Every now and then we all get to watch a bunch of hackers cause a bit of a ruckus. We’ve had LulzSec and Anonymous, but now there’s Lizard Squad. Say hi to Lizard Squad everyone – all they really want is attention so maybe if we all smile and wave they’ll go away?
Lizard Squad are claiming to have taken down the PlayStation Network. Anyone who attempted to log in yesterday afternoon (Sunday) would have been greeted by a message that said the service was “down for maintenance”. Sony had originally intended to bring down the PSN for actual maintenance at some point today, Monday. Lizard Squad’s DDoS attack on the PSN, however, took it offline instead.
Service has since been restored to the PSN (which will presumably go offline again at 18:40 local time today for its routine maintenance) at time of writing. However, Lizard Squad wasn’t stopping there: they had American Airline flight 362 redirected by Tweeting a fake bomb scare. Why did they target flight 362? Because Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley was on board.
Flight 362 was heading to San Diego from Dallas. It had to be redirected to Phoenix after Lizard Squad sent out the following tweet:
.@AmericanAir We have been receiving reports that @j_smedley‘s plane #362 from DFW to SAN has explosives on-board, please look into this.
— Lizard Squad (@LizardSquad) August 24, 2014
Smedley himself confirmed that he was on the flight and sent out the following tweet shortly after being grounded:
Something about security and our cargo. Sitting on Tarmac — John Smedley (@j_smedley) August 24, 2014
Lizard Squad’s agenda appears to be one of support for Iraq terrorist organisation ISIS (or ISIL as it is also referred to). Shortly after taking down the PSN, they replaced the contents with a picture of a man carrying a flag with the ISIS logo. They also tweeted the following:
Kuffar don’t get to play videogames until bombing of the ISIL stops. #ISIL #PSN #ISIS
— Lizard Squad (@LizardSquad) August 24, 2014
The FBI is currently investigating the hacking collective.
Sources: Polygon