The impact that technology hackers can wreak upon the world was one of the concurrent themes that stood out alongside terrorism in the lead-up to Christmas 2014. Just when the public had calmed down after "The Interview" was eventually released by Sony, the Lizard Squad reared its online head again, targeting Playstation and Xbox gamers during the Christmas period.
The first sign of the latest Lizard Squad hack emerged on Christmas morning—Christmas Eve in the northern hemisphere—when both the Xbox Live and Playstation gaming networks were reported as offline by thousands of frustrated gamers. The access problem was especially upsetting for those who had received the corresponding gaming consoles as Christmas gifts.
The two gaming networks allow users to step up to the next level of gaming by moving beyond the confines of their own homes to play against competitors from around the world—an internet connection is all that is needed. However, the as-yet-unknown Lizard Squad used a standard technique known as a "distributed denial of service" attack to incapacitate both of the networks by flooding them with fake traffic.
While the two technology brands were appreciating the patience of their customers and "hard at work trying to reach a solution", the hacking entity—it is not known whether the Lizard Squad is an individual or a group—communicated with the public through its Twitter profile: "Jingle bells jingle bells xbox got ran" appeared on Thursday, followed by "oh my fun it is to troll of you morons ... hey!" While a solution was still being sought, a Lizard Squad tweet reading "I have the nation on strings" was published, with an offer to reinstate the sites if enough retweets are received.
As of 8:30pm AEST on Friday, the networks were still offline. Meanwhile, the North Korean government proposed a joint investigation with the United States in regard to the cyber-attack against Sony Pictures; however, a link has not been established between that hacking incident and the Lizard Squad.