Talk about a taste of its own medicine. Hacker group Lizard Squad, which first netted all the rage after attacking Sony's and Microsoft's online gaming servers, is back in the headlines for another hacking incident. This time, however, the notorious crew is the one on the receiving end. As Lizard Squad capitalized on its full-blown hacking schemes by putting up a site called LizardStresser, it turns out that the service itself has its own vulnerability. And this is what Brian Krebs from Krebs Security uncovered without difficulty.
"A copy of the LizardStresser customer database obtained by KrebsOnSecurity shows that it attracted more than 14,241 registered users, but only a few hundred appear to have funded accounts at the service," Brian Krebs shared in a blog post as he announced the hacking of the LizardStresser site.
"Interestingly, all registered usernames and passwords were stored in plain text. Also, the database indicates that customers of the service deposited more than USD $11,000 worth of bitcoins to pay for attacks on thousands of Internet addresses and Web sites (including this one)."
The service, as Krebs Security discovered, is backed up by thousands of Internet home routers with default factory settings. This, sadly, is what brought major gaming companies down during their infamous attacks. Launching denial of service (DDoS) attacks to knock any website or Internet service offline with the use of the LizardStresser service requires interested customers to shell out around $6 to $500 in bitcoin cryptocurrency. Despite the embarrassingly massive leak, however, the service is still live.
Since Lizard Squad's attack on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live on Christmas Day last year, several alleged members of the organization have been taken into police custody. On Dec. 31, 22-year-old Vincent Omari was easily apprehended after his interview with Sky News. The second arrested member is a youngster named Julius Kivimäki, a 17-year-old Finnish who claimed to be the hacker group's spokesperson. The latest one is 18-year-old Jordan Lee-Bevan, who was bailed until May.
