Gamers were left frustrated last Christmas when a group of hackers, called Lizard Squad, shutdown the online gaming networks of PlayStation and Xbox for two days using a DDoS attack. This year, Phantom Squad wants to spoil the party for gamers with a DDoS attack on the Play Station Network and Xbox Live – for a whole week.
If you are wondering whether you should take the threat seriously, the newly formed DDoS group took down Xbox LIVE across Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Xbox on Windows 10, as well as Sony PlayStation – the very next day of announcing their intention.
Having trouble signing in & launching content on Xbox One? Our teams are investigating! Stay tuned here: https://t.co/99xfLMWcZW for info
— Xbox Support (1-5) (@XboxSupport) December 17, 2015
We’re still looking into the issues w/sign in & launching content on Xbox One. As always, https://t.co/99xfLNdOow has the latest updates.
— Xbox Support (1-5) (@XboxSupport) December 17, 2015
Thanks for your patience! Our team is still diligently looking into troubles accessing content on Xbox One. We’ll keep you posted w/updates.
— Xbox Support (1-5) (@XboxSupport) December 18, 2015
Issues signing in and launching content should now be fixed! A reset should help clear up any remaining troubles: https://t.co/QENEhDawC3
— Xbox Support (1-5) (@XboxSupport) December 18, 2015
While were still updating the news, Twitter had suspended their account.
Phantom Squad seems unaffected:
In response to the shutdown threats, Anonymous, the online hacktivists made it clear that they will not stand by the decision of targeting PSN or Xbox Live, but claimed if these services went offline this Christmas, it would solely be Sony and Microsoft’s responsibility.
If PSN or Xbox live goes down, Microsoft and Sony are the blame. You would expect these corporations to have sufficient DDoS protection.
— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) December 16, 2015
And offered a bit of advice for gamers…
We won’t take down PSN or Xbox live. But if you worry about not being able to play games on Christmas you need to re-evaluate priorities.
— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) December 16, 2015
This Article (Phantom Squad Takes Down PlayStation, Xbox: Anonymous’ Response Is Awesome) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.
Because they are vulnerable or not they do it simply because they are assholes with no life and nothing better to do with their time. Maybe these guys should find a mate and get laid for once instead of fucking everyone over.
They’re exposing security holes in Microsoft and Sony so your credit info and other valuable info doesn’t get stolen, but these big companies don’t care to make sure your valuable info is kept at it’s safest. Now who’s the asshole?
A DDoS attack doesn’t expose security holes that make data vulnerable, it exposes network traffic handling issues. Not the same thing.
^ This. DDoS is just sending a crap ton of connection requests without actually connecting. There really isn’t a very good way to defend against it, because it’s kinda hard to see if a connection request is legit or not. These guys aren’t heroes, just assholes who have nothing better to do than make others miserable. If a person wants to play on CHristmas, that’s their prerogative.
There are loads of ways of defending against it. Its not particularly complicated and readily available to companies of all size. If Microsoft and Sony wanted to properly defend against it they could.
They are still a-holes because of the fact that they blame the PSN AND Xbox services for not being secure against thieves, but yet, they steal info themselves and or attack the DDoS Trafficking issues, making them Hypocrites. If they want to help so darn bad, they should get legal jobs in reevaluating the services and helping industries make better choices INSTEAD of being pissed off taking the service offline, and acting like High and Mighty trolls with benefits.
There is no place for grey/gray hats in a legal job. For white hats, yes maybe, but Anon is full of gray hats, they hack for what they deem right, not what the law says is right.
You act as if Anonymous is a group. There are black, white and grey hats from all the groups in anonymous. There is no real collective.
Good Job, You Just Expose There Weakness’s Because They Take One’s Money & And Do Not Protect Their Client’s !!!
Interesting theory. So we should re-evaluate our priorities… Interesting coming from hackers defending other hackers wasting their time ruining christmas for millions. This is like saying that house didn’t have sufficient protection so they deserved to be robbed… Where does it stop when you have that attitude towards society. Maybe you need to spend more time with really people instead of separating yourselves from everyday life.
Ok this is bullshit just bought my kid a Xbox one and won’t be able to play destiny look at the time and fucking money I did so this better be taking care of by christmas
Not sure how this post got tagged … (Phantom Squad Takes Down PlayStation, Xbox: Anonymous’ Response Is Awesome) either. This really isnt awesome at all.
game security ?? corporations need to pay their fair share of building a viable world, but securing” a game network should not be close to a priority.
these lizard wannabes people give impression that hackers are children one and all.
Congratulations! You’ve won the stupidest comment of the day award!
ruining christmas for millions of children! well thats in the spirit of christmas isnt it! assholes!
what a selfish bunch of assholes, fair enough take out is accounts but spoil xmas because someone feels xmas should not have games, attack anyone but the kids on xmas ffs
If an outage of PSN or XBlive is all it takes to ruin a child’ xmas, then that child really has a low quality of life.
The point is that some of those people are paying for a service, and someone is preventing them from utilizing that service and using a really crappy excuse for it.
and a bunch of faggot on their COMPUTER have a much better quality of life. Fuck out of here with that BS.
Does kind of suck for the kiddos who might just want to play their new games with their friends. Won’t completely spoil the day, but the timing is sad for them. My boy is so excited about getting his Xbox One (not from me) but I know he’ll be happy to have his Kindle (from me, reading ftw) and read instead if he can’t play.
PSN has your credit card info as well as all your personal information, links into your email, your physical address, etc. Yes, security is a big issue if people don’t want that information available to unscrupulous hackers.
Ddossing is not a security attack. Your personal data is not threatened by a ddos. All they do is throw a bunch of junk at a network. It’s like putting the lid on the garbage can. You can’t put more trash in it, but the trash that’s in there is still there (not going anywhere). Same as the ddos. They clutter the network to where nobody (not even they) can get into it.
Ddos is not hacking. Please don’t confuse the two.
BOOM #FACE. First comment I’ve seen that makes sense.
yeah some common sense
More than right “?!”
As do many other thousands of companies we shop with, but they don’t hack them do they?
Christmas for kids is gaming these days, just because these assholes have no lives of their own, they mask it by calling it a ‘service’ and take the networks down (for a little while) so they can wank at their screens.
You’re obviously clueless on how DDoS and online financial systems work. DDoS weakness has nothing to do with the systems that house you personal CC information. Game networks (which have no credit cards on them) rely on geographic diversity, bandwidth and connection speed, so have to be somewhat sensitive to DDoS tactics to run right. They’re picking an easy target for attention only, since the flaws they’re pointing out have nothing to do with data protection. You don’t clog up the highway to protest car dealer sales practices.
They call themselves “Hackers”, When the only thing they can do is buy a few offshore servers with a script that has been made by a real hacker and take credit. They are a bunch of kids enough said.
All the gamers are upset. Comn’ guys spend it with family and close friends
Doing this during the holidays does nothing to prove your point. Doing it during the holidays only upsets people at you with your “Look at what I did!” simpleton attitude. Ruining a persons time with ones family because of you misguided anger is childish. You could do this at any other time of the year. Doing it now is just dumb.
I agree, It happend before where all the creditcard information was leaked from the PSN network. How would you feel if your information was stolen and abused. Some douchebag maxing out your creditcard just before christmas.
Have them take down the networks and create awareness for security. If your kids christmas is ruined because the XBOX or PSN network is down. Then you definitely should reconsider your parenting skills !
They AREN’T stealing anything you stupid fucking muppet. No amount of ‘security’ will stop a DDoS attack, just a shit load of more bandwidth.
Go learn shit before opening your idiot mouth and say it!
Am in two minds on this one. That these whole systems have been brought down. Once again. By something like this is ridiculous. That lessons aren’t being learned by these companies is appalling. They have our personal details and often our bank and credit card details.
However.
To bring down systems that are used to game is ridiculous and as someone said above, it does not help hackers look anything other than assholes. There are other ways to push this type of agenda without ruining people’s free time like this. Especially as so many of the users are young enough to not understand what is going on.
Scum bags if this is what Anon stands for i’m out, all them kids on xmas day disappointed because some IT freak would like to make a point, seriously you should take out these guys nodes, this is bad this is supposed to be christmas not hackmas… Fricking seriously?
I’ll iterate it simply; It’s not anonymous taking down the gaming service networks.. it’s another group ‘Phantom squad’ which is just a renamed ‘Lizard squad’ which took down the service last year aswell.. Anonymous is saying that a company as big as sony and microsoft should be able to guard themselves against such a weak attack on their network.. and in the end, ‘phantom squad’s’ excuse for doing so is blatant bull..
Cyber security is a very serious thing. The fact they chose to do it on Christmas just puts more pressure on Microsoft and Sony. Believe me, they have the resources to secure their networks from a simple DDoS attack. We’ll see what they choose to do. In the case that they leave themselves vulnerable, well that’ll give us more time to reflect on what Christmas is about instead of slaughtering zombies or whatever your flavor is.
Merry Christmas
You CAN’T defend against a DDoS. Thats the whole point.
They are using the one method that no amount of network security and management can defend against and claiming they are hackers instead of just a bunch of fucking asshole little script kiddies who rent a bot net to flood some servers with random traffic from global IP addresses that can’t easily be blocked or filtered.
Its NOT a security problem, its a consequence of how the internet was created and has grown far past its original intent.
Take down there network and I will take down yours permanently simple enough
QUOTE…. We won’t take down PSN or Xbox live. But if you worry about not being able to play games on Christmas you need to re-evaluate priorities. UNQUOTE… re-evaluate our priorities cus we wanna play games on christmas day?? FUCKING HYPOCRITES!!! how about you re-evaluate the LITTLE CUNTS YOU ARE!… i will stick a knife in the face of any hacker shit that ruins my family christmas… utter cunts!!!… do it and i will personally go out my way to expose every last one of you on a global scale!! fuck your security issues!! do you play games?? if not then just fuck off!!! try hacking the fucking home office or the government thats fucking with peoples lives… attack people who attack you!! nothing but scum!!
Hey I got a idea why not go outside and enjoy some fresh air and actually spend it making memories with family rather then being stuck infront of a damn game.
A LOT of my best memories of gaming with FRIENDS I can’t be with.
fuck you, our whole family plays xbox together and its quality! we rarely play games except at christmas and parties. anonymous stand for freedom and equality, yet allow these scum hackers to shit all over loads of peoples christmas becuase ‘they can’. They are vile people.
These groups talk of security and that should be enforce and reinforced. But all they do is attack. They dont do anything in combating these situations. These so called robin hood groups… are attacking isis? And they say they are the good guys?!? We are not oppressed by microsoft or psn. We play games to either cut loose or to escape our sh*tty reality. Since we are not oppressed by them, and you effecting our lives by this… this makes phantomsquad or queef TERRORISTS. It is an act of terror. Kids play these games to. To some of them its all they have. But Anonymous says ” better re-evaluate your priorities! ” . I mean really? Were you idiots born then the next day you turned 38 years old?!? You were kids once. If your life wasnt great, doesnt give you the right to ruin it for others. That makes you heartless criminals. Not good guys.
LMAO This is pathetic. Attention whores these days hahahaha They could do this on any day of the year but they choose Christmas. They are trying to ruin Christmas for the kids. Can we assume they had a rough childhood themselves? And there is a difference between DDoS protection and hiding your credit card information
^This…. Fucking attentionwhores is what they are… Trying to act big and important with a DDos attack targeting services for entertaining children, during a holiday… Real heros….. NOT!
And for the record… my xbox never went down. Either days. So this phantomsquad or phantomqueef, better find some better work. How about making peoplw who are poor wealthy or giving veterans one hell of a christmas gift. I mean I’m a veteran and the VA wont pay for a surgery I need for a normal life. But outside doctors say it would greatly improve my way of life.
But yea…. lets hack microsoft and psn!
honestly it is rather sad that this would happen considering not every person celebrates christmas and those people that don’t might only have a game system to keep them busy while all of ther friends are away for the holidays etc
Well then, my Christmas is already ruined, when you have a family as dysfunctional as mine, there isn’the much to do on Christmas but sit around fighting over politics and drinking your life away, I may not be a kid, but the fact a bunch of nerdy f*cks in the middle of BFE think that I’d be happier spending my Christmas with my family sitting around and doing nothing but fighting is f*cking ignorant.
I hope they get exposed, sent to jail, and get butt f*cked by fleece Johnson for the rest of their lives.
How bout they offer to fix the loopholes rather than exploit them? Eh?
F*cking attention whores…
Hey Anonymous, how about doing something good on Christmas instead of ruining it for kids. Why not completely shut down all of ISIS’ networks on Christmas day? What an appropriate day to it on, as well. I don’t think you have the know-how. The more I follow your antics, the more I am becoming aware of the fact that you all are nothing but children, with immature ideology, performing cyber terrorism. Are you the pot calling the kettle black?
Fuck spending time with family. waste of time.
^ THAT!
Then your a fucking idiot family is important if all you do is play video games than you have no fucking life so get one idiot
Such a shit excuse by both the Phantom idiots and Anon. So the fuck are you to decide what are good life choices? Families play games together you jackasses. Supporting Phantom because you think “they should have better security” is fucking ridiculous. How about you go harass the damn State Dept if you think that’s a justifiable reason to DDOS attack someone. Hell they’ve gotten actual people killed by their lack of security. You’ve lost all respect from me. It’s Sad you behave like children when there are real dangers out in the world.
It’s good that groups show the weakness in security.
But dos attacks is a lazy hackers weakness.
And not impressive at all
Bit like using chatroom booters back in the day. Flood it with packets lol.
Wow so awesome NOT
Taking down xbox and psn for Christmas and then tell the people to spend time with their family’s
Ain’t that a dictatetorship.
Do something impressive for Christmas. Hack the rich and give it to the family on food banks. Do some thing positive
Hackers are smart and creative so why do dumb things like dos attacks
Something all hackers can work on find away to clear all debt for the 99% of us poor people
Choices
Clear all debt for 99% poor and piss off the 1% rich
Or
take down a gaming network and impress 1% of the poor and piss off the 1% super rich
And what do you choose ? The easy lazy option
Well I’ll be playing on Christmas because I’m not Christian….wtf.
I’m 39 when I was a kid we didn’t spend time with the family we was out on our new bike or playing football or in our room with our spectrum, at least with online gaming me and my kids play the same games online so we are having a laugh or doing singstar or listening to music on spotify. If you lot of unloved kids who had a shit childhood cause your parents didn’t care shut it all down you will ruin our fun for your entertainment!! Go figure you sad lonely spoty fucks
Xbox going down on Christmas isn’t the main worry but what about the kids that’s been asking for an Xbox or ps4 all year that finally get one on Christmas still can’t play it with friends because these goons are trying to prove a point that security is bad by DDos which I might add most of you have got the stuff to do it it’s really not hard
Why not try focusing on doing something good with your ‘amazing’ computer skills and take down ISIS or other terrorist groups?
i completely agree its not fair to the children and familys who put their sweat and blood into buying their kids these new consoles i will be doing what i can to stop these attacks
I think its a great idea people need to spend time with family any ways instead of being wrapped up in a video game. I hope they do it so I can spend time with my boy friend he needs a break from the video games and there’s more important things in the world to worry about than gaming.
Who will be affected, sony and microsoft won’t give a fuck, just the kids who were looking forward to playing on the’re new consoles at christmas. Just do everyone a favour and do something substantial or fuck off, you are impressing nobody with this shit.
Lol, Even I got DDoS protection.
*Mitigation, not protection. The only sure protection is to disconnect your devices from the internet.
My favourite part of this article….Anonymous saying people who are worried about not playing online over Christmas need to re-evaluate priorities…meanwhile it’s apparently perfectly fine to be an asshole and DDoS servers, and those priorities don’t need to be re-evaluated. Heh. What a joke.
you guys are losing focus with this argument, the scale of it all, it’s bigger than me you than any of us, they keep us distracted for the simple purpose of taking over everything, I’m a gamer 2 i can relate i like to play online and all, but at the end of the day we should be joining efforts to solve problems, not fighting each other.
really? if you have the know how to do this do something bigger like shutting down the social media of isis? you want to do something just because you can then do that instead of pissing off a bunch of games…i admit to knowing nothing about how ddos works or what it does by the way.
Okay normally I would have just ignored this, however this sort of irritates me. Put yourself in the place of a child who has cancer and is unable to be out and about with others because of contamination risk (yes I have an adopted child in this situation) Now that child asks for only one thing for Christmas and let me tell you, with the cost of cancer treatment, for some $400 might not be a thing but for those families dealing with this it’s a huge thing. Now this child is laying in a bed smiling and happy because they got their game system that they may or may not have been asking for for quiet some time with tubes hooked to them possibly in a isolation tent while chemicals are attempting to save their life and making them miserable and stuff. None the less they are excited because they get to play their game with their friend that they possibly have not seen for a year or more because of their restrictions. They go to get on and can’t because some asshole decided to take down the entire system. Yeah you’re such a big man. Grow up get a life and stop picking on innocent children. Yes I’m aware there are many many adults on these systems and that their time should be invested in getting jobs, getting an education, bettering their lives, family, etc. BUT there are many more who are innocent children who are not able to get out and have a happy normal healthy life like your kids are. Bullying others be it for what you feel is a just cause or just for the sake of being mean is NOT EVER a good thing. Who are you to dictate who should be spending more time with their kids? In fact you’re a hypocrite to sit there and say that they need to reevaluate their priorities when your priority is destroying Christmas for millions of kids don’t you think? I do applaud Anonymous for not backing this action, however blaming Microsoft and Sony for it? How are they at fault because a bunch of assholes want to bully kids?
yes on christmas your prioritys should not be xbox/psn but what about the familys who got their children xbox and playstation for the familys who worked hard to purchase these items and on christmas and the whole famjam sits down to watch little jimmy boot up his new machine and boom the whole family is disapointed and jimmy is devastated that he cant use his new toy because some losers can show that they can /tracert a url and run loic
huge flaw yes but it isnt fair to the family and children i will gladly stand with those who want to take out this new little group to them i say expect us
I understand kind of what you are saying, but little Jimmy can play campaign mode for his family if that’s how you see it. If little Jimmy’s day is ruined because he can’t talk trash to some kids he will never meet, perhaps that family needs to evaluate how he is being raised and go shoot some hoops.
What if little jimmy got a destiny bundle or another game that is only online?
just because there are offline gaming options doesn’t mean a ddos attack is ok, kyle.
I wanna play Xbox live on Xmas day after going beach with family, walking, meal and then chill. If these assholes ruin that for me then hfusin bfufiajsbdhcuehwhduaajsjxue reevaluate parenting skills!? Haha open a window.
Aw fuck those attcks I was on my 360 on live last x-mas to when they said the same same thing there just big talkers trying to act all big and bad but they ant going to do anything all they got is talk
Phantom Squad, Lizard Quad, and Anon are showing themselves to be no more than the establishments they say they wish to oppress. The internet should be free, DDoS removes the act of free will. You’re just another oppressive regime.
I get what they’re trying to do but again why take down the service? All PSN and Microsoft have to do is say someone hacked our system and took it down. Are we going to stop paying for the service? Are we really going to stop buying the games? Of coarse not… you’re ruining what should be a fun day for so many. What would I care as a CEO of one of these companies if you did this? Do like they did to Sony Pictures… they were scrambling like crazy and made changes overnight after all the emails came out. You want to affect change in a company… then go after the company. Hack into emails to show they know about issues and choose to do nothing, or expose loop holes, etc. But to me personally it does seem like it’s a bunch of people just being jerks.
If it happens it happens they had more than enough time to improve there security and besides we need to spend times with out families on Christmas any way.
Xbox live and psn are so much more than just playing games to a lot of people. It’s internet access, movies, tv AND games with family. Tech is huge in social gatherings, so Anon, I’m sorry, you don’t get it. For some, Christmas traditions will be ruined by this. You could help and save Christmas again, or not and be just as grinchy as Phantom Squad.
Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for kids to not be able to play games on Christmas Day. Besides everyone knows system games are for noobs anyway. Go get a laptop, learn to use an actual keyboard to play your games, and you soon figure out a 500$ laptop can do 99999x more than any system ever could, you just have to use your brain a bit……but oh wait that’s not cool right?
I hope these hackers die a horrible death, I truly do.
Sorry about your penises Nutsac wannabees.
Why u hacking people’s account like u can hate and we will bate acting all cool still makes u a fool like we didn’t do anything on Christmas Eve like the police arrested lizard squad they should arrest u because UR hacking people hacking will never make u achieve
Okay, attacking gaming companies is just ridiculous. You jack nuts are interfering with my JOB. I am a game tester, and I am assigned to XboxOne testing, and now I cant do that because of this crazyness. You are hurting the civilians not the companies. Bravo.
This hackers are just smart ass kids who think only about themselves.
Don’t know anyone would think it is right for some kid to walk into your house and defecate on your carpet just to show he can.
These morons have no statement to make other than look at me. They are out to annoy everyone and nothing beyond that. They live in closets and this is the only pathetic thing they can do to have any affect on the world.
They hack games so they can just go in and do everything to everyone. They think it makes them worthwhile but in fact it just shows how worthless they are.