PlayStation Network Down after DDOS Attack

PlayStation Network Down after DDOS Attack by Lizard Squad

PlayStation Network Down after DDOS Attack – Sony has verified its PlayStation Network is Down after an attack on the company’s online service. There are even reports that Sony Online’s President, John Smedley, has had his flight diverted for his safety.

Sony released a statement Sunday saying their network was hit by “an attempt to overwhelm our network with artificially high traffic.” The electronics company is working as fast as they can to bring the PSN service back online. Sony reports that “Although this has impacted your ability to access our network and enjoy our services, no personal information has been accessed.” 

A DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack happens when a hacker or group of hackers uses a large number of computers (usually ones that have been infected with a virus creating a botnet) to overwhelm a server with requests, causing the server to go offline.

The attack was allegedly carried out by a team called Lizard Squad who claimed credit on Twitter saying, “Today we planted the ISIS Flag on Sony’s Servers #ISIS #jihad.”

The group of hackers have quite a sense of humor. Apparently they’ve also been responsible for attacks on Blizzard Entertainment and Riot Games, makers of World of Warcraft and League of Legends.

Sony’s PSN was shut down once before in 2011 for over a month. In this attack personal information and credit card info for 77 million accounts was compromised.

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