The hackers weren't lying and they have hacked PSN after sony disregarded their threats
OR
There is new system software like sony said, i believed this initially but like you said 26 hours hmmm this think must be like a 10GB download if they are serious.
hahaha yeah its been down for a little while and it could still be days before it is resolved, i think hackers are the least of there problems atm and the boys from microsoft and X box live will be cheering because they are going to have a lot of unhappy gamers to cater for i beleive!
I have both Xbox and playstation and throughout all Xbox's hardware issues I think this is far worse. To get to the point where your identity is at stake is a massive problem. I have also found that a lot of the gaming servers are frequently down on playstation which is also a rare occurance for xbox. I don't mind paying the piddly $89 a year for online access for xbox because to me their online services are far superior.