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Sony's PlayStation network has
been shut down after cyber-
attackers overloaded it in what's
known as a distributed denial of
service attack.

In a blog post Sony said that no personal information had been
accessed.

On Sunday an American Airlines flight
carrying a senior Sony executive was
also diverted following a bomb scare.

The group claiming responsibility for
closing down the network also tweeted suggesting there was a security threat to the flight.

'Fixing the issue'

In a blog Sony said that "the PlayStation
Network and Sony Entertainment
Network have been impacted by an
attempt to overwhelm our network
with artificially high traffic".

"We will continue to work towards
fixing this issue and hope to have our
services up and running as soon as
possible," the blog said.

Sony has said the FBI is investigating
the security scare over the flight
carrying Sony Online Entertainment
President John Smedley, which should
have landed in San Diego but was
diverted to Phoenix, Arizona.

Mr Smedley tweeted, "Yes. My plane
was diverted. Not going to discuss more than that. Justice will find these guys."

Sony's 52 million strong PlayStation
network has been hit by hacking
attacks before, including a security
breach in 2011.

Sony had already scheduled routine
maintenance work to be done on its
PlayStation network on Monday.

After 1740 BST some services including
PlayStation Store, PSN account
management and registration,
entertainment services and online
gameplay will be unavailable.

http://m.bbc.com/news/business-28924210