Sony brings PSN back online, then...takes it down again

And it seems the hackers used Amazon's cloud services to launch their attack

Sony began a phased restoration of its PlayStation Network (PSN) online gaming service yesterday, but quickly had to take it back offline again.

The PSN was being reactivated across Europe following a hacking attack three weeks ago, which resulted in the loss of the private data of more than 100,000 Sony customers.

Sony stopped the restoration for a short time due to the heavy volume of password change requests from customers concerned about their data security.

Writing on the firm's PlayStation EU blog, Nick Caplin, Sony's head of communications for Europe, said:

"We're currently experiencing an extremely heavy load of password resets, so we had to turn off services for approximately 30 minutes to clear the queue."

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that hackers used Amazon's cloud services to launch their attack on Sony.

The hacker set up a legitmate account with Amazon to host the attack, making it harder to trace than if they had managed their own servers.