The PSN outage was a result of an "external intrusion" on Sony's servers that halted all online activities for a total of 24 days. In between April 17 and April 19, the attack occurred and on April 20, Sony shut down the services so they could conduct an investigation. Sony mentioned that they would be rebuilding their system and that it would take time. It was on April 26 that Sony mentioned that personal information of its users were compromised from the attack.
Service was supposed to be restored within one week, Sony mentioned on the same day as when they released the information about the personal information. On May 1, Sony announced a "Welcome Back" program for those affected by the outage and went on to say services would be back online within the first week of May. It wasn't until May 15 that services started coming back online, with all users being forced to reset their password.
As compensation for the attack, Sony offered a free month of Playstation Plus to all users, as well a choice of two free games from a list of five select ones. Users with PSPs were also allowed a choice of two free games from a list of four titles. Qriocity subscribers were offered 30 days of extra service at no charge. In addition, users were offered one year of free identity theft protection.
