In September Sony updated the PlayStation Network's terms of service to include a new clause removing the ability for customers (who were more than likely upset over the major security breach that happened earlier in the year) to file future class action lawsuits. Users who accepted the new TOS had to agree to individual arbitration instead of a lawsuit if they had a grievance against Sony. Since users had to agree to the new TOS in order to sign in to PSN, many simply agreed and moved on.

DC Universe Online had about 30,000 paid subscribers prior to switching over to a free-to-play model. Apparently that switch has helped the game gain an additional 90,000 registered users. Sony Online Entertainment, which manages the DC Comics-based superhero MMO, said the surge in interest represents a 400 percent increase on previous figures.

GameSpot managed to corner Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley during the GDC Online conference this week in Austin, Texas to get his thoughts on the recent attack that resulted in Sony temporarily locking down around 93,000 PlayStation Network, Sony Entertainment Network, and Sony Online Entertainment accounts.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released new guidelines on Thursday that require publicly traded companies to disclose when they are the victim of a security breach or cyber attack. The new guidelines are the result of members of congress pressuring the watchdog agency to add them following several major cyber attacks earlier this year. Senator John Rockefeller is one of those lawmakers.

Last night Sony's new SVP & Chief Information Security Officer, Philip Reitinger wrote a lengthy post on the official PlayStation Blog, detailing some questionable mass logins. While some of those attempts to login to accounts by unknown persons were successful, Reitinger assures the public that those accounts have been identified by the company and temporarily locked down.

Sony did not break Australia’s Privacy Act during the PlayStation Network cyber attack, ruled Australia's Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim. Pilgrim’s report, released today, said that the Commission found "no evidence that Sony intentionally disclosed any personal information to a third party." Pilgrim said that he was satisfied that Sony Australia took reasonable steps to protect its customers’ personal information, including encrypting credit card information and ensuring appropriate security measures were in place.

You may think the unprecedented and massive security breach that took down multiple Sony services including Sony Online entertainment and PlayStation Network is what pushed Sony to make the changes it did recently to the PSN Terms of Service, but a CNN report points to another reason: The Supreme Court. Last week Sony changed the document for PlayStation Network asking customers to give up their rights to file class-action lawsuits against the company and its partners.

An interactive entertainment lawyer tells GameIndustry.biz that the new wording in the PlayStation Network terms of service is geared more towards consumers in the United States and is probably not enforceable in the United Kingdom due to existing laws that prevent such contracts.

In case you've forgotten it from yesterday, here's what paragraph 15 of the PSN terms of service states:

If you are a member of Sony's PlayStation Network, chances are you were greeted with an email from the company this morning telling you that that the terms of service for the network are about to change. The big change, in case you haven't received that email yet, relates to your ability to sue them. From section 15 comes this wonderful new clause:

Sony has hired a heavyweight in its ongoing fight to protect its online game services from hackers. The company has hired Philip Reitinger, former director of the U.S. National Cyber Security Center, as its new chief information security officer.

At the annual Black Hat hacker convention that happened in Las Vegas this week Sony earned a dubious distinction of the security breach that took several of its services down for nearly two months. The awards are called "Pwnies" and - unless you are a hacker - you don’t want to be "honored" with on. Sony earned the "Most Epic Fail" award for the massive security breach that brought down the PlayStation Network and related services for nearly two months earlier this year.

Star Wars Galaxies, the popular MMO created by Sony Online Entertainment and LucasArts is shutting down by year's end. SOE announced that it planned to shut down the Star Wars themed MMO in December of this year. They are doing this, they say, to switch the focus on the next Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic.

SOE president John Smedley said the closure of SWG will not affect the team because it will be transferred to an undisclosed project in Austin.

An official letter to SWG players was posted on the forums, laying out the bad news:

A new lawsuit filed in federal court in San Diego on Monday (Cotorreal et al v. Sony Corporation Inc.) alleges that Sony's security breach of Sony Online Entertainment and PlayStation Network were the direct result of layoffs earlier in the month of April. In late April the company laid off around 205 employees from its MMO company SOE, closing down offices in Denver, Seattle and Tucson. These layoffs also affected the company's Network Operations Centre. The complaint alleges that Sony did not mention that any of these employees were part of "network operations" at the time of the layoffs.

The complaint also alleges that Sony rushed to protect data when it first learned of the security breach - but it wasn't user data they were concerned about. The company paid millions to secure sensitive corporate secrets, not offering the same level of action for customer data, the complaint contends.

According to a New York Times report, Spanish police have arrested three men they claim were involved in hacking Sony's PlayStation Network and the PlayStation Store. Police also claim that the trio are part of the hacktivist group Anonymous. The three men were released on their own recognizance pending formal charges but are expected to be charged with "forming an illegal association to attack public and corporate Web sites," which carries a maximum sentence of up to three years.

The official Twitter feed for the hacktivist group does provide some confirmation that the three are somehow connected to the group:

It's E3 week and that means that top executives make the rounds to as many media outlets as possible. Sony's Kaz Hirai is no exception, speaking to a number of publications in North America and Europe this week. In an interview with the BBC, Hirai admits that Sony has not been able to catch whoever breached the PlayStation Network's security in late April, and it is not exactly sure what they might have taken. All they really know is that they accessed user data and took some of it.

Earlier this month a congressional subcommittee looking into the PlayStation Network outage and data leak asked Sony Computer Entertainment America chairman and Sony Corp. executive vice president Kaz Hirai to testify. He declined at the time. While Hirai didn't make it to Washington D.C. his company provided a detailed list of answers that - at least temporarily - pacified lawmakers. Now with the PSN back online, Sony had decided that it will comply with the request from House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce's Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade.

Ken Johnson, an aide to subcommittee chairwoman Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), told The Atlantic magazine that Sony Network Entertainment president Tim Schaff, is scheduled testify before the subcommittee next week.

Sony Online Entertainment announced it will provide customers with a complimentary 12 month identity protection program through Affinion International Limited for Station Account holders in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain and Germany. Customers will have the option of enrolling in the program for 60 days after SOE's services come back online by contacting Affinion directly.

The identity protection program provides customers whose accounts may have been affected by the April security breach on SOE's network with monitoring, surveillance, reporting and insurance.

The second most powerful man in British politics says that Sony's massive security breach should be a wake-up call for online services everywhere. Chancellor George Osborne told a London audience yesterday that all online services in the UK need to learn a lesson from the PlayStation Network troubles: security should be the top priority.

"The hacking into Sony’s online PlayStation Network, and the theft of millions of users’ credit card details, is a high profile example of the need for robust online security," Osborne said.

Osborne added that "this age of digitized public services creates challenges alongside opportunities – the challenge of ensuring the security of personal data and financial information."

While the PlayStation Network has launched in North America, Europe and other regions, the relaunch of Sony’s services in Japan has been held up by regulators in Japan. According to a Dow Jones report, the PSN will not be relaunched in Japan until Sony provides assurances to the government that it has added additional security to its network services.

"We met with Sony on May 6 and 13, and basically we want two things from them," said Kazushige Nobutani, director of the Media and Content Industry department at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

"The first is preventative measures. As of May 13, Sony was incomplete in exercising measures that they said they will do on the May 1 press conference," he said, although he refused to provide exact details of the measures for security reasons.

By the time you read this the PlayStation Network should be back online in most regions in the United States. After three weeks of being offline, the service slowly started going back online after Sony issued a new firmware update to deal with firming up security and allowing users to change their passwords.

The first phase of the network restoration will include online play, video streaming, friends lists, PlayStation Home, and Qriocity. Unfortunately the PlayStation Store is still offline. The v3.61 is mandatory and is available now.

And on a related note Sony Online Entertainment's various online game services are coming back online this weekend as well. From the SOE Site:

After several days of being offline MMO company Sony Online Entertainment says that users wanting to play games like EverQuest II, Free Realms, and DC Universe Online will have to wait a "few more days." The company took down its various MMO's after it realized that it had suffered a security breach at around the same time the PlayStation Network was hacked into - over three weeks ago.

In the latest update to the official SOE site, the company also detailed what it will do to make all this up to players:

Sony Online Entertainment has said it'll likely be "at least a few more days" before its online gaming services are restored following the recent security breach. In an update on its site, it also outlined the compensation PC and PS3 users will receive for the down time.

Earlier this week Sony sent a letter to developers hoping that it would give them some comfort as they wait for PlayStation Network to come back online. Several developers including Q-Games and Capcom complained about the amount of money they were losing with PlayStation Network being down - now in its third week.

Sadly, the letter doesn't offer any more information than what is already publicly known, nor does it offer a definitive timeline for when the network will be relaunched.

Below is the full text of the letter penned by Rob Dyer, Sony's SVP of Publisher Relations:

C|Net is reporting that Sony is considering offering a reward for information leading to those hackers responsible for breaking into its PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment networks that lead to both services being taken down nearly two weeks ago. According to the report, the company has been kicking around the idea of a reward for a while, but has not yet come to a final decision on the matter. Apparently, they are still weighing the pros and cons of offering such reward. If they do agree on it, the report claims, it will be brought before the company's top executives for approval.

CNET's report adds that any reward would have to be offered in cooperation with various law enforcement agencies around the world investigating the security breach including the FBI.

Sony has not publicly commented on this story.

It should come as no great surprise that Sony shares have taken a beating since the massive security breaches a few weeks ago. The prolonged downtime of the PlayStation Network is also weighing heavily on investor confidence. Sony shares dropped 3.7 percent on Friday following this week's announcement that Sony Online Entertainment has been hacked and the ongoing struggle to get PSN back online.

Tokyo's financial markets were closed for national holidays Tuesday to Thursday, but reacted negatively to news on Friday morning, according to a Reuters report.

Analysts are also voicing concern about Sony's current situation, and with rumors of a third attack this weekend it is a recipe for more declines in its stock price.

According to a C|Net report a group of hackers is planning another attack on Sony this weekend. C|Net is calling the planned offensive a "major attack" that will target various Sony web sites. The information comes from IRC chatter, observed by an unnamed source. According to the report, the people involved plan to publicize the information they are able to steal from Sony's servers, which could include customer names, credit card numbers, and addresses. The hackers claim they currently have access to some of Sony's servers.

Sony is busy today, putting up no less than three updates on the official PlayStation Blog, to discuss preparations for the restoration of the PlayStation Network, a letter from Sony CEO Howard Stringer, and details on the new AllClear ID Plus Identity Theft Protection program offering.

First up is a post from Sony Sr. Director of Corporate Communications & Social Media Patrick Seybold about preparations to restore the PlayStation Network. According to Seybold, Sony's global network and security teams have begun the "final stages of internal testing of the new system." Seybold said that all of this is an important step towards restoring PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. Full post below:

According to this Bloomberg report, the New York State Attorney General has subpoenaed Sony over its ongoing security breach. Citing sources close to the situation, Bloomberg reports that New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is seeking further information on the security breach of Sony's PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment.

Specifically his department is taking a closer look at what Sony told customers about the security of its networks and when it told customers. The probe is supposedly part of a "consumer protection inquiry," according to the Bloomberg report.

From the report:

Sony is having a busy news day today. First, a story has been circulating that the company has hired yet another security firm to help it with its investigation of the PlayStation Network security breach. According to GameIndustry.biz, Sony has retained Data Forte, a company led by a former U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service officer. Security firms Guidance Software and Protiviti consultants are also involved in the investigation.

DC Universe Online subscribers, upset over Sony Online Entertainment's and Sony's security issues, will get some compensation in the form of a virtual item and some free play time in the super hero-themed MMO for PC and PS3. According to the DC Universe Online community site, subscribers will receive a 30 day subscription credit in addition to one day for each day the DCUO was unavailable. Subscribers will also receive a Batman-esque cowl. SOE is calling all this the "make good" plan. More from SOE:

When Sony Online Entertainment announced yesterday that it had suffered the same fate as Sony's PlayStation Network, it baffled many in the community. You may recall one week ago that SOE claimed it had not been affected by the major security breach suffered by PSN because its services were separate. But if those services and data of SOE customers were separate from PSN data, how did SOE get hacked too - and at the same time as the PSN attack as the company claimed yesterday?

Joystiq managed to track down a representative of the company willing to talk about it on the record. According to that staff member, the security breach on SOE's servers occurred because of "overlap."