Some people waking up earlier this morning may not know this, but Xbox Live was down last night. While it’s outage only lasted a few hours, Lizard Squad has promised more. You will more than likely recognize that name, as Lizard Squad is the hacker group behind attacks that have taken down Sony’s PlayStation Network, League of Legends, Battle.net, Twitch and a few others. These attacks can last from only a couple of hours to days. While Xbox Live was only down for a couple of hours, they have promised more to come on Christmas with their… Twitter account. Yes, oddly enough the Lizard Squad, a hacker group with supposed ties to ISIS, has a Twitter account. While Lizard Squad has implied these claims are false, it’s interesting that a hacker group still has a rather active Twitter.
So yeah, if you are planning on getting an Xbox One or PS4 during Christmas, Lizard Squad may hurt your first impressions of the consoles. With traffic on the consoles increasing so much, the Lizard Squad attacks could place some services out for days, not just hours. As the holidays already stress the servers out with the increased activity, a DDoS from Lizard Squad is not going to do them any favors. While a warning may help the companies prepare for Lizard Squad, there may be nothing they can really do.
It should be interesting to see what Lizard Squad has in store for Christmas and one can only hope it’s nothing too bad. Based off of their record though, Lizard Squad isn’t going to give us anything good this Christmas. Hopefully the companies attacked on that day will be able to prevent it or restore services quickly, but the stress on their servers may be their undoing.
That’s a small dose of what’s to come on Christmas. #LizardSquad
— Lizard Squad (@LizardPatrol) December 2, 2014