If you want to cause mayhem for online gaming services, you probably can’t find a better day to attack than Christmas.
Microsoft’s Xbox Live service is down for many people this morning. An alleged group of cyberattackers, known as Lizard Squad, is taking credit for the attack. This is keeping people from playing games online, accessing Xbox.com, and other services of Xbox Live. These kinds of attacks do not necessarily mean that Microsoft’s servers and data are compromised because cyberattacks that take services offline often come in the form of a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) assault that overwhelms a web service with junk data.
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Microsoft has acknowledged that it is dealing with the issue:
“We’re working to address this as quickly as we possibly can,” reads its status website. “Thanks for your patience, Xbox members.”
Today is one of the biggest days of the year for video gaming as a huge number of people get online for the first time with new hardware they just unwrapped as present, and that mass of people can often overwhelm something like Xbox Live without any help from a DDOS as well.
This is not the first time Lizard Squad has taken credit for knocking an online gaming service off the Web. The group has previously claimed responsibility for DDOSing World of Warcraft, League of Legends, and more.
Lizard Squad is also claiming that it is attacking Sony’s PlayStation Network as well.