Blizzard, League of Legends, Sony Suffer DDoS Attacks, Hacker Group Claims Responsibility

During the weekend the gaming industry has been suffering from a barrage of DDoS attacks. Blizzard’s Battle.net, League of Legends, and Sony’s PlayStation Network are just some of the games and services that have experienced unexpected downtime. However, it appears one hacker group is claiming responsibility for all of these attacks and more.

A group called Lizard Squad has been claiming responsibility for bringing down Battle.net, League of Legends, NCSoft, and Sony’s PlayStation Network over the past week on its Twitter account. As of the posting of this article, the organization currently claims that it will be bringing down Microsoft’s Xbox Live service too.

Prior to the group's most recent announcement, Blizzard’s Battle.net was brought down on Saturday and back up by Sunday. League of Legends has been suffering from these attacks since early last week and was brought down again Saturday. Sony’s PSN service is the latest victim, having been brought down on Saturday and is still offline.

But why is the group doing this?


An explanation was provided on its Twitter account that stated, “Why do we do it? Multi-million dollar companies aren't spending your money to ensure your game has good service. DDoS is so old it’s funny.” Another tweet added, Million dollar companies shouldn't be affected by us. End the greed.”

Furthermore, during the DDoS attack on the PlayStation Network, a Twitter user stated that they were angry at Sony about paying for PSN and not preventing this sort of thing from happening, to which the group responded, “Yeah, that’s kinda what we’re preaching. They should be paying for DDoS protection with your premiums.”

The group added, “Sony, yet another large company, but they aren't spending the waves of cash they obtain on their customers’ PSN service. End the greed.”

Other games Lizard Squad has claimed to have brought down, or partially affected, include Path of Exile, Eve: Online, Diablo 3, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, ArenaNet, and Guild Wars 2. 

Were you affected by these DDoS attacks?