by ted2112, HSM team writer

Sunday was a strange and unsettling day for both Sony’s PlayStation Network and XBox Live, among others, following what seems to have been a major outside attack on the gaming networks which resulted in their temporary suspension of service.

The story, however, gets much worse. In a more dramatic twist in the attack, Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley was traveling on American Airlines flight 362 from Dallas to San Diego when social media claimed explosives were aboard the commercial airliner. The flight was diverted to Phoenix, Arizona, and landed safely. The hacking group Lizard Squad claimed responsibility.

All the while these dangerous events were playing out, the Lizard Squad social media arm was taunting and relishing the situation, almost daring law enforcement to try and stop them. One post on Twitter said, “today we planted the ISIS flag on Sony’s servers.” Unfortunately for them, we all know how these events go down and are reminded of the FBI capture of the three hackers of the Spanish arm of Anonymous who were responsible for the outage in 2011.

The bot attack that started early Sunday morning involved thousands of bot IPs. Sony, however, has been through this before and has beefed up the security of the network; they quickly worked to counter the attack to the point where reports of some users were able to get on to the PSN normally. The Xbox Live attack seems to have come later Sunday evening, disabling Microsoft’s gaming network. This type of attack involves using thousands of computers — usually without the owners’ knowledge — and floods a network with information requests that bog down and eventually disable a network.

The good news: no personal information from any PSN users was compromised. It’s simply an inconvenience — and both networks are fully back up, as of Monday morning.

The deeply troubling thing about this attack: not only how incredibly pointless it is to try and disable entertainment servers, but how it crossed the line into terrorism with the bomb threat on a domestic commercial airliner. Any kind of agenda or cause is simply lost in this. Many followers of Lizard Squad joined in the taunting of both Sony and American Airlines while the aircraft was being diverted. Upon landing, the aircraft and contents were searched by federal and local law enforcement and no explosives were found. Echoes of 9/11 are all still fresh in the public consciousness, and this act of senselessness runs counter to everything gaming stands for.

This event is not a game. It is just another example of what is becoming a  blurry line where the power of what technology can do enters into the hands of those not mature enough to wield it. All that is certain of this is the consequences that will follow.

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One Response to “DDoS: the Aftermath”

1. Burbie52 says:

   August 26, 2014 at 10:51 am

   I will never understand the mentality behind hacking. It seems to be a bunch of people with too much time on their hands and a penchant for hating everyone. They seem to think that doing these things will get them some kind of recognition, their fifteen minutes of fame so to speak. But the people who are truly affected are the common users who aren’t a big corporation and never did anything to incur their wrath. All I can do is shake my head and wonder about why they do these things to people they don’t even know.

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