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Why Lizard Squad Took Down PSN and Xbox Live On Christmas Day
DroidJason1 writes Early Christmas morning, hacker group Lizard Squad took credit for taking down PlayStation Network and Xbox Live for hours. This affected those who had received new Xbox One or PS4 consoles, preventing them from playing online. So why did they do it? According to an exclusive interview with Lizard Squad, it had to do with convincing companies to improve their security — the hard way. "Taking down Microsoft and Sony networks shows the companies' inability to protect their consumers and instead shows their true vulnerability. Lizard Squad claims that their actions are simple, take down gaming networks for a short while, and forcing companies to upgrade their security as a result."
This actually shows how worthless consoles are now days without an Internet connection wich has been accepted by the masses. Most of the PC games are now unplayable without a connection too (in some cases even for single player mode!!!) which I find completely unacceptable.
Perhaps because they are not those assholes, as you imply?
They could have done much more harm with access to credit card information, like transfering money to many dubious locations.
So they just gave you time to think about your game consumption, and the opportunity to think about the "silent" in silent night.
A pass in the sense, that they might have used the only possible solution to give these companies a hint. As those companies did not do their share in protecting their network - and their users.
In law there is a principle, that in the case of an emergency you can justify breaking law without punishment.
But, this does not justify torture, but it gives you the option to kill someone that instant this person threatens your or other human life directly.
Also those "bastards" did not impede on basic human rights,
even the right to "commerce" is only slightly restricted now (it will be up and running quickly), no company will be bankrupt.
Nor was personal data published. If they would have done that, the verdict would be different because it would impede on human rights.
Yeah, that would be like yanking a movie out of a movie theater just based on some threats from terrorists. Nobody would do that.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I did not watch their twitter, but considering this, you are right, and I need to change my verdict.
None of these protect against a volume-oriented DDoS. Many are DoS only (single / few sources) and do not apply when every IP on the Internet appears to be sending thousands of requests, or more likely, responses. Further, you've completely ignored spoofing of addresses combined with amplification attacks (send out a 64 byte DNS request pretending to be the DDoS target, get 4kB sent to the target). Finally, regardless of the 50-100Gbps pipes MS, Sony and Amazon no doubt have, they're useless when there's 1Tbps of amplified crap directed down the pipes. With the example above, you'd only need about 4Gbps of bandwidth total (40 cheap VPS on "100Mbps" connections) to generate 256Gbps of DDoS.
When 256Gbps of rubbish arrives at your servers or firewalls ... registry settings and kernel tweaks do jack (note that CloudFlare was hit 11 months ago with more than 400Gbps of DDoS, so this is not implausible!)
And since it seems it was apk I'm replying to ... I'm actually half surprised you didn't try to claim that a HOSTS file would magically help.
Perhaps because they are not those assholes, as you imply?
They could have done much more harm with access to credit card information, like transfering money to many dubious locations.
So they just gave you time to think about your game consumption, and the opportunity to think about the "silent" in silent night.
They ARE assholes. Their excuse is as nonsensical as someone saying that they're justified in walking into my home and taking some of my stuff because I don't lock my door - or I don't have "enough" locks. Attention-seeking assholes. (and no, this DDoS does not affect me - I don't own either a sony or a microsoft console).
I can just see it - "Judge, I only held up the bank to show that they need to add more security."
If they're so concerned, why don't they work on solutions to these problems instead of acting like Santa didn't give them a pony.
BTW, they wouldn't have been able to get CC numbers just from a plain vanilla DDoS. They're not actually hacking into the servers.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Being able to directly connect to other players is fine but you need to already know a buddy and their IP address first. You would no longer be able to connect to a random game with random people. I loved playing Doom 2 & Warcraft 2 with others but could only do it with my friend when he was home and online or we packed up our computer and took it to the other persons house.
That COULD be an option but very few people would use it today.
Your original premise is still wrong, and has been roundly condemned, both on moral and technical grounds. Just because you reversed it based on a possibly fictitious tweet doesn't change the facts - you tried to troll, you got caught because unlike a well-done troll, you showed ignorance of the basic technology in a tech forum (about as dumb as trying to rob a donut shop next door to a police station).
Also, it's the inability for one single day, and people react like crazy kids, not taking a deep breath of fresh air or being able to relax.
You obviously still don't get it if you really believe that. But then again, you're such a lousy troll, who knows? Maybe you really do.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I tried to get on XBOX Live yesterday, and was having trouble connecting. I figured it was because it was the afternoon and their servers got overloaded with all the people who opened their new systems and tried to get online, and it overloaded the servers. That wouldn't be the first time the xbox servers got overloaded on Christmas. I did a test and it gave me a message right away that it was not my network or isp, it said it was an issue on microsofts side. I tried again like 10 minutes later and it was fine.