PlayStation Network (PSN) is back online for many users after facing downtime for over five hours. This is the first time in 2016 that the system was down.
Sony assured its users that it was working on resolving the issues, even as it acknowledged that users could face trouble accessing PSN.
However, the status page of the network's Support page still flashes a notice that says, "We are currently under maintenance and you may be experiencing issues. We appreciate your patience."
The connectivity issue affected PSN users on PS3, PS4 and web services. Several users were seen posting messages saying PSN will be offline until 7 January. This was mainly due to a message that was flashed on the official Sony site that read, "PlayStation Network is currently experiencing connectivity issues...4 January 2016 AT 10:20pm GMT to 7 January 2016 at 7AM GMT."
IBTimes reported that Phantom Squad, a hacker group had claimed responsibility for getting the PSN offline. Phantom Squad posted messages claiming credit for this episode that led users to post some funny posts too.
Meanwhile, Lizard Squad has posted a Twitter message saying, "A 3rd party team did your job... How do you feel."
The last time PSN users faced issues was during Christmas Day after threats from hacker group Lizard Squad. The hacker group took down PSN and Xbox Live in 2014 with distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) attack.
