Lizard Squad Hits Xbox Live with DDoS Attack

Update: After our story went live, a Twitter user claiming to be a member of Lizard Squad informed XBLA Fans that the cyber attack on Xbox Live took place between 9:00 and 11:00 pm UTC on Sunday. In a follow-up tweet, he stated that the alleged perpetrators “did manage to fix the lower restrictive server that allowed local play to be revived in a couple of hours.” Our original story is below.

Many gamers, including some XBLA Fans staffers, experienced difficulty playing multiplayer games over Xbox Live last night. If you were one of them, you now know who to blame for your woes.

Lizard Squad, the same collective of nefarious internet users behind attacks that brought Xbox Live to its knees this past holiday, has claimed responsibility for the network problems. In conjunction with the group Like No Other, Lizard Squad apparently hit Xbox Live with another shot from its weapon of choice: a DDoS attack.

Though XBL appears to have since fully recovered from the attack, this may have just been the opening salvo of Lizard Squad’s latest offensive. “More to come, it’s about time to re-ignite lizardsquad,” the group tweeted last night. Gamers may recall that the biggest holiday DDoS attack was preceded by a smaller one.

The group also took the opportunity to blast Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload. Dotcom convinced Lizard Squad to cease and desist its holiday 2014 attacks by offering its members 3,000 vouchers for cloud upload site Mega worth $99 each. Lizard Squad turned around and began reselling those vouchers for $50 apiece.

Yesterday, however, the group recommended he take his free Mega membership vouchers and insert them somewhere inside someplace large and most unpleasant. Lizard Squad did not respond to XBLA Fans’ tweet inquiring as to why its feelings towards Dotcom and his vouchers had changed.

Source: @LizardPhoenix via Attack of the Fanboy