Not mobile security, but possibly big emerging security news (more on why I think so below). The Sony Playstation Network is currently down (as of 20:39 UK on the 9th of June).

Germany-Portugal 0-0 you say?

Just before 8pm, I noticed I was signed out of the PSN, so went to the “Sign In” menu. This immediately took me to a change password menu. It said that my password was “no longer valid”. The dialog asked me to enter and then re-enter a password. Quite painful on a PS3 controller with complicated passwords, but it did slightly concern me that it hadn’t asked me for my old password (I need to spend some more time thinking about this though but my first thoughts were about whether I could get access to my credit card info etc, once I had done this). Anyway, I didn’t even get that far as the system locked up on me. After a restart, I submitted the new password and it timed-out, with “This service is currently undergoing maintenance”.

The PSN website says that the service is “Partially available” but there is no statement at all about what is going on. Obviously it could just be a major hardware failure somewhere, but equally we could be seeing the effects of an emergency shutdown due to a security issue (like last time). And, it was about this time last year it all happened. Added to that the fact that there have been a lot of password related breaches this week (LinkedIn et al), could this be linked?

As I write this (now 20:51), I’ve just been able to sign in again. No password change screen or anything, so it is all a bit strange.

To be updated…

Update 14/06/12 – No word on what happened the other day from Sony by the looks of things, but this afternoon (c.14:30 ish) the PSN network is down again, with some tweets giving very similar symptoms to the ones I had above. Again, nothing from Sony as to what is going on…