Apr 27, 2011 20:41 GMT  ·  By

A brand new report has appeared on the web concerning the recent PlayStation Network outage, which says that the online service might have been taken down by Sony in order to prevent users that were running customized PlayStation 3 firmware versions which enabled them to circumvent all of the company's security measures.

As you all know by now, for over a week, the PlayStation Network has been offline, with Sony finally admitting earlier today that the service was attacked by hackers and that it made the decision to take it down in order to prevent things from getting worse.

Now, a Reddit user called "Chesh" has revealed on the website, via TorrentFreak, that the root of all these problems was a special version of PlayStation 3 firmware, which allowed users access to a subset of the PlayStation Network, reserved only for developers.

While the custom firmware (CFW) version only did this in order to enable online gaming for consoles banned by Sony, some clever hackers managed to circumvent Sony's own security protocols, allowing them to make illegal purchases off of the PlayStation Network, essentially robbing the online service.

This phenomenon started around April 7, according to the user, but Sony realized the gravity of the situation last week, when it took the PlayStation Network offline, on April 20.

Sony, at first, didn't reveal any concrete motive for leaving PSN users without the online service, but, after over a week of delays, has admitted that hackers were to blame and that it is working on rebuilding the whole service in order to make it safe once more.

What's even more serious is that Sony confirms that hackers might have stolen personal user data, ranging from PSN IDs and passwords to even credit card information, if the account had made any purchase on the online service.

As of yet, Sony still doesn't know when things will be back to normal.