The holidays are getting close, which means its time for one of gamers’ least favorite yearly traditions: gaming DDoS attacks. The PlayStation Network was hit with more DDoS outages this week, interrupting service for a number of United Kingdom and European Union members, as well as gamers suffering login difficulties and hacked accounts. For those who don’t know, DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service, and it happens when hackers attempt to overload a site’s services by bombarding it with traffic. Fortunately, service interruptions did not last for too long and they have since been restored.
This round of attacks was perpetrated by a hacker group known as Phantom Squad (or at the very least, they’re the ones taking credit for it). According to a report made by Fat Robot Entertainment, they have also taken credit for taking NBA 2K17, Battlefield 1 and GTA Online servers down this week. Hopefully, this isn’t a build up for a much larger attack planned later this Christmas. Gamers will no doubt remember the similar barrage of attacks during last year’s Christmas Day that took down both PSN and Xbox Live. In 2014 as well, Lizard Squad, another black hat hacker group, were responsible for several attacks against PSN and Xbox Live throughout the year, including a DDoS attack on both networks during Christmas Day. Apparently, hackers think there’s nothing more fun than messing with a bunch of gamers who just want to play their brand new games.
Though the PlayStation Network now seems to be operating properly again, users with compromised accounts are advised to contact Sony customer support immediately.