First things first. The PlayStation Network has not been hacked again. Late Tuesday night. Sony’s Chief Information Security Officer Phillip Reitinger alerted the PlayStation community that tens of thousands of accounts from Sony Entertainment Network (PSN, Music Unlimited, Videos Unlimited) and Sony Online Entertainment were possibly accessed by outsiders. Around 60,000 PSN and SEN accounts and 33,000 Sony Online Entertainment accounts were logged in to by outsiders.

This news is almost identical to the several website hacking related stories that we’ve covered in the past. The latest victims are Sega Pass users. The hackers stole some personal information, but financial information was not stored in the Sega Pass database. This is indeed getting very old.

This isn’t the kind of news we’d like to start off the week with, but it may very well affect you. Hackers are breaking into gaming websites left and right. Codemasters was recently hacked, Nintendo’s site was breached and the drama never seems to end with hackers making a mockery of Sony’s web security. The next two victims are Epic Games and Nintendo’s UK site.

The PlayStation Network has been down for so long, I’ve lost track of exactly how many days have passed. In the beginning days of the outage, I would constantly be on the lookout for an update, an email, anything that would confirm to me that PSN was back online. We’ve been threatened with identity theft, we’ve sat back while hackers bickered back and forth and we’ve definitely been more than patient. Through all this waiting and stress, I feel as if I’ve come to accept the fact that PSN is gone. Actually, I’m not even thinking about the service anymore when I’m not writing about it.

Sony planned to have the PlayStation Network back online this week, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen. Today is Saturday, and the one week time frame Sony presented to us has lasted beyond seven days. Sony provided an update yesterday evening that gave the impression that we are going to have to wait a little longer. Sony did not give a time frame for restoration this time.

Sony chairman Kazuo Hirai replied to a letter Congress sent which questioned many aspects of the PlayStation Network breach. Yesterday, we told you about a file that was left on one of Sony Online Entertainment’s servers. That file was named “Anonymous” and contained the words “We are Legion.” Despite Anonymous’ claims that it isn’t responsible for the attack, this file more or less implicates the organization in this crime. Hirai also explained the possibility of how Anonymous may have played a role in this whether they like it or not.

Last week The Subcommittee on Commerce Manufacturing and Trade sent a letter to Kazuo Hirai, chairman of the board of directors at SCEA, asking for answers related to the PSN security breach. Hirai responded to Congress’ 13 questions with a letter of his own that is dated May 3, 2011. Hirai explained how things transpired day by day, and what it is doing to prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again.

The past few weeks have not been good for Sony and PlayStation Network account holders, what with the hackers breaking in and taking private data from over 77 million people. It only got worse when the problem extended to Sony Online Entertainment on May 2, 2011, resulting in that service being shut down, over 24 million accounts compromised and around 12,700 credit card numbers were stolen from an outdated database. Sony Online Entertainment has now stepped up to offer details on what its going to be doing to make things right for its violated customers, starting with the people who play DC Universe Online…

Good news everyone! It appears that the number of valid credit cards that were stolen from Sony Online Entertainment were far less than what was actually stolen. Well, I suppose this news isn’t really cause for celebration because the owners of those 900 cards now have to jump through hoops to secure their identities. The credit card and personal information theft was revealed by SOE yesterday. The company said hackers stole the contents of one of its outdated database from 2007.

There have been an understandable number of rumors circling around the PSN data theft situation. Among them are murmurs that Sony warned banks of possible identity theft, passwords were stored in plain text and that hackers tried to sell stolen credit card information back to Sony. Sony has updated the PlayStation Blog once again to address some of these reports.