(Posted by: Harrison Milfeld)

In a video announcement today, Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai said that some phases of the PSN restoration have been completed across all of their platforms, thus bringing an almost end to a month-long crisis. 

The statement from Kazuo Hirai as follows: "I can't thank you enough for your patience and support during this time. We know even the most loyal customers have been frustrated by this process and are anxious to use their Sony products and services again. We are taking aggressive action at all levels to address the concerns that were raised by this incident, and are making consumer data protection a full-time, companywide commitment."

In addition to the restoration, Sony has put in place new security measures to make sure that similar attack does not surface. The new security measures allow Qriocity and PS3 users to reset their passwords immediately upon signing in.

For now, PlayStation owners can utter a huge sigh of relief as they can finally begin their online matches with SOCOM 4 or finally receive platinum status on Portal 2 after a month's wait. Happy gaming everyone. This time the terrorists will not win. 

(Posted by: Harrison Milfeld)

The long and drawn-out nightmare of many PlayStation 3 owners may soon be coming to an end…but not until the end of May.

Tokyo-based Sony spokesperson Shigenori Yoshida stated today that they expect PSN to be fully operational by month’s end. New security is being tested as we speak to ensure breaches that led to the online service’s collapse will not happen again. Now, there’s a small catch: Yoshida was speaking on behalf of the PSN/Qriocity service in Japan, not for America.

Sony of America has not set a solid timeline as to when North American PS3 owners can expect the service to be back online. If the service is indeed fully functional by May 31st, it would be a total of six weeks since the initial attack from hackers. Sony CEO Kaz Hirai has said that some portions of PSN would be working before the end of May, yet many PS3 continue to wait.

With Sony setting a date to have PSN back online, what will this mean for their showing at E3 the following week? Will the company discuss PSN’s restructuring, or simply show a bevy of Triple-A titles to ease the pain? Discuss. 

It's the big Five-O! The guys celebrate in style by doing more or less what they do every week! They talk about games, namely Portal 2, Mass Effect 2 and Minecraft. They go through new releases, like...sorry, there wasn't anything too memorable. Also, there's news, some of it involving PSN, some of it involving other...things. Finally, they reminisce about how far they've come as a podcast, namely, about ninety feet and one floor down. You have the right to remain silent! Anything you say can and will be used in The Gameshoe Podcast!

(Posted by: Eric Rees)

Alex won't like the picture but I needed something relevant and I don't have time this or next week to photoshop. 

Sony declined to testify in front of Congress today but they did send a letter answering all the questions that were posed and gave an overall layout of the situation at hand. 

Sony says that on 4:15 of April 19, the network administrators of Playstation Network first saw that there was some unauthorized access going on in about 130 servers. That's when PSN first shut down, Sony decided to wait 6 days before they would issue a warning to their customers letting them know that their information was compromised. Almost a week before you decided to tell people? Kazuo Hirai, chairman of the board for Sony Computer Entertainment of America, writes that they didn't want to let people know early and "lead them to take unnecessary actions if the information was not fully corroborated by forensic evidence." Sony details in their letter that they had to bring in 3 different computer security firms before they found out on Easter Sunday how big the breach was. One interesting note was a file left by the hackers named "Anonymous" with the words "We are Legion."

I think that Sony should have aired on the side of being more open with information rather than how they went about it. 77 million people around the world were wondering what was going on and Sony just kept quiet about it for almost a week. Especially with the news that Sony Online Entertainment also went down as well, and there's no doubt that credit card information was stolen from there. The list may have been from 2007 but still, that creates a credibility gap that we have to work around. 

Sony explained to Congress that it has taken steps to up security already with more firewalls and monitoring services added in but does it seem to be too little too late? Hirai writes that Sony employees have had to "endure" this "unprecedented" breach and investigation. Will they endure as much as anyone who gets their credit card stolen from this attack?