MANCHESTOR: Gamers who received new consoles for Christmas might find themselves unable to connect and play with friends, thanks to a coordinated attack by hackers who claim to have taken down the two largest gaming networks. On what might be the biggest gaming day of the year, a hacker group called Lizard Squad is claiming responsibility for taking down both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network.
Both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network are down this morning, ostensibly due to a denial-of-accommodation attack. The notorious hacking group Lizard Squad — which already carried out earlier attacks on Microsoft and Sony has claimed responsibility on Twitter for these latest outages. While Lizard Squad’s role in all of this remains unconfirmed, the group did threaten last week to take down Xbox Live and PSN.
Regardless of who’s abaft this, the timing is conspicuously terrible: Plenty of people surely received one of the two consoles as Christmas presents today, while many more gamers would have ecstatically spent the afternoon in front of the TV. “Thanks for your patience, Xbox members.” In an electronic mail, a Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment further or verbalize when the company expects to recuperate accommodation.
