The PlayStation Network was hacked on April 19 and recovered on May 14. During the downtime, all online services, such as multiplayer gaming and streaming videos were unavailable to users.
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Palo Alto High School students are expressing mixed reactions to the recent hacking of the PlayStation Network in which credit card and other personal information was stolen. The hacking began on April 19 and ended on May 14.
The online multiplayer mode for all games was unavaible while PSN was offline, leading to disspointment for some players.
“My life was so boring when I couldn’t whoop people on Super Street Fighter Four online,” junior Justin Robinson said.
On the other hand, because of work and extracurricular activities, many Paly students said they were unaffected by the entire event.
“It [hacking] was disappointing,” junior Soloman Leung said. “[But] I had a lot of homework so I was not very affected.”
Some students, such as junior Tomer Arnon, thought the hackers, who shut down the network for over two weeks, should have shut down the network for only a short duration in order to prove a point.
“Hacking it [PSN], just to prove you can is fine,” Arnon said. “But don’t screw it up for other people and keep it down for so long. Take it down for half an hour, post a message on everyone’s PlayStation and leave.”
Students such as junior William Hall thought Sony, the creators of PSN, should have provided more information to players, whose personal information, including their credit card and password information, was available to hackers when the network was down.
“Sony should have responded more quickly to the reports of the network going down, and should have released some sort of information as to whether users’ information was secure or not,” Hall said. “Even if it [users’ information] wasn’t, I think that having the information that people need to take the steps to secure their information on their own would have been very useful.”
In response to the downtime, Sony has announced that it is offering a free 30-day trial of PlayStation Plus, a service which offers exclusive content to subscribers and to users, as well as the choice of two out of five preselected games for free.
“I think some people will appreciate the compensation,” junior Daniel Kosaka said.
According to a May 24 official statement by Sony, several services, such as the online store, are still not available, but the Account Management feature is now functional.
“The maintenance has been completed, and Account Management and other affected functions are once again accessible,” Social Media Manager Jeff Rubenstein said on the PlayStation Network Blog.