On Christmas day, many gamers around the world found that they couldnât play many of their favorite games anymore. The reason? The online services powering these games, such as PSN and Xbox Live, were downâand a group of alleged hackers claimed responsibility for it.
Today,
Xbox Live seems to mostly be up and running. PSN is still down, though Sony says theyâre working on it. While gamers wait to have services restored in full, the one thing everyone canât help but wonder is why? Why would anyone do something like this? Whatâs the point?
The Daily Dot published an interview with some of the folks behind Lizard Squad, the group that claimed they had taken down the gaming online services. Theyâve also claimed to be behind a few other stunts in the past year. To be clear, nobody can actually confirm that Lizard Squad really did bring down PSN and Xbox Live using denial-of-service attacks. But, the timing does match up: the group claimed Xbox Live and PSN would be down on Christmas nearly a month before it happened, and lo and behold, it came to pass. While it mightâve just been a coincidence, itâs interesting to hear Lizard Squad explain why they supposedly took down PSN and Xbox Live on Christmas. Apparently, the attackâwhich theyâve been allegedly planning for a whileâwas done to highlight âincompetenceâ at Microsoft and Sony.
âMicrosoft and Sony are fucking retarded, literally monkeys behind computers,â one of the members of Lizard Squad explained to
The Daily Dot. âThey would have better luck if they actually hired someone who knew what they were doing. Like, if they went around prisons and hired people who were convicted for stuff like this they would have a better chance at preventing attacks.â
âIf I was working [at Microsoft or Sony] and had a big enough budget I could totally stop these attacks,â another member of Lizard claimed. âIâd buy more bandwidth, some specific equipment, and configure it correctly. Itâs just about programming skill. With an attack of this scale it could go up to the millions. But thatâs really no problem for Sony and Microsoft.â
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In a different interview with BBC Radio, a member of Lizard Squad was asked whether or not they felt a sense of shame for essentially ruining Christmas for a bunch of kids. âIf I did, I would probably have apologized by now, but no I donât,â the Lizard Squad member responded. âYou feel that you have the power to do something, and maybe the company can change for the better,â he later said, while explaining why Lizard Squad took down PSN and Xbox Live. He later defended the DDoS takedown of PSN and Xbox Live by bringing up how gamers pay so much money for subscriptions to play online, only to have Microsoft and Sony fumble when it comes to maintaining these services while under attack by hijinks like those that are supposedly carried out by Lizard Squad. Lizard Squad seems convinced that what theyâre doing is for the âgreater good.â It doesnât help that Lizard Squad claims they had warned the companies that an attack was coming on Christmas day. While we canât verify that yet,
we do know that Lizard Squad had been threatening with an attack publicly on Twitter for the last month.
âItâs not so much that we donât care about [peopleâs lives] being disrupted,â a member of Lizard Squad clarified. âSurely people could go for one day [without playing games], you know, it wasnât even a day in total. It was just 12 to 14 hours.â
Youâd think that taking center stage like thisâTweeting, boasting and giving out interviewsâwould make some of the members of Lizard Squad scared about being caught. But, they donât really seem to care.
âThere is a chance that I will get caught, and I personally am not really that worried about it, to be honest,â a Lizard Squad member said in the BBC interview. âIf I get caught, then I get caught. Maybe Iâll end up serving time, or maybe Iâll end up helping companies, help them get better I guess.â
Assuming Lizard Squad did take down PSN and Xbox Live, some would claim that what they accomplished isnât actually hacking. But, Lizard Squad does have a response for that too.
âFor attacks of this scale, you canât really do them without either having access to insane amounts of funding or being able to gain access to the computers via hackingâŠyou canât just do DDoS attacks from your home computer,â a member of Lizard Squad claimed in the
Daily Dot interview. âIt doesnât work.â
Another member of Lizard Squad didnât sound as confident about his hacking abilities during the interview with BBC radio.
âI wouldnât really call myself a top grade hacker,â the Lizard Squad member said. âI know people who are way better than me. But I think I know my stuff. I think itâs fair to say I know some of my stuff, and this just proves it, right?â
âSo it doesnât take a degree of sophistication to do this,â the interviewer responded. âAn ordinary hacker that wants to disrupt childrenâs lives on Christmas day could do this.â
âIf they put their minds to it, whereas, with me, friends of mine, they used to go out clubbing, partying, I really didnât enjoy that,â the Lizard Squad member explained. âI found it dull. So I decided to just sit at home and learn more skills of my own. Itâs helped me along the way, so maybe this isnât something that most people enjoy and think that it was a good decision. But to us I think it was just something we just decided upon, so, yeah, [the PSN and Xbox Live DDoS] happened.
You can read the rest of the Daily Dot interview here. Weâll keep you updated on the status of Xbox Live and PSN, as well as any developments that might shed some light on what was responsible for these incidents. For now, developers like Rockstar are trying their best to make things right for players who arenât able to enjoy seasonal, limited time experiencesâlike snow in Grand Theft Auto Online
