Agent X
Member
I've been experiencing some really strange problems with PSN over the last hour.
First, it started while browsing the PS Store on Vita. It would frequently lose connection to the server.
After that, I checked my friends list on Vita. A few friends were missing from the list, and at least two people that I dropped from the friends list a while back mysteriously reappeared. Sometimes refreshing would give me the correct list, other times it would do nothing. Meanwhile, the PS Store was still only working sporadically, and eventually stopped working completely.
Next, I went to the PlayStation site on my PC. I was unable to log onto the site. I retried a few times with no success. At one point, Chrome popped up a security warning saying that the connection (https site) was not secure.
PS4 seems to be mostly working well for now, including the PS Store.
I just tried Vita again. The friends list now refuses to load most of the time, and when it does load, gives me the "old" friends list that I described above.
Is anyone else experiencing similar weirdness with PSN today?
EDIT (12/27): I'm adding some information that ThirdMartini posted in another thread, which should shed some light on the situation.
Sony has also issued the following statement in a post from PlayStation.Blog, which you can click here to read.
First, it started while browsing the PS Store on Vita. It would frequently lose connection to the server.
After that, I checked my friends list on Vita. A few friends were missing from the list, and at least two people that I dropped from the friends list a while back mysteriously reappeared. Sometimes refreshing would give me the correct list, other times it would do nothing. Meanwhile, the PS Store was still only working sporadically, and eventually stopped working completely.
Next, I went to the PlayStation site on my PC. I was unable to log onto the site. I retried a few times with no success. At one point, Chrome popped up a security warning saying that the connection (https site) was not secure.
PS4 seems to be mostly working well for now, including the PS Store.
I just tried Vita again. The friends list now refuses to load most of the time, and when it does load, gives me the "old" friends list that I described above.
Is anyone else experiencing similar weirdness with PSN today?
EDIT (12/27): I'm adding some information that ThirdMartini posted in another thread, which should shed some light on the situation.
Sony/PSN is using prolexic for DDOS mitigation.
At this moment all auth requests are being blackholed behind prolexics servers. There could be several reasons for this.
* The auth server going offline on Sony's side.
* The auth server being overloaded
* Prolexic actively filtering traffic because of an ongoing attack.
* Some problem at prolexic (perhaps they can't handle the load either)
PSN also uses Amazon EC2 for their applications/multiplayer servers. And Akamai for game downloads, updates, firmware, etc. EC2 and Akamai also seems to be stable and explains why folks can get downloads and even play Online ( if they managed to login ) since those services are running in EC2 or over Akamais CDN.
When snooping traffic it's clear that the auth server is responding sporadically... and sometimes not at all. Which implies that it is at least alive but struggling.
It should also be noted that when a DDOS mitigation is done by first attempting to filter out offending traffic based on content... when that fails (IE: the attack is sophisticated enough) IP ranges begin to be blackholed altogether. This causes some regions to appear completely offline while others are fine. Those filters are then refined to allow legitimate users in. (Assuming the mitigation service is not overloaded). This is never perfect and extremely time consuming. ( BTW Mitigation services are EXPENSIVE ) To say Sony is not spending enough on infrastructure is a bit presumptuous.
The real problem is zombied edge devices. My little itybitty server in the corner of the internet gets 10s of thousands of hits from zombied IPs a day looking for vulnerabilities in my server. 1/2 the time I look it's from a Cheap wireless router that's been rooted and has an open telnet/ssh port or botnet client on it. ( It's so tempting rm -rf / and then burn the flash out on those things to kill them!! ) So it's not just infected enduser PCs anymore... it's all the cheap, insecure other crap people buy and plug into their internet connection. For all I know many of the folks here are running zombies without even knowing it and contributing to the problem. Perhaps while waiting for Sony to get PSN up and running folks should go see if their own gear has been compromised. :O
Sony has also issued the following statement in a post from PlayStation.Blog, which you can click here to read.
Catherine Jensen said:The video game industry has been experiencing high levels of traffic designed to disrupt connectivity and online gameplay. Multiple networks, including PSN, have been affected over the last 48 hours. PSN engineers are working hard to restore full network access and online gameplay as quickly as possible.
From time to time there may be disruptions in service due to surges in traffic, but our engineers will be working to restore service as quickly as possible.
If you received a PlayStation console over the holidays and have been unable to log onto the network, know that this problem is temporary and is not caused by your game console. We’ll continue to keep you posted on Twitter at @AskPlayStation and we’ll update this post once the problems subside.
Thanks again for your patience.