Christmas was definitely silent for millions of Xbox and PlayStation gamers when the network of both gaming giants was reportedly hacked on Christmas day. Customers of both the Xbox Live and PlayStation Now were unable to access their online accounts due to the hack that was the "Lizard Squad".
The attack was first detected on Wednesday when thousands of users complained about the slow response of both Sony and Microsoft servers. The servers finally crashed on Wednesday evening, a critical situation for both companies since their servers allow their respective players to play their games on a wider online community. The two companies, Sony and Microsoft were not able to find a solution until Christmas day, which annoyed and angered many of its customers. It was only late Thursday that both the companies admitted that something is wrong with their network and that they are doing their best to find a solution for the problem.
PlayStation said on a tweet that "We're aware that some users are having issues logging into PSN (PlayStation Network) - engineers are investigating."
Recent reports show that the hack was claimed by Lizard Squad, whether the hack was perpetrated by a group of hacker or just an individual is still unclear. On a Twitter post, Lizard Squad claims that they manage to topple the servers of both Sony and Microsoft through a DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attack. DDoS is a hacking technique that involves overflowing the targets server with packets of information until the servers cannot effectively manage the traffic and eventually crash.
The Lizard Squad shared on its Tweeter account the following message; "Jingle bells jingle bells xbox got ran, oh my fun it is to troll of you morons ... hey!"
Speculations are rising that the hack could be a direct retaliation to Sony's decision of releasing the highly controversial film "The Interview" despite hacker threats of 9/11-style attack on theaters. Microsoft on the other hand agreed to stream the movie. However, experts claim that the two attacks are unrelated.
