Welcome Back Package now live!

Ohhh yeaaa finally! It is up. Free 30day trial for PS+ and other goodies that comes with it. Activate your PS+ now I don't know what to say. I already downloaded a bunch of free stuff that you can keep even after your free PS+ subscription is done.

Your chance to get your PS+ package is only available until July 3rd!

If you have 2 or more accounts, you can download pretty much all the games for both PS3 and PSN. However, those accounts should be registered prior to April 20 2011.

Game list vanished from PS Store? Don't worry! It is still there! Go to your "Account Management" then hit "Transaction Management" then to "Services List" and finally to "SCEA Promotion".

PS3: Firmware Update 3.61 is Up For Grabs! SOE and PSN Back Online Today!

That is right! 3.61 firmware upgrade for PS3 is now live. Like I stated in my old post, it is a security update that forces you to change your password. I think we are nearing the end of the dark times. Turn on your PS3 and get your update :) Also, PSN is coming back online now for North America - "state by state" as we speak.

* Not confirmed but just rough estimates/predictions. It could be some of their surrounding states as well. Thanks :)

Update(9): Playstation Network is online for North America 12:00am Pacific May 15, 2011. WOOT! See you guys online!


Canada is also back online. You can request your change of password now using your PS3. It is faster than PC. I highly recommend using the PS3 to change your password. Remember, only the PS3 you always log-on into will work for the password change.


If you are going to try to change it through your PC, you have to wait for an email that could take 24 hours to arrive. The email will provide you a link so that you can verify that it is you and update your password.This is what you would see from your PC if you try to log in:

"To sign in, an update of your account information is required. An e-mail message with instructions has been sent to Your_Email. It may take up to 24 hours to receive this message."

Update(8): West coast and mid-west U.S.A is now back online. Also some Central parts, Alaska and Hawaii as well. Every state in U.S will be back sometime in the morning. Welcome back guys! Now we look forward for our "Welcome Package". 11:00pm PST. Congrats!

Update(7): Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and Pennsylvania are up and running! (Officially confirmed) 10:30pm PST

Still coming up next few hour or so*:
Washington State (Possibly next)
Texas and surrounding states- Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Oklahoma (Possibly next)
North/South Dakota(2-3 hours or so)
and Oregon (in about 2-3 hours or so)

Update(6): Florida, South/North Carolina,and Georgia are now online 9:00pm PST (officially confirmed) Enjoy guys!

It seems like they confirm states every hour. Please be patient.

Still waiting for Washington state(trying to confirm right now), Louisiana, Dakota, Texas, Michigan/Ohio (trying to confirm as well), possibly Oklahoma as well as Alabama, Illinois and their surrounding states to come up next hour.* One of these should be officially confirmed as well as some of their surrounding states

Germany (Will be back on soon as well).

Update(5): Florida, Louisiana, Washington State, and Dakota coming up next. In addition, Texas and Michigan/Ohio area are coming up too. Alabama will join shortly.

Update(4): State of California is now on as of 8:11pm PST. Europe servers are still down but has updated their blog post. PlayStation Network Restoration Begins - Sony UK


Update(3): Seems like the official site is having trouble loading. Probably the server is being overwhelmed. Nothing has changed so far from the map. 7:51 PST

Update (2): New York are and entire far North East of U.S is now officially back on. Still no word for Canada. You can now access your PSN and online multiplayer if you live in NY, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey area.

Update(1): People are reporting that they are having trouble downloading the new update probably due to the amount of people downloading it. So just keep trying and you will download the update successfully. The PSN is still down in my region as we speak.

"An error occurred during the download operation. A connection to the server cannot be established. (80710101)"

____________________________

PSN is going back on today state by state. Maybe by tomorrow, the whole North America will be back online.

"Please note that these services will take a bit of time to be turned on and rolled out to the whole country. The process has begun and some states are being turned on now, so please be patient as we reach your city and state."

They kindly put up a map on which state is currently on. To see the official blog. Click :

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/05/14/play-on-%E2%80%93-psn-restoration-begins-now/

"We strongly recommend that all PSN account holders with PS3s update their systems to prepare for when PlayStation Network is back online. The release of this update is a critical step as we work to make PlayStation Network significantly more secure. Thank you for your continued support and patience."

 -  Eric Lempel - VP, Sony Network Entertainment

It is quite a big update. I am pretty sure there is more behind this update other than just forcing you to change passwords of course. There was no noticeable changes made but we will find out once the PSN gets back on.


However, PSN is still down but I think it will come back soon. I expect another firmware update once before the whole service is back up since PS Store will be disabled up until the end of the month.


For full official blog post:
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/05/14/ps3-system-software-update/

Also, a welcome message from Kaz.
Kaz Hirai - PSN Relaunch Announcement


SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT

In addition, GOOD news for SOE PC gamers! Your service is coming back on today! Still no words for PSN though. Happy hunting!

"Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE) announced today that restoration of its game services will begin today. The phased restoration will include the return of nearly all of SOE's portfolio of online games, the reinstatement of SOE's game forums and websites, and added functionality to require players to reset their passwords."

 For the official announcement :

http://www.soe.com/securityupdate/restorationannouncement.vm

Sony : We know who did it or ... do we?

Another official blog was just posted few minutes ago by Mr. Seybold providing an answer to to the U.S house of Representatives' questions. Apparently, Sony and their digital forensic team has found a file in their server that says "Anonymous - We are Legion". Few days after the PSN went down, the anonymous said that they are not at fault for causing this situation.

This confirms that Anonymous is the one at fault:

"We discovered that the intruders had planted a file on one of our Sony Online Entertainment servers named “Anonymous” with the words “We are Legion.”

- Patrick Seybold, Sr. Director, Corporate Communications & Social Media

The problem with this group of hackers is that they act without a leader. If they all agree on one idea, they will do it and nobody will point a finger(since each hacker does not know the other hacker)making it difficult for the authorities to catch its members. Also, one can become rouge and betray their operations because there is no one on top and on power to moderate the moderators.

The ones who disagree with the initial idea does their own thing carrying the same name - "Anonymous". It is probably those group who did this or someone pretending to be the "Anonymous". So, it is hard to tell who is lying or who is telling the truth. The fact is, they are all Anonymous.

Let's see how things happened since the beginning:

• GeoHotz was brought to court
• Anonymous showed up and declared war to Sony for teh lulz - they also posted a video in youtube
• PSN was attacked for a short period of time as well as official Sony website
• Gamers were furious about messing up with their PSN
• Anonymous said that it will halt its action against PSN but will continue against other Sony websites
• It was rumoured that the group has broken into two groups - the ones that they think should not disrupt the PSN and the ones that should
• PSN was shutdown
• Anonymous denied that they are the cause of the hacking but states that they will continue to disrupt services as soon as the PSN goes back live again.
• Sony and their forensic team has found a file leading them back towards Anons and announces it to the public.

Sony is pointing its fingers to the anons. Soon the Playstation supporters will follow because they are butthurt. I hope this does not lead to hack wars.

Sony has no name or age or anything that identifies the hackers. It might take months or  years to find out the people behind the name anonymous. They have deleted logs in the server to cover their tracks. Digital forensics should be much more smarter than just looking at logs.

Update (1): Official response documents are now available in flicker.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/playstationblog/5686965323/in/set-72157626521862165/

In the official document it states :

"Detection was difficult because of sheer sophistication of the intrusion."

Indeed, hackers becomes much more smarter as years go by. They are more experienced and possibly with a higher education. What fascinates me the most is that Sony shut down only the server they suspect that was compromised hours later the hacking and while they were not aware about other servers being compromised as well. I have noticed significant on and offs from the network at that time because I was online. If they had a suspicion that someone is mingling around their system, they should have shut it down right away. Sony had enough warnings prior to getting hacked and they were very confident about their defences I guess.

The documents provided by Sony are very informative. Not only it provides information based on a timeline but it explains everything in Sony's perspective. To think that telling their consumers without a physical evidence that their information has been taken would be...stupid. Not only they will provide false information to the consumers that could lead to fear. Either way, it was a dilemma for Sony.