A report from the Washington Post claims that the hacker group that leaked massive amount of sensitive document stolen from Sony Pictures had received help from another hacker group that toppled the PlayStation Now network.
A member from the hacker group Lizard Squad said that it shared stolen information from Sony to a member of another hacker group Guardians of Peace (GoP). The Guardians of Peace is the notorious hacker collective that hacked Sony Pictures in an attempt to thwart the upcoming release of the satirical comedy "The Interview". The infamous hack had leaked very confidential information from low level Sony employee up to the top executives.
According to a member of the Lizard Squad, their group "handed over some Sony employee logins". The logins were then used by the GoP to access Sony's private information. This statement from the Lizard Squad is the first statement that confirmed their involvement with the GoP. They admit that they shared login information to GoP but denied that they take part in the hacking efforts. The Lizard Squad member did not provide more information as to how the group manages to get a hold of Sony employees' login information. However, there is a possibility that the group discovered the login information as they are searching for possible ways of penetrating the PlayStation Now network.
The Lizard Squad successfully disrupted not only the PlayStation Now network but also managed to hack deep into Microsoft's Xbox Live network. The hack came early Christmas Eve and left millions of subscribers unable to access their online accounts. The disruption only came to an end after tech magnate Kim Dotcom stepped in and gave the Lizard Squad 3000 free vouchers to Mega, an encrypted cloud storage e service. The vouchers cost $99. However, the vouchers are now on sale for only $50, mathematically the buyoff could net the Lizard Squad $150,000. After the buyout, Lizard Squad posted on their Twitter account that they are done with the PlayStation Now attack and are currently eyeing another target, the Tor network.