It’s a Christmas tragedy for video game-lovers.
It’s a Christmas tragedy for video game-lovers.
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Hacker group Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the attacks from its Twitter $TWTR account. Lizard Squad initially announced plans for a Christmas attack at the beginning of this month. But after a rival hacker group known as Finest Squad exposed some of the Lizard Squad members’ identities and reported vulnerabilities they had found to PlayStation and Xbox administrators, it seemed that the Lizard Squad hackers had been thwarted.
But apparently not.
Lizard Squad has this year carried out previous cyber-attacks on PlayStation and Xbox. It has also hit EA Games, and grounded a Sony executive’s flight with a tweeted bomb threat.
Both PlayStation and Xbox consoles were likely popular gifts this holiday season. In October, Sony said it had sold a total of 13.5 million PlayStation 4 consoles since its 2013 launch, while it’s estimated that Microsoft had sold about 5 million Xbox One units at that point. Video game consoles make up 63% of all gaming platforms in the $93 billion video game market, with PlayStation and Xbox the two most dominant players.
Xbox and PlayStation’s Twitter support accounts said they were aware of the problems and actively working to resolve them:
