Lizard Squad Announces DDoS Attacks for Christmas Time

The Lizard Squad group hinted on Twitter that they were preparing for an offensive against gaming services from different companies on Christmas.

On Monday, some Xbox users reported problems connecting to the network, their consoles replying with the 80151909 error, a code that occurs then there are issues with downloading the gamer’s profile.

More DDoS attacks promised for Christmas

Lizard Squad, a group self-described as “the DDoS kings,” claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that it was “just some preparation for Christmas.”

After pointing their followers to the flurry of Twitter messages from users having trouble connecting to Xbox Live network, the Lizard Squad also said that it was just a small dose of what they had prepared for Christmas.

At the end of August the group shared on Pastebin that they would be disbanding because their purpose had been achieved after causing havoc in the gaming community for the previous two weeks.

The post said that they wanted to see if they could evade getting caught, “And to experience the raw thrill of anarchy.”

However, the denial-of-service activity did not stop and services continued to suffer because of incidents claimed by the lizards.

DDoS costs are not to be ignored

Referring to incidents of this kind, Igal Zeifman, researcher at Incapsula, said via email that the DDoS trend was likely to continue, and the reason is twofold: first, the price for a mid-sized attack is less than $50 / €40; secondly, there is instant and widespread coverage of the attacks.

As far as the reasons behind this type of activity are concerned, Zeifman issues a few theories, “Angry gamers looking for revenge on the mods who kicked them out of a community. Rivals in the gaming ecosystem – how-to sites or virtual good exchanges — are looking to take down a competitor for a larger share of the affiliate fees market. Outright extortionists who know the cost of downtime.”

DDoS attacks are designed to disrupt the activity of a service by flooding it with a sufficient amount of data that can no longer be processed by the servers. Its purpose is simply to bring down the services of a provider.

There is no other financial implication except for remedying the problem and restoring the service. According to a report in November from Incapsula, an average cost for such an incident is of about $40,000 / €32,000 per hour; however, some companies could end up paying even $100,000 / €80,500 per hour.