Xbox Live and PSN Threatened by Hacker Group Conducting DDoS attacks During Christmas Time
As we inch closer to Christmas time, and people around the world prepare to celebrate the holidays in their own fashion, hackers are ramping up their efforts to attack the Xbox Live and PlayStation networks at a time when usage is at an all-time high.
This year's holiday season has brought many joyful spirits to the lives of many. However, on the other hand, the holidays are bringing forth the Grinch in the form of hackers and cybercrooks who want to garner a quick payday or see the world burn to the ground. In light of the many online gaming networks having a record number of users during the holidays, a new hacker group has set out to conduct DDoS attacks on the Xbox Live and PlayStation Networks.
The Xbox Live and PlayStation networks will naturally see increased usages during Christmas as many people will receive the gaming devices as a gift and immediately take to the gaming networks for their online gaming experience. The new hacker group, who is calling themselves Phantom Squad, is claiming to carry out DDoS attacks against several online gaming networks. So far, the group has not provided definitive proof of their attacks. However, Phantom Squad is continually boasting about how they are specifically attacking the Xbox Live and PlayStation networks following very short downtimes suffered by the gaming networks this week.
As we know all-to-well, DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are instances that flood a server or gaming server with so much traffic at once that the server eventually crashes or is unable to load services for its end-users. DDoS attacks continue to be a serious nuisance among large websites and networks. Though, many networks are robust enough and utilize piggyback CDN (Content Delivery Networks) to safeguard them against some of the strongest DDoS attacks.
When it comes to gaming networks that Xbox and PlayStation consumers utilize, the servers are extremely robust and can thwart the most common DDoS attacks very easily. The Phantom Squad hacker group's attempt to take down the Xbox Live and PlayStation networks, if it proves to be true, only took the services down momentarily for an hour or two in the past week. Other than the short downtime, business continues as usual for Xbox Live and PlayStation networks.
There is a trend with new hacker groups to earn respect and garner attention. The Phantom Squad may very well have the capability to take down large sites and networks. However, in the scope of their recent attacks on Reddit and now two large gaming networks, their work proves to be the copycat actions of other well-known hacker groups who were successful in their attacks on many different entities around the world.
Today https://t.co/vwG4SNrlLa. What should it be tomorrow
— Phantom Squad (@PhantomSqaud) December 15, 2015
From the looks of Phantom Squad's Twitter account, as they mention in the shared Tweet above, they are being rather boastful of their actions and have allegedly set out to attack other networks, such as Steam, KEESTARx and Reddit.com. Time will tell if they are successful, but we speculate that they won't even be noticed. Either way, the companies who are under the radar of Phantom Squad should take the necessary precautions. After all, who wants to wake up Christmas morning to a new Xbox or PlayStation to find out that they can't play it online due to a downed online gaming network?