network instability], including the possibility of targeted behavior of an outside party. If this is indeed caused by such act, we want to once again thank our customers who have borne the brunt of the attack through interrupted service. Our engineers are working to restore and maintain the services, and we appreciate our customers' continued support."
Getting things back up to full speed shouldn't be too hard for Sony, as Anonymous claims to have stopped its attack on the PS3's online service, a statement on the group's website reading "We realize that targeting the PSN is not a good idea. We have therefore temporarily suspended our action, until a method is found that will not severely impact Sony customers."
"Anonymous is on your side, standing up for your rights. We are not aiming to attack customers of Sony. This attack is aimed solely at Sony, and we will try our best to not affect the gamers, as this would defeat the purpose of our actions. If we did inconvenience users, please know that this was not our goal."
Sony acknowledges possible denial-of-service attack [GameSpot]