PSN down: PlayStation Network still hit by problems as players swarm back onto service

PlayStation Network, the console’s online service, is still experiencing problems after it was taken down by hackers on Christmas day.

While the attack that took Xbox Live as well as PSN down now seems to have stopped, many users are still having problems signing in — likely as a result of the flood of requests the network is being hit by as gamers try to get connected again.

The problem seems mostly to be hitting sign-ins, which mean that gamers could be unaffected if they are already online.

Sony said last night that the network was up but that there was internet connectivity issues because of the high volume of traffic.

PlayStation has recommended resetting consoles that can’t get back online, and other fixes have been suggested by players.

Kim Dotcom, the Internet entrepreneur who has played a role in bringing Xbox Live and PSN back online, said yesterday that the attack had stopped and that the outage was likely a result of a flurry of requests trying to connect back online.

Connections could also be hit as both networks make changes to stop a similar attack happening again.

Xbox Live and PSN were taken down by Lizard Squad, a hacker collective that said it had done so to demonstrate weak internet security. The attack stopped soon after — an apparent result of Kim Dotcom having offered the group hundreds of thousands of dollars of vouchers for his Mega file-hosting service to bring it to an end.