PS3 Custom Firmware to Blame for PSN Shortage?

A moderator from a popular CFW site has come forward with the following claim:

“I’ve seen a bunch of speculation as to why people think PSN is down, and I thought I should just post what the community knows in comparison to what Sony is telling everyone.

There was a new CFW released know as Rebug (http://rebug.me). It essentially turns a retail console into a dev console (not fully, but gives you a lot of the same options that usually dev’s only have access to). Anyway, this new CFW was quickly figured out to give CFW users access to the PSN network again via the dev. networks. With a little manipulation of the URLs through a proxy server you could get your hacked console back online. Not that big of a deal, right?

Well, it turns out that some people found out that you could provide fake credit card information and the authenticity of the information was never checked as you were on Sony’s private developer PSN network (essentially a network that Sony trusted).

What happened next was extreme piracy of PSN content. Sony realizing the issue here shut down the network. Now, before you go freaking out about the latest information posted on several websites about personal credit card information, no one’s personal information was accessible via the hack. Not to say they couldn’t get it, but no one is admitting to i being available.

Anyway, that’s the reason for the PSN downtime. Sony is now rebuilding all of its PSN servers to be more secure and make sure the CFW users can not access PSN anymore.”

Now this is speculation, but according to the moderator, it is speculation based on hard facts:

• This Rebug was released on 3/31/11
• First guides on how to use the dev networks showed up around 4/3/11
• Word of “shady” sites finding a way to pirate PSN content via the dev networks on 4/7/11
• PSN goes down 4/20/11

This outcome seems to be the most believeable in my opinion. I wonder what Sony’s official word will be when the dust finally settles.