Last year bright-eyed gamers hoping to play their new video games online on Christmas morning found themselves out of luck when Xbox Live and the Playstation Network were shut down for two days by a hacker collective calling themselves Lizard Squad. These hackers claimed their Grinchy stunt was designed to teach Microsoft and Sony a “lesson” and force them to tighten up their lax security. And it’s not the first time it’s happened; in 2011, PSN was forced offline for nearly a month by hackers.
Well, hopefully Microsoft and Sony have taken their lesson to heart, because hackers are once again threatening Xbox Live and PSN. For the past week a new hacker group calling themselves Phantom Squad has been threatening to take down Xbox Live and PSN, and keep them down for a full seven days.
https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/674391272728039426Phantom Squad has already claimed to be responsible for taking Reddit offline earlier this week, although Reddit has not confirmed that hacking was involved. This new group certainly seems to be less altruistic than Lizard Squad, as they say they’re going to take down Xbox Live and PSN simply to prove that “cybersecurity does not exist.” Well, okay then.
Hopefully, this is all just empty boasting/trolling, but again, Microsoft and Sony’s online services have been successfully targeted in the past. So yeah, I’d make sure your Christmas list has some meaty single-player games on it, just in case.
(Via Variety)