When it rains it pours, with Sony’s online facility for PlayStation gamers the latest of the entertainment giant’s services to come undone by hackers.
Following the ongoing fallout of Sony’s infamous security breach over the past fortnight, PlayStation’s PSN service went down this morning thanks to LizardSquad, a hacker group.
It appears to accomplish this through DDoS attacks, bombarding servers that host online services with traffic to a point where they are incapable of handling connections from real users.
A few days ago the same group claimed responsibility for bringing Microsoft’s Xbox Live service to a halt on the Xbox 360. It’s still not fully up to speed.
This attack comes at an embarrassing time for Sony for numerous reasons, one of which being it only recently celebrated the console’s 20th birthday anniversary.
PSN Login #offline #LizardSquad
— Lizard Squad (@LizardPatrol) December 8, 2014
Although now restored, the PSN service coming down also adds to a particularly woeful few days for Sony’s security team.
As reported earlier, the cyber-attack against Sony Pictures is “unprecedented,” the CEO of FireEye’s Mandiant forensics unit Kevin Mandia has told the head of Sony Pictures Michael Lynton.
The cyber-attack knocked much of Sony Pictures’ network offline, resulted in the theft and distribution online of five movies about to be released to cinemas worldwide as well as the exposure of vital records including celebrity data and over 47,000 social security numbers.
Angry gamer image, via Shutterstock
