'Phantom' menace threatens to down Xbox Live, PSN at Xmas

Last Christmas LizardSquad played Grinch with the holiday fun of gamers by knocking out XBox Live and smacking the PlayStation Network offline with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The traffic flooding exercise turned out to be a promo for a DDoS-for-hire cybercrime service. Arrests against both the hackers and …

[Stuart 22]

Who's skiddin' who?

"highlight continuing lack of securirty .."

Yeah DDoS does just that dunnit? Hack the server, publish the CEO's paycheck and expenses and I'll be impressed. You might have done something useful. But DDoS is easy, stopping it is hard. You claim a win, I just go along with El Reg awarding you Grinch of the Year Award.

Will you be turning up in person to collect. Its over there with the gentleman in a blue suit and a funny hat ;-)

[Wzrd1]

Re: Who's skiddin' who?

Erm, DDOS is script kiddie, zombies rule that nest.

Compromising enterprises requires skills.

Kindly note the difference.

[Luke 11]

Grinch scuzzbots.

To do that at Christmas would be a completely unnecessary and spiteful thing to do.

Who, other than Grinch scuzzbots, would do that?

Why don't they do something useful and go after ALL ISIS are paedophiles? Is it because they're frightened of ALL ISIS are paedophiles.

[g e]

Re: Grinch scuzzbots.

Meh. Metal Gear 5 will play offline (seems to, anyway, lack of PSN access, rather than MGS servers, may affect it). Destiny and Warframe will be jiggered for a bit, though. Judging by my progress % and time spent, I still have about 280hrs of campaign play left before even worrying about online mode. That game is seriously large.

It would be a childish and cowardly thing to intentionally do at Xmas. Exactly the kind of bullshit you'd expect a couple of skiddies to do, in fact, rather than a 'reputable' team (irony/etc intentional) who could presumably demonstrate their 'p0wah' over the intertubes at any time.

So yeah. I call Grinch AND skidiot morons.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Grinch scuzzbots.

Not a bunch of skiddies.. No, a bunch of spiteful little spoilt cunts with nothing better to do than spoil other peoples enjoyment.

Bullied at school most of em I reckon and THIS is the only way they can "get back at society".

Or LMS.

Either way, you are Skid marks and you are kids, now fuck off and let the adults go about their adult business you set of fuck sticks..

[Amorous Cowherder]

“We are Grey Hat Hackers. Not skids not fakes not wannabes,”

Rather than wasting time performing DDOS attacks when they're bored, perhaps they would be wise to spend a little more time in after-school English classes.

[g e]

Yeah. Commas.

But to Oxford or not to Oxford ?

[mythicalduck]

I'm surprised nobody's pointed out their twitter handle is actually PhantomSqaud, not PhantomSquad!

[g e]

By Crikey!

I therefore amend my earlier assessment, then, to:

Illiterate, Grinchy, Skidiot Morons

[TechicallyConfused]

Not Skiddies

Indeed. If you do this at Christmas then you are just a bunch of w**kers, nothing more, nothing less.

[Anonymaus Cowark]

may be it is just a threat to keep the companies alert, so that they won't mess up again like last year

[Mark 85]

Nah... they just want to irritate Kim Dotcom again this Christmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh dear....

...wadda matter,mummy not getting you your Spiderman pajamas this year. Feeling left out, because you're still in the small bedroom even though your younger sibling moved out?

There, there, have some nice cookies and warm milk.

[Flak_Monkey]

PSN falls over every xmas anyway

No need to DDOS, the PlayStation Network falls over every christmas anyway... all those shiny new boxes and games trying to sign-up and sign-in is enough. I don't believe anyone that says they knocked PSN offline on any public holiday or big game release. Fact is PSN just can't cope with the surge, and no comapny in the world would invest in the infrastructure required to cope with the 3 to 4 days a year of overwhelming demand.

Can't comment on xbox live.. don't have one.

[asdf]

Re: PSN falls over every xmas anyway

But the cloudtards brag how it is infinitely elastic.

[MJI]

Re: PSN falls over every xmas anyway

Nope spent 2013 and 2012 Xmas online playing Killzone 3 multiplayer

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: PSN falls over every xmas anyway

Given the PS4 is bow outselling Microsoft shitebox one at a rate of 5:1, I doubt anyone would even notice shitexbox live going down.

Also , someone want to tell the newbs that DDOS isnt a security issue and not really possible to fix as the problems are fundamental internet problems.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: PSN falls over every xmas anyway

5 to 1 maybe in your home country but more like 2 to 1 globally at worse according to vgchartz. When PSN was free on PS3 it was a no brainer but now that you have to pay monthly for online games for both went Xbox this generation (also due to being pissed off PS3 would only run for a hour at most before it just beep and shut itself off, so wasn't going to reward Sony for hardware failure). At least here stateside worked out pefectly as I got a sweet bundle on sale, like the games more especially this holiday season and my brother as an added bonus went Xbox so can frag him as well. Also being able to play Xbox 360 games now including being able to buy the whole Gears series for the price of one game is pure score. Horses for courses and still can certainly see why on paper and in the real world why the PS4 is owning this generation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: PSN falls over every xmas anyway

It's 2:1 in the US and 5:1 in most other regions around the globe.

It's now game over, as PS4 has such a lead, new gamers buy what their friends have and aside from a few Texan trailer parks, where pockets of Xbox one owners live, the rest of the world has PS4

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: PSN falls over every xmas anyway

Worldwide 32.3m PS4 / 17.6m Xbone != 5 . Yes Sony won this generation for sure when Microsoft decided to commit seppuku on launch (taking most of its leadership as well). Will Sony's hardware division still be around in five years to savior the win is an open question (pretty much loathe both companies and their business practices equally so if one or the other fails fine with me). Not worried about finding people to play with ( not Wii U after all and seems to be more Latin America players than Texans actually) and certainly don't buy a console out of any nationalism (funny on here how many Euros assume Americans think like them when it comes to brand nationality when things in the US are so globalized due to the multinationals we often don't know where our brands even come from). Microsoft isn't going to pull a Sega (maybe to their phones) any time soon so really my only complaint about the Xbox at all is its controller range is as crappy as the PS3s (20 feet) which is annoying as I can throw the image from the console to any TV in the house (long live Nyrius).

[Alistair]

Hi! We're the new bad guys on the block

To show you just how bad guys we R

WeRgunnaTakDunDaGamrs@Xmas!!!!

Pls snd bitcns@us and we du ur bad tings.

<< i.e. this is posturing for advertising>>

[Scott Broukell]

Well . . . . .

I for one welcome this action, in our household it generally means enjoying many more merry rounds of cribbage, dominoes, canasta and shove h'ppenny. I find that it also means I can hear the home service a lot better on the wireless set, not to mention the joy of watching both her Maj's speech and The Royal Institute xmas lectures without the little darlings being constantly engaged in either WWIII or defeating some unknown alien hoard with the volume turned up to 11!

[Robin Bradshaw]

Its a ruse by the engineers at microsoft and sony to cover their arses when their networks inevitably slow to a crawl as everyone unwraps their new shiny console and tries to download the 6gigs of updates before they can play metalgearsofwarcraft 20

[Joerg]

The "hackers" myth...

"Hackers" do not exist. As simple as that. It is just a urban legend , a myth.

People nowadays believe that little kids and students for free and with no real expertise and knowledge could be able to decrypt anything, disassemble and reverse engineer complex hardware and software.

It is just a fairy tale. It doesn't happen.

The only real truth about "hacking" and cracking lies with multinationals, software and hardware producers themselves and secret services/military.

They are the only ones with the knowledge and financial resources to do it.

[Dwarf]

Plenty of time

Plenty of time before Christmas to buy DDoS protection service, there's enough of them out there.

[Roland6]

Re: Plenty of time

Are you implying that Phantom Squad @PhantomSqaud may have an alternative agenda and may actually be owners of such services, looking for a little extra Christmas bonus? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for one of PSN or Xbox Live (won't say which), these idiots are doing real harm to a law abiding business. The employees of these companies who have to deal with their shit do not deserve such brazen criminal behaviour, which is akin to forcing Westfield shopping centre to close. They're not big or clever, DDoS is the lowest, scummiest form of computing attack.

[Anonymous Coward]

On the flip side

If you're a parent, and you want a bit of quality family time then you could invest bitcoin less wisely ;)