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FBI Allegedly Investigating Lizard Squad Member Over Xbox Live, PSN Attacks

Posted by samzenpus on from the who's-to-blame dept.

blottsie writes The FBI is actively investigating a member of the hacker collective that claimed responsibility for recent high-profile cyberattacks on Microsoft and Sony properties, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the investigation and the attacks. A member of the Lizard Squad hacking group, who goes by the alias "ryanc" or Ryan, allegedly garnered the attention of a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation after speaking with the media about Lizard Squad's Christmas-day attacks on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network.

4 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Hacker Group? by CimmerianX · · Score: 5, Informative

    You mean "script kiddies" who are desperate for attention.

    1. Re:Hacker Group? by Himmy32 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Nearly everyone is vulnerable to DDoS attacks, as long as your attacker has more bandwidth than you do. They've done nobody any favors.

    2. Re:Hacker Group? by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Informative

      Well, you can do a few things to mitigate a DDoS attack. Basically you have to distinguish between two kinds of DDoS. One where a flaw in a service on your side is being exploited and one where your connection is simply flooded with traffic. The first is easy to mitigate: Patch it. Ok, easier said than done in a corporate environment, but you get the idea. If your service is susceptible to a denial of service attack by, say, abusing an implementation flaw, you can actually improve on your service and mitigate the effect fairly easily.

      The other would be where the attacker simply fields superior bandwidth or leverages techniques where little bandwidth use on his side leads to lot of traffic on your side. E.g. DNS-request spoofs. To mitigate that you usually need the cooperation of upstream providers, but I'm kinda certain that Sony can easily "convince" anyone they deal with that they should better aid them in their struggle. E.g. by blocking DNS replies from outside servers further upstream.

      There are ways to mitigate DDoS attacks. But they all cost time and money.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  2. Re:Alias? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ryan C. is a pretty good alias when your name is Julius Kivimäki.