14 DAY TRIAL // Phantom Squad, the hacking group that threatened to take down Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network for Christmas, took down Xbox Live for a few hours today just to prove their "technical" capabilities.
The group made its presence felt on the hacking scene for the first time only this month when it started by launching small DDoS attacks on various gaming servers.
From DDoSing gaming servers to attacking Reddit
Initial targets included Star Wars: The Old Republic, Grand Theft Auto 5, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.
Soon after, the group's five members moved their sights to larger targets and started launching smaller DDoS attacks on the Steam network and Reddit.
With a name that remembers everyone of LizardSquad, the hacking group that took down Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network during last year's Christmas, Lizard Squad made their real intentions clear three days ago when they revealed that they too have the same goal.
Some users didn't take kindly to their threats and mocked the group online. As a response, the group took down Xbox Live for a few hours today.
Attack on Xbox Live lasted a few hours, made a dent in Microsoft's defenses
Xbox users reported problems with buying items, redeeming codes, or downloading purchases.
After the attacks started, Microsoft posted the following message on its status page:
"Are you having issues playing previously purchased content, Xbox members? We’re aware of the issue and we have our top engineers on the case. We appreciate your patience while we work and we’ll provide an update as soon as we have more information."
The attack eventually stopped, and Lizard Squad threatened to focus on PlayStation next. After this, Twitter took down their account, and we couldn't follow any updates.
Since the Xbox attacks, we've been monitoring the PlayStation Network status page, but everything seemed to be OK all day.
