Sony PlayStation Network suffers DDoS attack

Sony Playstation Network suffered from a massive distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on Sunday that has affected millions of users all across North America. However, the company clarified that no personal data of users were compromised.

A group of hackers called Lizard Squad has come out on Twitter claiming responsibility for the cyber-attack, following similar attacks launched earlier this weekend on other gaming servers including Blizzard, Grinding Gear Games, and Riot Games. A DDoS attack involves sending large amounts of fake traffic to a server until it crashes.

ISIS refers the Islamic State, the militant group in some parts of Syria and Iraq that has recently made headlines when a video of one of its members beheading American photojournalist James Foley surfaced on the Internet.

Sony President John Smedley himself confirmed on Twitter that Sony is experiencing problems, saying that the attackers focused on the network's upstream traffic, which Sony has no control over. Sony assures users, however, that "no personal information has been accessed" and the attackers only seem to be preventing user access to the network, but remains mum as to when the network will be back up for its customers.

"Although this has impacted your ability to access our network and enjoy our services, no personal information has been accessed," writes Sid Shuman, Sony spokesperson, in the company's latest update. "We will continue to work towards fixing this issue and hope to have our services up and running as soon as possible."

The issue, however, seems to be more than just a cyber-attack by a group of disgruntled Sony customers, one of whom goes by the name of Brian Wilson and claims to be a resident of Las Vegas. Lizard Squad has also alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation when the group posted a public bomb threat on Twitter involving the American Airlines plane that carried Smedley from Dallas-Forth Worth supposedly to San Diego. The group's tweet says it has been "receiving reports" that American Airlines flight #362 "has explosives on-board."

The flight has been diverted and landed safely in Phoenix, says a Boeing 737 spokesperson.

The group, however, seems unconcerned that the FBI has turned its eyes on its activities, continuing to take the whole situation lightly by posting videos of the Sept. 11 attacks on the Twin Towers directly to Smedley and referring to the Islamic State. In fact, with Sony and other servers down, the group seems to have turned its attention to Microsoft.

Sure enough, a look at Microsoft's Xbox support page shows customers who own Xbox One and Xbox 360 are currently unable to log in to Xbox servers.

"Hi Xbox members. Are you having trouble connecting to Party Chat on Diablo III on Xbox One and Xbox 360? Additionally, Xbox One users, are you experiencing server unavailability issues?" says Microsoft. "Us too, but we're working alongside our partner to get these issues fixed ASAP!"