PlayStation Network, XBox Live Experience Massive Outages Due To Possible Hacker Attacks – Twitter Goes Insane
Twitter has come alive in big-time ways as both PlayStation Network and XBox Live are experiencing major outages. While some believe that a large number of new users could have caused the systems to crash during the Christmas holiday, it could be something else. Hackers are stepping up to take credit for the outages and it seems like Lizard Squad is proud of it.
According to Bloomberg, on Christmas Day, outages happened to both Sony’s PlayStation Network and Microsoft’s XBox Live. As usual, many gets new video game systems for the holiday and it was thought that many new users could have caused an overload.
That was the assumption until Twitter came alive with Lizard Squad saying they are to blame and will “stop hitting” only if users acknowledge their attack and retweet them. They even started making fun of users.
“Jingle bells jingle bells xbox got ran…oh my fun it is to troll of you morons…hey!”
As USA Today stated, Lizard Squad also claimed responsibility for the attack on the PlayStation Network in August as well as those of online games League of Legends and World of Warcraft.
Sony has been dealing with plenty as of late due to the massive hacks of Sony Pictures Entertainment and the leaks. Now, they’ve got this on their hands and a bunch of angry gamers that just want to play with friends online.
As of the morning after Christmas, XBox Live had come back online, but the PlayStation Network was still down.
Our engineers are continuing to work hard to resolve the network issues users have experienced today. Thanks for your continued patience!
— Ask PlayStation (@AskPlayStation) December 26, 2014
If there are any continued problems with XBox Live though, Microsoft is aware of the situation as is everyone.
“We’re working to get everything back to normal ASAP,” Microsoft says. “We appreciate your patience. Check back in 30 minutes for a status update.”
While the outages of both XBox Live and PlayStation Network is bothersome, some wonder if it could be much worse. Not everyone has taken into consideration if information and date could have been stolen during this so-called breach.
“It’s not yet clear whether it’s just an outage of the PlayStation Network or if some personal data has been stolen too,” said Hideki Yasuda, a Tokyo-based analyst at Ace Research Institute. “From investors’ point of view, a data leak won’t bankrupt the company.”
If this does end up just being a temporary outage of the PlayStation Network and XBox Live, and nothing more serious, it may not be that bad.
When the PlayStation Network suffered an outage and was down for a month, sales of the PlayStation 4 were affected very little. The problem here is that social media is going crazy due to the Christmas holiday and everyone wanting to be on right now.
[Image via Simon Dawson – Bloomberg]
