Red-faced Sony confirms PSN shut down over hacking

Sony has finally confirmed the inevitable: this week's extended PSN outage was due to an "external intrusion".

Speaking on the PS Blog in what will no doubt be a deeply embarrassing admission, SCEA comms head Patrick Seybold said Sony made the decision to take PSN offline after it was hacked earlier this week.

"An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services," he said.

"In order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services going forward, we turned off PlayStation Network & Qriocity services on the evening of Wednesday, April 20th.

"Providing quality entertainment services to our customers and partners is our utmost priority. We are doing all we can to resolve this situation quickly, and we once again thank you for your patience.

"We will continue to update you promptly as we have additional information to share."

Both EU and US services were taken offline on Wednesday, with Sony conceding on Thursday that PSN could be down for "days".

At the time of writing, the European PSN is still offline.

Sony's network service had recently been the target of hack group Anonymous in relation to legal action against several hackers, but the attacks had ceased due to a user backlash.

The admission the third-parties entered PSN to an extent that Sony was forced to make it unavailable for consumers will be humiliating for the company, and it likely to shock both users and content handlers.

Sony's online PlayStation systems hold not only gaming-related information, but the addresses and credit card details of millions of users.

PSN has more than 75 million registered accounts worldwide.

This is the first statement Sony has made on the matter since Thursday.