A group calling themselves the Phantom Squad are threatening to take down Xbox Live and Playstation Network on Christmas. Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- A group known as the Phantom Squad announced on Twitter that they will take down the Xbox and Playstation networks for a week starting on Christmas.

The group also claimed to take down Reddit on Tuesday morning.


Reddit was down briefly early Tuesday, with the website blaming "extreme load." Phantom Squad says its attacks use a simple tactic -- distributed denial of service (DDoS) -- which overloads servers with requests, causing networks to collapse or become too slow to function properly.

"We are going to shut down Xbox live and PSN this year on christmas. And we are going to keep them down for one week straight" Phantom Squad tweeted on Dec. 8.

We are going to shut down Xbox live and PSN this year on christmas. And we are going to keep them down for one week straight #DramaAlert — Phantom Squad (@PhantomSqaud) December 9, 2015

The group has claimed to take down Xbox Live multiple times already in December.

Last Christmas, Xbox Live and Playstation Network went offline after an attack by a group calling itself The Lizard Squad. Users with new games were prevented from getting necessary updates or playing online.

Phantom Squad tweeted that the purpose of the attack is to demonstrate the importance of "cyber security."

I get asked a lot on why we do this? Why do we take down PSN and Xbox Live? Because cyber security does not exist. RELATED Sony's Playstation 4 passes 30 million units sold worldwide December 13, 2015

Advice for those who are buying games or new systems: Power up the console and the game before Christmas to download whatever updates are needed before a possible attack shuts down the networks.