PlayStation Network Back Online After Monday Morning Hacking

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
The same team of hackers that claimed credit for an attack on Xbox Live last week has now taken down Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN), and they are threatening to continue targeting online game services until Christmas.
According to BBC News, the group known as Lizard Squad has said that they are responsible for the attack which has forced the gaming company’s online store to be inaccessible on Monday. Sony had said that it is aware of the issues and is currently investigating the matter.
Overnight, PSN’s status was listed as “Intermittent,” but earlier this morning it was listed as being back online, said Abhimanyu Ghoshal of The Next Web. He added that, despite Lizard Squad’s claims, it was still not 100 percent clear whether or not the PSN servers had been attacked or if Sony was just conducting routine maintenance.
The attack comes days after the console celebrated its 20th anniversary last week, and less than a week after Lizard Squad claimed credit for distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that took down the Xbox Live network, Andrew Griffin of The Independent noted. At the time, the group said that attacks would continue throughout the holiday season.
“Lizard Squad hit Sony earlier this year, in August, when it took down Sony’s PlayStation Network. It said then that the purpose of the attack was to highlight vulnerabilities in the network,” Griffin said. “The group has been connected with Anonymous, but its Twitter account appeared to deny those claims yesterday.”
“The hacker group had then said that its Xbox attack was just “a small dose” of what was to come over the Christmas season. Lizard Squad has claimed responsibility for attacks that have taken high-profile targets like EA games and Destiny offline in the past,” BBC News added, noting that the group has “a Russian-based website.”
The apparent PSN cyberattack follows a recent attack on Sony’s movie division, Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE), that crippled its computer systems and resulted in the illegal release of several of the company’s motion pictures. A group known as Guardians of Peace (GOP) claimed credit for that attack, though there have been rumors that North Korea was behind them in retaliation for the upcoming film “The Interview.”
Late last week, Variety reported that the hackers responsible for the Sony Pictures attack have threatened employees and their families unless they made the company “behave wisely.” Those employees were instructed to turn off their mobile devices after receiving the threats. Law enforcement officials are continuing to investigate the incident.
Sony’s PlayStation Network was also targeted by a DDoS attack in August. While no user data was compromised in that attack, a 2011 breach did expose the names and passwords of millions of PSN customers. That attack, which experts called one of the worst breaches in years, resulted in the names, addresses, email addresses, birth dates, user names and passwords of some of the then-77 million PSN accounts being potentially compromised.
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