The two most popular gaming networks, PSN and Xbox Live, have been offline most of Christmas day due to a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack. A group named the Lizard Squad has taken credit for the attack. This is the same group that credited themselves for an attack on the PlayStation network and MMO games World of Warcraft and League of Legends back in August.
Both service status pages for the Xbox and PSN state (at the time of this writ) that they’re offline. This definitely caps off a rough Holiday for Sony, who recently had their Sony Pictures subsidiary get attacked and sourced as one of the biggest tech topics over the past week and a half. During which, a group of hackers named the Guardians of Peace (GOP) threatened a 9/11 style attack on theaters that would show the leaked Sony Pictures movie “The Interview.”
Sony had decided to pull the film when the U.S. government determined that North Korea had been behind the hack, but recently decided to put the film on services like Google Play and show it in cinemas in the U.S. on Christmas day. The film can be purchased on other services like YouTube and, on Xbox Live.
We’re aware that some users are having issues logging into PSN – engineers are investigating
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) December 25, 2014