Lizard Squad allegedly caused an outage of the Sony’s online PlayStation gaming service which prevented users logging in on consoles

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The hacking group Lizard Squad is claiming responsibility for an attack on Sony’s PlayStation network, which caused connection issues for gamers over the weekend.



Visitors to the PlayStation Store were met with the message “Page not found! It’s not you. It’s the internet’s fault”. Sony said: “We are aware of the issues some users are experiencing, and are working to address them,” but did not elaborate the cause.

Lizard squad claimed credit for the outage via its Twitter account.

Lizard Squad (@LizardPatrol) PSN Login #offline #LizardSquad

A Sony spokesperson told the Guardian: “We are currently investigating the root cause for the issue,” and confirmed that service had been restored to normal by 9am this morning.

PlayStation (@PlayStation) If you had difficulties signing into PlayStation Network, give it a try now.

Sony PlayStation follows Sony Pictures

This is the second attack on Sony services in the past month, with a hacking group called Guardians of Peace claiming responsibility for an attack that crippled the Sony Pictures computer network, stealing and releasing movies and confidential files on to the internet.

Lizard Squad were linked with denial of service attacks and other hacks that have hit and taken offline Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, as well as gaming video streaming service Twitch and Call of Duty, Destiny and Fifa games servers.

The hacking group also targeted Sony’s PlayStation network in August with denial of service attacks and bomb threats against the Sony Entertainment Online president, John Smedley, which forced the diversion of a plane to a nearby airport to investigate the claims.

This is not the first time the PlayStation Network has been subject to a series of attacks from a hacker group. In 2011, the service was brought down for several days leaking the personal details including credit card numbers, email addresses and passwords of more than 70 million users. Sony was criticised for its handling of the attack, and fined £250,000 by the UK’s data protection watchdog.

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