Online gaming is the face of gaming today.
We’re always connected and challenging others from all over the world, rather than just the system in our living rooms.
Hackers are targeting video games.
Not to cheat the game, but to disrupt gamers.
Hackers commonly have goals to achieve money or information.
In instances ranging back to 2011, hackers have bypassed Xbox Live and PlayStation Network walls compromising millions of players’ personal and financial information.
In April 2011, one of the largest cyber-attacks occurred compromising more than 70 million PlayStation users’ credit card information, resulting in a PlayStation network outage lasting 24 days.
During a live chat, one PlayStation user Kloc (Kay-Lock) called it the “worst month of [his] life.”
He “forgot how to live in the world without games.”
In August 2014, a group emerged calling themselves “Lizard Squad” starting a spree of attacks on multiple game servers. The group appeared to have no clear motive other than to create chaos to gamers and not to be caught.
Lizard Squad would declare whom they’d attack on Twitter.
Once the strike was complete the group would Tweet a taunt.
LizardSquad: EA #Offline
LizardSquad: Our first test. Parts of Destiny #Offline
LizardSquad: We’re attempting to slam Sony back into the ground.
The attacks were simple and lasted only a short while.
Gamers were irate because of their denial of service to servers.
What Lizard Squad did was basically create a massive amount of traffic into a server forcing it offline until it recovered.
It’s called a DDOS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attack.
Gamers lashed out frustration in words on Twitter with taunts to FBI, calling them various slurs and reciting vulgar threats.
However, the group posed a deeper threat in claims to be in the Middle East and ties or affiliation to ISIS and even reporting a bomb threat on a plane flight in which Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley was attempting to board.
This created a greater urgency in FBI involvement shortly after the Lizard Squad website was seized by the FBI.
The group’s Twitter is down. Lizard Squad apparently disappeared in the past week.
Most suspect the members have been caught, but no statements have been released or proof of anything otherwise.
There’s no way to know if this is the end. Gamers are still not at ease thinking it’s not, but for now the gaming has continued and millions are back online.