Sony Releases PS3 3.61 Update Ahead of PSN's Imminent Return

Sonny Yatsen writes "Sony has released the PS3 3.61 firmware update as a part of the phased return of the Playstation Network and Qriocity. The new update now requires all PSN users to change their passwords in order to sign back into the PSN service." And several readers are pointing to reports that the network is slowly being spun up. Snips one anonymous submitter: "Sony Japan told customers today that it would begin phased restoration of its services of its beleaguered Playstation Network which has been suffering from an outage for nearly a month. The company would start bringing back its gaming network this Sunday, on a country-by-country basis, and expects it to be completed by May 31."

Comments

The problems go much deeper

[symbolset]

There are reports today that Sony's networks still are oblivious to real security. Among the serious vulnerabilities are links to globally viewable security consoles in robots.txt files, ID web-management consoles being publicly available and indexed in Google, and more!

I guess the upside is that if the hackers are going to get your credit card from Sony, they already have it so you may as well play your games too.

Re:The problems go much deeper

[tlhIngan]

And yet, I have yet to hear / read (until your comment) that is was OtherOS which caused this.

More like a *lack* of OtherOS.

Face it - was the PS3 the most secure console? After all, the Wii and Xbox360 have been "hacked" to some extent (piracy and/or homebrew), but the PS3 was "secure".

Then in 2009 Sony releases the Slim PS3. Sometime in 2010, the PS3 is completely hacked, which if you go by when the Slims without OtherOS get hacked, happened around 12 months later. And this is a complete pwnage - all security in the PS3, broken.

At 12 months to complete pwnage, it's probably close to the average for consoles. At close to 5 years to first pwnage, it's a record.

Now, did the PS3 simply escape all efforts to hack it for piracy or other purposes because it was secure, or was it because those with the skills to do it were busy writing their homebrew? After they couldn't run Linux or run their homebrew anymore, perhaps they also had the necessary skills to start picking at the locks?

Sony did the right thing at first - homebrewers don't want piracy, and keeping them happy ensured the pirates would have a tough time. Homebrewers are a skilled lot with lots of interesting tools at their disposal and the knowledge to use it.

And considering that OtherOS was removed because of a super theoretical hack that wasn't even used in the end to pwn the PS3...

Re:The problems go much deeper

[donscarletti]

I've been playing PS3 games this whole time, just not online. The same applies to my XBox since I refuse to buy Gold membership, but I will start playing on PSN again once it comes back.

I'm not going to apologize for Sony and say that they are not incompetent in online security, but this will not quell my interest in PS3 any more than Sony's other numerous blunders, because I still believe that PS3 is a great piece of consumer electronics. As a software guy, I have always known Sony are a bunch of guys who just do not understand software, take PS3's awful operating system into account, it just refuses to multitask between some combos of apps, like opening a webbrowser or playing music while you are browsing the store, it obviously has not implemented its file system correctly since you cannot copy directly from the network to a memory card or a thumb drive. I implemented a better operating system than these guys for my honours thesis and that was rubbish. But, a PS3 is just such a good piece of hardware, it supports so many different types of media and device, you can just plug a keyboard or mouse up to it, or use bluetooth and it will work as it should, stick in a blueray, dvd or cd and it will play it or fill that same disk with movie and sound files and it will play that too. HDMI port as well as digital audio and standard analogue at the back all works great with standard cable, SD, MS and CF at the front (now removed sadly but great if you have a first gen model). It's quiet, reliable and looks good. Also, it handles games pretty well too, kind of gets the rough end on ports because it does not make sense to develop a multi-platform game around the PS3's little quirks.

It comes down to it, PSN is kind of awful compared to XBox Live Gold, but it is free. Once again, Sony are bumbling idiots when it comes to software, but I've known that for years, no company that cared about software would even consider using the Cell processor since it is torture for programmers. But if I am buying new hardware, Sony obviously (in my mind) makes the very best and I will buy it. I just wish they outsourced their software to Europe or North America since Japanese have always had difficulty with large software projects.

Re:Why is the whole network linked to credit cards

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

In fact, PSN shouldn't really care who you are unless you're trying to buy something.

Or unlocking Trophies, or listening if you're receiving messages from other players, or setting the status of what game you're playing, or to check whether or not you've got game invites periodically...

Oh, wait...

Activating it per state

[saikou]

What I'm curious about is why do they re-activate the network per state.
As of right now, just California and a few New England states seem to be "online". One server per state? Sounds a bit odd.
Oh and the map is stored on Flickr. For a moment there I thought someone hacked their blog system too, and just posted faked-up "we're about to go live again" message.

Re:Generalizing..

[gtch]

Much of the point of ChromeOS is that applications will have offline functionality.

The HTML5 technologies that ChromeOS will use for offline functionality are really designed to synchronise with the original server. So when Google Docs or your network goes down, you will be able to keep working on your document. But if you want to take your document somewhere else — say take a copy home as a file on a USB stick — you can't. Exporting documents is done in the cloud, not by the browser, so your document is stuck on your machine. You just have to wait until Google Docs works again so it can sync back up and then export it.

That is almost exactly the same as the PS3 outage. The PS3 console and games continue to work as normal offline, but you can't play online and you can't switch to a competing provider of online games. In a major outage of Google Docs, your ChromeOS would continue to work as normal offline, but you wouldn't be able to take the document anywhere or give it to someone else — and you wouldn't be able to switch to a competing provider like Office Live — because your data is stuck in the Google cloud. One day Google may fix this, but at the moment you would be stuck.

The problem here is being reliant on one company. On a desktop computer with a full operating system you've got myriad alternatives and competing solutions for any problem. On the PS3 and ChromeOS you've got a very simple-to-use system that's normally all you need; but if it fails then you're stuck with no alternative.

Re:Generalizing..

[drinkypoo]

Much of the point of ChromeOS is that applications will have offline functionality.

The HTML5 technologies that ChromeOS will use for offline functionality are really designed to synchronise with the original server.

That's not true, Google is adding additional functionality to handle local file access. Again, don't let the facts get in your way or anything.