Merry Christmas, from hackers: PlayStation Network and Xbox Live both attacked
PSN and Xbox Live Christmas HacksImage Source: idgmr
By Chris Smith on Dec 25, 2014 at 11:35 AM
A hacker group known as “Lizard Squad” has claimed responsibility for attacks targeting both Microsoft’s Xbox Live and Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN) on Wednesday evening.
Microsoft’s Xbox Live went down for Xbox 360 users in the afternoon of December 24th, with the company’s status page for the service showing that Xbox Live core services were “limited.”
The hacker team posted various messages on Twitter, confirming that it took down Xbox Live on Christmas Eve.
“Xbox offline,” the group wrote. “Jingle bells jingle bells Xbox got smacked, oh my fun it is to DDoS in my moms basement …. heyy!”
Business Insider reports that a few hours after the attack on Microsoft, the same hackers took down Sony’s PSN in a similar manner. “PSN offline” the group said. Sony confirmed the attack via its @AskPlayStation Twitter account.
It’s believed Lizard Squad used DDoS attacks to temporarily shut down these services, basically flooding them with web traffic. The hacker group last week threatened to take down both the PSN and the Xbox Live networks this Christmas.
Currently, both PSN and Xbox Live are up, with the latter showing that service is limited for certain apps, including IGN, Maxim and MLG.TV.
