A member of the infamous hacker collective that brought down the gaming servers of Sony and Microsoft have been arrested by the British authorities. The suspect's name was Vinnie Omari, 22 years old and an active member of the Lizard Squad. According to reports, he played a vital role in the recent Sony and Microsoft hack.
On an email that he sent to The Daily Dot, he said that the police authorities took everything in his home during the raid. Among those confiscated were his Xbox One gaming console, his personal phone and laptops. No charges were filed according to him and he was subsequently freed in the following hours. According to some documents posted online, Mr. Omari posted bail that's why he was released.
The hack perpetrated by the Lizard Squad started early Christmas Eve and persisted for the next days or so. The hack brought down the entire gaming servers of both Sony and Microsoft, a disruption of service that brought millions of gamers unable to access their accounts and therefore unable to play their respective games. Microsoft was quick to resolve their issue, being able to fix the problem with the next couple of days. Sony was badly hit and took the company more than three days to find a fix for the problem, however after the patch was done reports are still circulating that their server is not in 100% working condition.
A Lizard Squad member said in a BBC interview claiming that the hack was brought about "because we can". He also added that the attack is to reveal various security loopholes within the system of Sony and Microsoft. However, on Tuesday the Lizard Squad released a program called the Lizard Stresser. The program will enable customer to launch a similar distributed denial of service attacks to any server of their choice, an attack similar to the ones that toppled Sony and Microsoft.
Another Lizard Squad Member named "Dragon" released a statement saying that the attack on Sony and Microsoft is a marketing strategy to promote their program the Lizard Stresser, a statement that contradicts their previous actions saying that the attack were merely for laughs and to show security loopholes.
