Sony said on Tuesday its PlayStation Network will come back to life by the end of this month, putting to rest swirling rumors about when the gaming giant will sort out is hacking threats and restore the 77-million-strong network, even as it still remained entangled in the crosshairs of digital security watchdogs.

Sony's gaming network users had been left in the lurch following daring attacks by hackers on its online videogame service and Qriocity streaming video and music service which forced the gaming major discontinue its services on April 19.

A spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. said on Tuesday that the PlayStation network will be restored by the end of May. He did not give further details or a specific date for service restoration. However, the public statement by Sony will put to rest swirling rumors about when the gaming giant will sort out is hacking threats and restore the network.

Sony spokesman Satoshi Fukuoka said a probe into the hacker attack is going on, according to the Associated Press.

Sony had said earlier that a security breach in its online videogame service and Qriocity streaming video and music service had compromised data pertaining to as many as 77 million customers.

There have been conflicting reports about when Sony would be able to restore the PlayStation network. Bloomberg reported on Monday that the gaming service was unlikely to be restored until the end of May.

However, Sony immediately explained that the May 31 deadline was inaccurate, sowing more confusion about the restoration of the network even as Sony got entangled in the crosshairs of digital security watchdogs.

Ever since the massive security breach came to light and fears spread that hackers might have got crucial information pertaining to credit card numbers, purchase history and password security details of millions of members, Sony has taken a series of measures besides pulling the plug on services like gaming and music streaming.

Sony apologized for one of the largest security breaches in history and offered damages to the affected users.

However, Sony lost the momentum once again when its Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) portal was attacked. After it was revealed that a fresh security breach had affected the data pertaining to as many as 25 million customers, Sony took off its SOE. It was also revealed that the compromised data included sensitive credit card data.

Sony said last week that it was not sure if hackers got the data but emphasized that there was no evidence that they got any.
While there is no evidence that the credit card data has been compromised, we also can't rule it out, Kazuo Hirai, the head of Sony's PlayStation videogame business, had said in Tokyo.

Sony' recent troubles stemmed from the battle it was waging with legendary PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz, who kept posting PS3 exploits onto his personal website. While Sony took Hotz, also know as Geohotz, to court over this it also assiduously worked with Internet Service Providers, Paypal and YouTube to lay hands on the IP addresses of users who viewed the exploits.

This angered digital privacy warriors who vowed revenge on Sony for its alleged privacy invasions, triggering several denial of service attacks and other data breaches.

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