Phantom Squad Launches DDoS Attack, Takes Down EA Servers

A hacking group going by the name of Phantom Squad launched DDoS attacks on Electronic Arts servers on Tuesday.

A Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS, attack is an effort to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources.

In mid-December, Phantom Squad threatened to carry out cyber attacks from Dec. 24 to Dec. 31. According to The Hacker News, Phantom Squad wants to disrupt the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live over Christmas. The hacking group also released a number of tweets via @PhantomSquad, which has since been suspended, regarding their DDoS attack intentions.

"We are going to shut down Xbox live and PSN this year on Christmas. And we are going to keep them down for one-week straight," said a threatening tweet by Phantom Squad.

"Ok, think about this ... Xbox Live and PSN have millions upon millions of dollars ... but do they use that money for better security?" said another tweet. "No. PSN and Xbox do not use that money to improve their security ... So until they open their eyes, Xbox Live and PSN will remain vulnerable."

When Phantom Squad launched its first attack, the game developer's services went down for a few hours. Some gamers took on to Reddit complaining about the EA server downtime.

"Was working for me ~hour ago. Now when I try the web app I get internal server error:500. Trying to log in through the game I get 'we're sorrry but you are not eligible for online due to age restrictions,'" complained a user on Reddit.

"I can't load the origin store, I can't log in to anything that needs my EA password, it tells me to enter the security code from email but never sends it no matter times i try to resend it," wrote another Reddit user.

The cyber attack was so severe that EA also issued an apology to its users via Twitter.

Phantom Squad has also targeted DDoS attacks on PSN as some users have said that they experienced problems on Twitter. However, the attacks on PSN were not as severe as on EA servers.

In December 2014, a similar attack was conducted on Xbox Live networks and PSN, but by a different hacking group called Lizard Squad. The attack refrained gamers from playing online games across the world.

Both the Xbox Live networks and PSN went offline for over 24 hours following the attacks. PSN took more than three days to recover from the cyber attack, which left hundreds of unhappy customers over the Christmas period.

Even though the cyber attacks conducted by Phantom Squad and Lizard Squad are similar, they are not the same hacking group.

It remains to be seen if the Phantom Squad carries on more DDoS attacks on other servers in the coming days and if companies are prepared to thwart or at least handle the attacks.

As of reporting, EA has resolved server issues.