Pierluigi Paganini
December 03, 2014
Last night the Microsoft Xbox Live’s online service was interrupted, after Sony Pictures another company suffered a major cyber attack. This time the Xbox Live service was hit by a severe DDoS attack that has been coordinated by the Lizard Squad hacking group, the team that calls itself the “ddos kings” in its brief Twitter bio.
“Xbox Live #offline,” the Lizard Squad group tweeted at 5:37 p.m. Monday, later adding that the shutdown is “a small dose of what’s to come on Christmas.”
By Tuesday morning, Microsoft announced that all its Xbox Live services were “up and running.” The support team working at Xbox Live service worked overnight to restore normal operations, the company has kept updated it numerous customers providing updates via the Twitter account used by its support team.
“We’re currently working to resolve this. Thanks for your patience,” is the message posted via Twitter by one of Xbox’s support team members before midnight Monday.
The company said it was a “busy night.” as reported by the CBC news.
The hacking group, which is taking responsibility for the attack on the Xbox Live’s online service, in August 2014 targeted another giant of the gaming industry, Sony PlayStation. The PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network were hit by a major DDoS Attack and experienced a mass outages for North American users.
“Like other major networks around the world, the PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network have been impacted by an attempt to overwhelm our network with artificially high traffic.” announced Sony.
In that occasion, the hackers of the Lizard Squad group have hit a range of gaming services including Battle.net, League of Legends, Sony Online Entertainment titles, PSN and others.
In a separate incident, the Lizard Squad also claimed through its Twitter account that explosives might be on an American Airlines flight on which was flying the Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley causing the flight deviation.
(Security Affairs – XBox Live online service, hacking)
