The hacking group Phantom Squad claimed responsibility for the DDoS attack that brought down the PSN (Playstation Network) for almost 10 hours.
As we wrote, the hackers had warned of this act before Christmas. See here: Hackers say they will take down Xbox Live and PSN on Christmas!
In fact, Phantom Squad was responsible for other Christmas attacks on Xbox Live and the video game production company Electronic Arts (EA).
On Monday, PSN suffered a major outage worldwide and Sony didn't give much explanation, only initially announcing that it was network maintenance and later issuing another statement that reversed the first and said that the network was experiencing problems and technicians were working to resolve it as quickly as possible. See details here
The network also faced some minor problems over Christmas as some users reported difficulties in authenticating electronic services.
Phantom Squad has now claimed responsibility for the attack, posting a Tweet that explicitly referred to an issue affecting PSN. Specifically, they wrote: “Should we extend the date to the 7th of the month? Or will PSN fix the issue?” and used the hashtags #offline #psndown #DramaAlert
Sony has yet to issue an official statement regarding the incident. It only thanked users for their patience and said that it will soon offer extensions for PlayStation Plus, PlayStation Now, and video rentals.
The gaming platform is a favorite target of hackers, last year the hacking group Lizard Squad took down Xbox Live as well as the Playstation Network, highlighting significant security issues that both Microsoft and Sony had in their services!
