Sony says PlayStation Network back online

Sony said its PlayStation Network is up and running again after it was taken down Sunday by an apparent hacker attack.

The company said on the PlayStation Blog that the gaming network was shut down by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, a common hacker technique that overwhelms a system with traffic and makes regular service temporarily unavailable. The company said it found no evidence of any intrusion to the network or of unauthorized access to users' personal information.

"Update: PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network are back online, thanks for your patience and support," the official PlayStation Twitter account posted early Monday.

Sony decided to postpone maintenance work following the incident. "In light of [the] issue, the networks will not undergo the regularly scheduled maintenance, which was planned for Monday, August 25," Sony said on its blog. "We will provide an update shortly for when the maintenance will be rescheduled."

The attack, which followed a much more severe targeting of the gaming network in 2011, illustrated that the online service could still be vulnerable to being shut down by hackers.

:story: c|net