Lizard Squad took down again Sony PSN and Xbox Live networks

Hackers belonging to the Lizard Squad team have taken down at Christmas the online networks of both Microsoft Xbox Live and PlayStation network (PSN).

The Lizard Squad hacking team has taken down the online gaming networks of both Xbox Live and PlayStation at Christmas.

The attack does not come unexpected, unfortunately, the group Lizard Squad had already announced the offensive planned for Christmas.

It seems that the Xbox Live and the PlayStation network suffered a major DDoS attack, the circumstance is not new because both platforms were hit by the hackers earlier December.

Earlier December, the Microsoft’s Xbox Live servers were not reachable for 2 days, having a serious impact on Xbox Live users. A day after, the Lizard Squad team hit again the Xbox Live service with a DDoS attack and has announced other similar attack against the PSN services. On December 5, Xbox 360 users were not able to access the Xbox Live online service.

“Gamers planning to watch the Game Awards on Xbox 360 were utterly disappointed to find their connections breaking intermittently.” reported a blog post on TechWorm.net.

Lizard Squad also claimed it took down several online games, including League of Legends and World of Warcraft.

Yesterday the users of PSN and Xbox Live networks have had an unpleasant surprise accessing the platforms, they were welcomed with offline status.

While visiting the PSN and Xbox Live page visitors were welcomed with offline status as reported in the images below:

The Xbox network is now active, but many users still report problems.

The Lizard Squad team post the following message on Twitter through the account @FUCKCRUCIFIX claiming it took down Sony PlayStation online network.

150RTS if you PSN #Online — Lizard Squad (@FUCKCRUCIFIX) December 25, 2014

The Lizard Squad hacking group, which took responsibility for the attack, claimed that they downed both Xbox and PlayStation Network (PSN), and won’t stop until they get 10,000 retweets.

During the night Lizard Squad continued to send tweets, some messages were requesting money to interrupt the attack on Xbox Live and PSN.

GET ME TO 100k OR XBOX LIVE WILL REMAIN #offline RT!

— Lizard Squad (@FUCKCRUCIFIX) December 25, 2014 im on NBC

— Lizard Squad (@FUCKCRUCIFIX) December 25, 2014 welp now im on CNN

— Lizard Squad (@FUCKCRUCIFIX) December 25, 2014

The popular hacking collective Anonymous and the groups of hackers Finest Squad announced support to Sony and Microsoft, it seems that they are cooperating with the FBI in the dismantling of the Lizard Squad.

Both Sony and Microsoft are “working hard” to fix the problems, the damage to their image is very serious.

Stay Tuned … … …

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Sony PSN, Microsoft XBox Live, Lizard Squad)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.