Hackers plan to shut down XBOX Live and PSN for a week straight.
Another year, another hacking threat. According to reports, Xbox Live and the Playstation Network have received another holiday hacking threat. For the past week, the hacker group Phantom Squad has been issuing threats to disconnect online service of Xbox Live and the Playstation Network using DDos attacks. The group revealed in a tweet that they plan on taking down Xbox Live and the Playstation Network on Christmas for an entire week straight.
We are going to shut down Xbox live and PSN this year on christmas. And we are going to keep them down for one week straight #DramaAlert
— Phantom Squad (@PhantomSqaud) December 9, 2015
The two companies are not the only network servers the hacking group has threatened. In fact, the group is planning on taking down specific games including Grand Theft Auto V, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Call of Duty Black Ops 3.
But, should we be worried about Phantom Squad? Well, on Tuesday morning in a hacking attack the group took down Reddit, the popular link sharing website, which caused an uproar in the community with many members complaining even hours later.
The website did indeed go down, and according to Reddit’s status website, it was because the databases came “under extreme load.” This would line up with a DDoS attack, which overloads servers with fake requests.
This is not the first time Xbox Live and PSN were hacked. Lizard Squad, a hacker group that shut down Xbox Live and PSN last year on Christmas and Christmas Eve. But, Phantom Squad claims they have no affiliation with Lizard Squad, their mission behind these attacks is to prove “cybersecurity does not exist.”
