PlayStation Network (Photo : Reuters)
The Sony PlayStation Now network is finally back online after the service was brought down by a series of hacks perpetrated by a group of hackers called The Lizard Squad. The cyber-attack eventually halted PlayStation Now's service for three days and although the company has said that it is back online, the service is yet to be 100% working.
The hack was done in Dec 2, during the busiest time of the year. The service outage disrupted the PlayStation Now's entire operations and must have caused a lot of trouble to its customers.
According to reports, a distributed denial of service attack was the technique used to topple Sony's servers. Distributed denial of service is a hacker technique that involves overflowing a specific server with fake packets of data causing immense uncontrolled traffic to the servers.
Aside from Sony's PlayStation Now crash, a similar service offered by Microsoft's Xbox Live was crippled on the same day by the same hackers as well. However, Microsoft was quick to react to the attacks and was able to get its network back online Friday.
Irate gamers and customers have brought their rage into social media outlets like Twitter, flooding both Xbox and PlayStations account with complains about the abrupt disconnection of service. Reports from Sony put affected users at around 56 million. The attack was the second security breach for Sony in a span of less than a month. The most infamous being the Sony hack on Nov that has brought sensitive private documents within Sony to the scrutiny of the public. The Lizard Squad has also breach the PlayStation network Aug of this year.
The hacker group, posting their messages on Twitter, has claimed that they are done with the PlayStation and Xbox hack and are now targeting a different internet service, The Onion Router.
