Microsoft’s Xbox Live and Sony’s PlayStation Network faced outages on the Christmas Eve following DDoS by a hacking group calling themselves the Lizard Squad.
Microsoft acknowledged the disruption and posted a message on its Xbox Live status page saying the service was limited and that, “We’re aware that some of you are experiencing trouble signing in to Xbox Live, and we want you to know we’re working to address this as quickly as we possibly can. Thanks for your patience! We’ll update you on our progress in a half hour.”
Sony also listed its PlayStation Network as “offline,” and posted a message on the PlayStation Network status page which read “We are aware that some users are experiencing difficulty logging into the PSN. We will update this article with any changes that occur in regards to this issue. Thank you for your patience.”
The gaming networks, which let users to play video games with a wider online community, first went down on Wednesday evening and the problems persisted into Christmas Day.
“I have the nation on strings,” Lizard Squad tweeted. It also said it would put the sites back online if enough people re-tweeted its messages.
Both Microsoft and Sony have not yet commented on the hacking group’s claim, but both said they were working on the problems and investigating.
