PlayStation Network Down & Flight Grounded
Hackers cause chaos today for Sony and PlayStation Network and John Smedley
Today the PlayStation Network was offline for the North American users. Hackers have claimed responsibility via Twitter, and also, the same hacker group has caused a significant delay for American Airlines and Sony’s Online Entertainment President John Smedley. Today users of the PlayStation Network on both PS3 and PS4 received a message that the network is down for routine maintenance from noon August 24, 2014, to around 7:30 pm Eastern time on Monday, August 25, 2014.
Shacknews.com has reported that both the PlayStation Network and Battle.net have been hit.
“The attack was foreshadowed when Lizard Squad pointed to a Twitch user playing Hearthstone. Minutes later, the group targeted a Dota 2 stream. A portion of Dota 2 servers have been affected, but there does not appear to be a widespread outage at this time.”
Lizard Squad is to blame as it seems. Sony does acknowledge the events within their Twitter page
https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/503577213690576896
Issuing this statement:
“Like other major networks around the world, the PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network have been impacted by an attempt to overwhelm our network with artificially high traffic.
Although this has impacted your ability to access our network and enjoy our services, no personal information has been obtained.
We will continue to work towards fixing this issue and hope to have our services up and running as soon as possible.
We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.”
Here are some additional times lines from Shacknews.com
- Update 4: Lizard Squad has now set their sights on Xbox Live. Xbox Support confirms that service has been affected.
- Update 3: A Sony Online Entertainment representative has stated Shacknews in regards to SOE president John Smedley having his flight diverted over a fake bomb threat. The statement reads, “I can confirm that at this time, the FBI is handling this directly.” The rep added that no specifics could be offered, as this has now become a matter of national security.
- Update 2: An update has been posted on PlayStation.Blog confirming that no personal information has been stolen in these attacks. The DDoS attacks are persisting, and the team is looking to resolve the matter as soon as possible.
Update: Sony has acknowledged the attacks on Twitter.
As of now, it is being reported the FBI is involved. John Smedley’s flight was diverted, and no further incident has been reported as of now.
