By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO
Hackers took down the systems of Microsoft’s Xbox Live and Sony’s PlayStation Network during Christmas, with PlayStation still suffering from outages Friday.
The cyber attacks against PlayStation began Christmas Eve, with more following for both services on Christmas Day and continuing through Friday.
With networks down, gamers are unable to connect to players using other consoles – a much-buzzed about feature on the latest consoles from PlayStation and Xbox.
While Microsoft reported the core services of Xbox Live were up and running Friday, certain apps were still down and Xbox’s support page said service was limited.
Sony, still reeling from a massive hacking on its film studio less than a month ago, was experiencing more difficulty.
“Our engineers are continuing to work hard to resolve the network issues users have experienced today,” read a tweet from PlayStation’s official Twitter support page early Friday morning. “Thanks for your continued patience!”
Unlike the attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment where data and documents were stolen from the company’s computer system, the PSN and Xbox Live attackers launched distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on the networks that overwhelmed servers with fake requests.
A hacker group calling itself Lizard Squad has claimed responsibility for the attack. The group has issued threats since the beginning of the month about a Dec. 25 DDoS attack.
A “core member” of the group claimed that while it originally took down the systems for fun, the motivation coalesced into demonstrating the weaknesses of the gaming networks, according to an interview published Thursday with WinBeta, a Microsoft-focused news outlet.
Other hackers, calling themselves the Finest Squad, have launched their own DDoS attacks against the Lizard Squad in attempt to bring PSN back online.
But as Sony, Microsoft and splintered crews of hackers battle, gamers who received new consoles under their Christmas trees Thursday remain unable to fully enjoy their new toys.
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