Microsoft's Xbox Live service is now up and running after it shut down on Monday due to a hacking incident. Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners reported difficulties connecting to the said service after a hacker group overwhelmed the system.
On Monday night, a lot of users said that their consoles showed the 80151909 error code when they tried to connect. Moreover, when users attempted to sign in to their accounts, they received a warning that the Xbox Live profile has failed to download.
XBox Live has been fully operational since the developers fixed the issue. Microsoft offered no comment about the attack.
Lizard Squad
Hacking group Lizard Squad admitted that it was behind the attack after it posted a series of tweets pertaining to the incident. Its first tweet reads, "Xbox Live #offline."
Apparently, the group, which is known as the "king" of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, used their favorite method to disrupt XBox Live's operations, which means that the hackers overwhelmed the server with a lot of requests causing it to shut down. DDoS is not a breach in data security. Microsoft and Lizard Squad have not confirmed whether user logins and other information were stolen.
This is not the first time that Lizard Squad hacked a server. In August, Sony's PlayStation Network also suffered a temporary shut down after the same DDoS attack. The group was also responsible for overwhelming requests on the servers of different online games like "Grand Theft Auto 5," "League of Legends," and "Destiny."
Meanwhile, in March, the Xbox Live service was also attacked by a different hacking group coined as Team Hype. The team accessed Xbox Live accounts of some of the "high-profile" employees. The hackers illegally obtained the Social Security data to gain access to the service and sold some of the Xbox Live user accounts.
Security improvement
The motive of Lizard Squad is still unknown although the group revealed that the recent attack was a preparation for hacking attacks on Christmas. Thus, gamers and service providers should prepare themselves against possible security breaches during the holidays.
"That's a small dose of what's to come on Christmas. #LizardSquad," the group said.
The group also asked its followers who to hack next.
With the impending threat of a hacking attack from the group, it is imperative for Microsoft and other gaming servers to intensify their security to prevent possible breaches. Moreover, users should take precaution with their accounts.
