Sony's PlayStation Network is facing issues with mass outages for hours across North America. The reason for the downtime has everything to do with a recent DDoS attack that was carried about by hacker group Lizard Squad.
According to Sony in a blog post following the attack, the company made sure to tell fans that personal data were not leaked, so those who were worrying before should now have an ease of mind. Furthermore, Sony claims that in some locales, the problem persists for more than 10 hours after the attack.
Strangely enough, this attack also includes some form of security threats on the plane where Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley was travelling in earlier on Sunday. The plane was quickly diverted to Phoenix where the cargo was searched for a possible explosive. Apparently, the Lizard Squad made claims on Twitter that the flight had bombs on board, but it wasn't sure how true the statement was.
"Like other major networks around the world, the PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network have been impacted by an attempt to overwhelm our network with artificially high traffic," said Sony in a statement on its blog.
"Although this has impacted your ability to access our network and enjoy our services, no personal information has been accessed."
Sony is well known for being repeatedly attacked by hackers. The company's PlayStation Network was on the wrong end of a hacker attack a few years ago. It managed to bring the network to an almost complete halt for several days, and millions of user passwords were stolen during the attack. It is something Sony will never forget as it made the PlayStation Network come off as very inferior when compared to the likes of Xbox Live and even Nintendo's own network.
It would be interesting to see if the Lizard Squad hacker group target Sony in even more devastating ways than this. Hopefully, it doesn't happen, because we doubt Sony in its current financial woes is capable of withstanding another blazing attack that is similar to the past.
Since this is indeed just a DDoS attack, things should get back to normal in a few hours if it haven't already. Let's hope Sony is able to find other means to help fend off a DDoS attack in the future, because these issues are bad for business, and can cause gamers to pick up their toys and run off to the competition.
Update 1: It appears Xbox Live is also down, as Lizard Squad took to Twitter, asking if anyone is able to login to their accounts. Furthermore, the Xbox Live status page is showing that problems are afoot, and the engineers are working to have it rectified.
