Xbox Live and PlayStation Network suffer intermittent outages amid hacking claims

[Himanshu Arora]

Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, the online services for Microsoft's and Sony's game consoles, are experiencing intermittent outages apparently due to a malicious distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

As of writing, the Xbox Live status page is showing Xbox Live Core Services as "limited," while the PlayStation Network service is offline. The connectivity problems began around Christmas Eve and have been acknowledged by both Sony and Microsoft.

"We are aware some users are unable to sign into Xbox Live. Our teams are working to resolve the issue. Visit xbox.com/support for status updates," said Sean McCarthy, general manager of Microsoft's Xbox Product Services, adding that the company doesn't share information on the root cause of specific issues.

On the other hand, Sony's Ask PlayStation account tweeted:

We are still looking into the PSN issues reported earlier. Thanks again for your continued patience today.

— Ask PlayStation (@AskPlayStation) December 25, 2014

A hacker group by the name of Lizard Squad, that had previously pledged to take down the services on Christmas Day, has taken credit for the attacks via Twitter, promising that it’ll back off once it gets sufficient number of retweets. "Get this tweet 2,000RTS and make sure to follow @iBeZo if you want us NOT to hit XBOX and PSN #offline for the rest of the night! RT," the group said in a tweet which has since been deleted.

Incidentally, this is the same group that took the responsibility for Blizzard and PlayStation Network outages last August, saying that the action wouldn't stop until the US ceased attacks on the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL). It also tweeted a bomb threat following which the flight of Sony Online Entertainment head John Smedley was diverted.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/59242-xbox-live-playstation-network-suffer-intermittent-outages-amid.html

 

[TheDreams]

So they go from wanting the US to stop attacking ISIS to wanting retweets? Lawl

 

[JohnCB]

DDoS != Hacking
Just a bunch of attention seeking script kiddies

 

[yukka]

Honestly think if Microsoft and Sony can't get a hold on this, they might have to rethink their business model. And games released that require patches before they can be played. Installs that require Internet connections. If you can't get online to do these things regularly, people will find other things to do and other ways to spend their money. £60 a game for something that might just unavailable to play isn't sustainable. Maybe once or twice a year something happens can be laughed off but sustained attacks cant. PC games have had issues, servers have gone offline. But the PC hardware isn't reliant on a steam connection (as an example) to get any use out of it. In a lot of cases, no Xbox live means no service.

I'd say it's interesting to see how Ms and Sony will approach this but it's not really. Seems if a bunch of people want to hire a botnet they can take out gaming across the world and the millions paying hundreds of pounds can't do anything about it.

 

[Guest]

Well, M$ is doing something from what I've noticed. LS threatened much more for christmas than their last attacks on xbl and failed to deliver on that. They did something, but they are obviously being slowed down as far as attacking xbl goes (so far). Unless they lost focus. Either way it doesn't matter what they say they will do now. They are losing momentum imo.

 

[tonylukac]

Isn't the interview movie being shown thru those networks?

 

[josh brown]

DDoS != Hacking
Just a bunch of attention seeking script kiddies

a DDoS doesn't mean hacking its a denial of service it just happens to be that through hacking they've made Xbox account and Xbox live and PSN DDos. But at the same time you could argue that sony's playstation and microsoft's xbox should have better security to be able to not allow people to hack into the servers. At the same time we who have Xbox accounts or Playstation accounts have to pay for service and for online access and yet we don't get the service we want therefore its not right on our behalf and im a big microsoft fan and yet I still think the past month there service has been shocking.

 

[ET3D]

In a lot of cases, no Xbox live means no service.

Really? Isn't it possible to play single player games you have installed if Live is down?

 

[yukka]

A single player game can be played. Disk based games that are already installed and any digital games if you are on your "home" Xbox. But if you are using an Xbox that isn't your home Xbox you need to be signed in to play digital games that aren't owned by the Xbox owner. so there's some stuff you can do but nothing you pay the yearly sub to Microsoft. Nearly all my games are online (gta, destiny, Diablo and FIFA). If they took the online part away from the package I would never have paid £300 for the console in the first place, wouldn't own those games and would be doing something (probably more healthy) with my time off. Maybe it's a good thing these guys are doing their thing to wreck it all for everyone.