It’s Sony temporary!

As I’m sure any of us with access to a PlayStation 3 will already know, Sony’s PlayStation Network was hacked between the 17th and the 19th of April and the personal information of up to 77 million users was taken. News of the attack on Sony has lead to widespread apprehension about the theft of credit card information of gamers which could be used or sold on. This is a particular worry for those of us who can’t remember more than one password, and so have had to spend the last three panicked weeks working out what we are subscribed to. Sony, of course, has denied that there are any confirmed instances of stolen credit card details being used, but advised all members that someone (they aren’t sure who) now has access to all of our details and that we should probably do something about it. Sony chief executive Sir Howard Stringer has apologised officially in a blog post and announced that they will provide a $1 million identity theft insurance policy but, somewhat irritatingly, this is only for US users as of yet.

Sony were quick to place the blame on hacking community ‘Anonymous’, the group responsible for bringing down the systems of credit card companies such as Mastercard in support of WikiLeaks. The motive is certainly there – Anonymous has already promised an attack against the technology giants in reaction to their prosecution of George Hotz after he shared the PS3’s ‘root key’ which allows the system to be ‘jailbroken’. Unlike in previous instances, however, Anonymous has explicitly denied responsibility for the attack. In an official statement, they declared that the theft of credit card information was against their modus operandi and that it was being made a scapegoat. The cynics among us might argue that they would never admit responsibility, however; doing so would hardly help their public image and rather alienate and risk death threats from die-hard online gamers. I, on the other hand, am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt; it would be somewhat hypocritical of them to be attacking ‘evil’ corporations for not sharing information whilst simultaneously stealing the details of innocent gamers for their own personal gain.

Many of us who have felt the bitter sting of the hack, however, will have faced far greater agitation than the theft of our passwords. The lack of online gaming has had a serious impact on the relaxation of millions who need to release stress and unwind by mowing down other gamers on _Call of Duty: Black Ops_. Sony has yet to release a concrete date for the re-launch of the network and so the suffering of countless boyfriends and husbands (and of course girlfriends and wives) continues, as they are forced to pay attention to their other halves and socialise under natural light.

Yet all is not lost. For those of us who have not managed to stop worrying about our kill-to-death ratio long enough to eject _Call of Duty_ since we bought it on the day of release, this can be seen as a liberation. Not because we can now leave the PlayStation and get on with the revision that we are supposed to be doing, but because we can rediscover the joys of our old games before first-person shooters took over. Thus I implore you to dig out _Crash Bandicoot_ and complete _Metal Gear Solid_ for the fifth time, and remember that there is a wealth of creative games out there that have been left to gather dust. Finally, if worst comes to worst, the network should be up and running again at some point within the next few days or weeks, and it could be worse: we could be paying £40 a year for Xbox Live.