Today’s notifications at SOE Facebook and SOE Twitter explain that services will not be restored today. With no indication that we’re any closer to a resolution, the question on everyone’s minds is: When will SOE, and by extension EQ2, become available again?
Crossed Wires About Dates
Bloomberg.com latched onto a terse quote from a Sony spokesman and published a service restoration date of May 31st, leading many publications to report that the PlayStation Network and SOE networks had little hope of recovery before then. But that’s incorrect, according to Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold. In fact, Sony has yet to announce a date for the restart of the PlayStation Network, which has been down since April 20th, or the games and websites of Sony Online Entertainment, down for 9 days now. At one time it was hoped that service could be restored by Friday May 6th but that deadline was scrapped once the extent of the intrusion into the SOE customer database became known.
Speculation Running Rampant
The lack of information from Sony and SOE, with communications to the public no doubt being funneled through a team of Sony lawyers, has encouraged a great deal of speculation. CNET‘s Erica Ogg certainly had a red letter weekend, posting articles thinly sourced from unknown individuals in an IRC chatroom, first prognosticating a third attack, and then basking in the credit for Sony’s alleged thwarting of said attack. Apparently the idea that there was no attack even planned never occured to her. 😉
Other news sites have posted missives no less farfetched, with conflicting theories as to whether Sony’s PSN and SOE networks were running outdated Apache software, and trying to pin the blame on Anonymous, perhaps a splinter group, or maybe profiteers hoping to acquire reams of credit card data. Readers interested in the lengthy and tangled speculative mess of the PSN/SOE Compromise have had a virtual buffet of editorials and articles to choose from by security professionals, linux gurus, and players big and small inside and outside of Anonymous and other hacking crews.
But is all this speculation helpful?
Sony could tell us more, a lot more. Most of us are not demanding a restoration date so much as a window when it *won’t* be done. Checking several times a day has only magnified our perception of time. For those asking “Well, how would you handle it?” look no further than this exemplary press release which might serve as a model for how Sony should be handling this situation:
Amazon EC2 Service Outage notification
Yet none of this helps to pinpoint a date. The 51% of our readers who voted “After May 11th” in our How Long Do You Think SOE Will Be Offline? were right on the money, but the only prize forthcoming seems to be a bit of grim satisfaction.