Phantom Squad Starts Christmas DDoS Attacks by Taking Down EA Servers

Phantom Squad, the hacking group that announced DDoS attacks on the Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network from December 24 up to December 31, has started its assault with a small attack on the EA (Electronic Arts) servers.

The hacking group, acting just like LizardSquad last year, is poised to ruin Christmas for gamers this year again, and since the beginning of December, it has been launching small DDoS attacks on both Xbox Live and PSN, but with short downtimes.

A few days ago, two other groups, VandaSec and PhantomSec, also pledged their support for Phantom Squad's cause.

Previously, the group also attacked the Steam network and a few servers for games such as Star Wars: The Old Republic, Grand Theft Auto 5, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. All these attacks were very short and seem to have been only tests.

Since it's December 24, we now see that Phantom Squad wasn't joking and has already launched a very powerful DDoS attack on EA's servers, taking them down for the last three hours.

The attack was so severe that the company took notice and had to apologize to its customers on its Twitter account.

As soon as EA admitted to the attacks, PhantomSquad stopped the DDoS and announced via their Twitter account new attacks on the PlayStation Network. Soon after, some users started reporting problems with PSN via Twitter. The attack doesn't seem very strong now, and the service keeps going down and back up again.

Stay tuned for more updates.

UPDATE 1: PSN seems to be hanging on strong, for now, no downtimes listed on its website.

UPDATE 2: Phantom Squad announces that a former LizardSquad member has joined their ranks: @RootedExploit.

UPDATE 3: December 24, 23:30, the PlayStation Network starts experiencing the first problems. From EA's wesbite: "Affected Platforms: PS4 Affected Services: You may have some difficulty launching games, applications, or online features. Our engineers are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, and we thank you for your patience."

Apologies for the inconvenience. We're working hard to resolve log in and connection issues which are currently affecting many game titles. — EA Support (@AskEASupport) December 24, 2015

EA is currently experiencing an outage. EA games, services & support may be impacted. We’re working to resolve as fast as possible. — EA Support (@AskEASupport) December 24, 2015