(PMC) On Christmas Day a pre-announced DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack was set upon both Microsoft’s Xbox Live Network and Sony’s PSN. No one took it serious. Then it happened. Both gaming networks were down for over 5 hours. As gamers looked into the real reason why, Lizard Squad – a network of hackers from around the world became a better known name.
While other white hat hacker groups such as “Finest Squad” (see finestsquad.com) outed the names and addresses of the Lizard Squad, a well known name in tech community paid what amounts to a payoff to Lizard Squad to cut the attack. Kim Dotcom promised vouchers to Lizard Squad which he stated he’d cancel if they did not halt the attack.
For whatever reasons, the DDOS attack was history by the end of Christmas Day.
One day later the attacks were back on. Maybe the morning network news coverage announcing their name gave them all the reason to continue, after all – these hackers have nothing better to do than to do what they do for notoriety. They are often poor, socially inept and rarely leave the security of their computers. They have zero reason to hack other than to show the world they have power. It means everything to a hacker.
Hacking groups such as Lizard Squad won’t be stopped easily. In fact it is safe to say that even as one was arrested in early December (see their twitter feed) they are not likely to give up what they do until they are all arrested and their computers are taken away.
Most every hacker has no fear of justice as they believe for one they won’t be caught and if they are, they will then become government sanctioned hackers through the misperception they are computer gods. While some most prominent hackers are caught and serve jail time, others pay no mind and fill the vacuum.
The new era of computer terrorism is here. With the Sony corporation hacked recently forcing Sony to temporarily halt release of the film “The Interview” a huge fire was stoked for hackers to continue to terrorize the world for attention. The hacking world demonstrated they could control the behavior of a major world corporation. The world had to see the next move coming and yet it did not.
For now hackers don’t have an agenda, even if they claim they do. But over time organized crime will find these hackers and put them to work to earn money by threatening any business that is dependant on Internet to pay for protection.
It takes huge problems to get enough attention to fix a huge problem, and only when money is on the line do things change. Companies will be forced to pay for peace on the Internet. That is the new age of the Internet. Sony and Microsoft are only the beginning.
To learn more about Lizard Squad, you can search their name on Twitter.
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