Sony was a favorite target among hackers this past weekend.
Not only was the company's online game network hit with a dedicated denial of service (DDoS) attack, one of its top executives was also targeted with a bomb threat.
Sony's Playstation Network was taken offline for most of the weekend. The network was bogged down by a coordinated attack that involves thousands of computers that attempt to connect to a certain service at the same time. The method that was used to bring down the Playstation network made it inaccessible because of an excessive number of connections.
The hacking team that claimed responsibility for the attacks, which calls itself Lizard Squad, attached a disturbing rhetoric to their mantra for disturbance. The group claimed a connection to terrorist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which gained further notoriety last week by beheading American journalist James Foley. It also posted a video of the 9/11 attacks. While the group is more likely to be admirers rather than an actual terrorist cell, it was successful in terrorizing Sony and Playstation Network users.
Last Sunday, the group posted the following tweets:
"We're attempting to slam Sony back into the ground."
"PSN is recovering, gg Sony."
"Yes hello i can confirm there are lizards in Sony's data center."
"We're putting a bunch of lizards in the pipes on their way to Sony."
Sony has since fought off Lizard Squad, who also performed the same attacks on Blizzard's Battle.net and on Xbox Live.
While online gaming users had a rough time over the weekend, Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley had it worst. He was repeatedly taunted by Lizard Squad on Twitter, and the team heightened the agitation by issuing a bomb threat for American Airlines flight 632. This caused the airline to divert the Dallas-San Diego flight to Phoenix for security reasons.
"Yes. My plane was diverted. Not going to discuss more than that. Justice will find these guys," Smedley posted on his Twitter account.
Sony has since announced that the Playstation Network has gone back offline. The company also said that there was no evidence that Lizard Squad gained access to user information.
