LOTP #389

[Tint Eastwood]

Figures. I get a game I want to play and someone hacked the Play Station network. No ETA for a fix either.

 

 

 

That blows. About right though. huh?

[Tint Eastwood]

Should have gone PC    

[TintDude]

Should have gone PC    

 

I got a Mac. Double facepalm

[Tint Eastwood]

Damn, up shits creek with a turd for a paddle.

[TintDude]

Colorful metaphor

[Roach]

Is that why PSN is down??? Hacked?? I was trying to watch some YouTube and couldn't sign into PSN... Figured they were doing maintenance or something.

[TintDude]

Yep, scary stuff, sounds a little too 'made for the news' to me.

 

 

Sony Online Entertainment President's Flight Diverted By PSN Hacker's Bomb Threat

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Gamers have been annoyed all day today as a hacker collective (or individual) known as the “Lizard Squad” succeeded in taking offline many gaming services include Blizzard’s Battle.net and Sony PSN. But things took a turn from irritating DDoS attacks to another level of harassment earlier this afternoon when the group took to Twitter TWTR +1.93% to publicly announce that they believed the flight carrying Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley had explosives on board.

American Airlines reacted to the threat immediately, diverting the plane to Phoenix, confirming it was for a security-related matter. SOE has come out with a statement that confirms that “at this time the FBI is handling this directly,” saying it was now matter of national security. The FBI has issued no comment on the incident as of yet.

Smedley had announced previously that he was traveling between Dallas and San Diego, which prompted the hackers to look up his flight information and tweet out the threat. Initially, Smedley didn’t seem to realize what had happened, simply griping about American Airlines delays, but eventually discovered that he had been targeted because he had been speaking out publicly about the group and the attack. “Yes. My plane was diverted. Not going to discuss more than that. Justice will find these guys,” he said.

As for the Lizard Squad, they have been consistently tweeting all day, and after the flight was grounded, they mocked the FBI’s efforts to hunt them down. “How do you succesfully[sic] prosecute someone with 0 physical evidence?” they said, alongside posting videos of the events of 9/11 and constantly comparing themselves with ISIS, the Iraqi terrorist organization.

Inexplicably, the hacker group transitioned from their bomb threat back into harassing individual streamers playing Hearthstone and Dota 2, demanding they write the name of their organization on their foreheads or else they would DDoS them. At the time of this writing, they were last targeting Dota 2 player SingSing, and an hour has passed since their last Tweet.

Penalties for making bomb threats to airlines are obviously severe. In 2013, a German national who worked for United Airlines was fined $314,000 and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for making eight bomb threats against his own company. And outside of the airline threat, a Lulzsec hacker involved in the 2011 PSN breach was sentenced to a year in prison for his involvement.

While the video game industry is no stranger to anonymous online attacks, be they outright hacking, DDoS assaults or other intrusions, this case escalated dramatically due to the targeted bomb scare. Even if the video game industry suffers from its share of toxic players and fans at times, rarely do things reach this level of harassment. The only event that somewhat resembles this in the video game space would be the recent targeting of CounterStrike streamer Jordan Gilbert, who had a SWAT team sent to his house as a “prank,” though obviously grounding and unloading an entire aircraft because of a bomb threat is an even more severe offense.

PSN and Battle.net slowly appear to be stabilizing, and the hacker group has gone quiet for a short stretch of time, meaning perhaps this could be drawing to an end. Stay tuned here for updates about what is one of the more bizarre gaming-related news events in recent memory.

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[TintDude]

"SOE has come out with a statement that confirms that “at this time the FBI is handling this directly,” saying it was now matter of national security."

 

Uh huh. Most of the hackers are on the FBI payroll, this is sounding staged to me. If they can create enough mayhem, we will demand more internet oversight and their solution will probably be some kind of internet license for the law abiding.

[Roach]

According to a couple sites it seems it was 'just' a DDOS attack... So servers were overwhelmed rather then hacked. So that's good.

The group claiming to be behind it reported a bomb was on the plane that Sony's BMOC was on and it was diverted to another airport to be checked, and now it seems the group is attacking Microsoft Live servers too...

The DDOS attacks... Annoying and I'm sure a crime in some form, but the plane thing - that is a federal crime that if the FBI finds the individuals behind that you're talking jail time.

[TintDude]

No doubt!