Christmas was not that merry for gamers because of the virtual "Grinch" that stole it from them. What should have been a good day of gaming became one where they tore their hair out, out of frustration, as they waited for the servers of Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live to be restored.
Lizard Squad was at it again. And just when everyone thought that the hacker group was outdone by the Finest Squad, who emerged after the group's detestable actions were considered insanely detrimental, it turned out they were not outdone after all.
Previous reports reinstated the hope in every gamers' hearts that Christmas day gaming would be flawless and worry-free, knowing that the rival hacking group had members of the Lizard Squad arrested and exposed. In the middle of the celebration, many overlooked the fact that Lizard Squad is, after all, an organization and taking them down would entail more than one shot.
On Dec. 23, fears of gamers were realized once more. Lizard Squad, back with its new Twitter account, posted an ominous tweet.
It said, "The lulz will begin tomorrow if everything goes as planned."
When the attack was deployed on Christmas Eve, Lizard Squad easily messed with Sony and Microsoft once again. It continued until the dawn of Boxing Day. Finest Squad was there to foil the attacks in between, of course. But with the tweets they shared, killing off the traffic sent by the resurrected hacker group became more and more arduous.
"Call Xbox Live and PSN and tell them FinestSquad says 'Upgrade your firewall and put a filter on traffic to their servers'.#ProblemSolved"
"It isnt our fault Xbox and Playstation refused to take advice from us. We had yesterday on lockdown. If anyone is a let down its them."
"PSN servers are completely off. No we cant even monitor them. WTF are they doing.@PlayStation yall are [explicit] what happend."
In an unbelievable turn of events, it was discovered that the only thing that could stop Lizard Squad (for now) is 3,000 Lifetime accounts on Mega, an encrypted upload service. This was offered by the owner himself, Kim Dotcom. As part of the deal, he reminded that another attack from them will render all the accounts useless. Here's to hoping that Pro 1 annual Mega vouchers with 500 GB storage (usually $99), will ward off the group for good.
However, there are speculations that one party will breach the deal, at least if Sony and Microsoft do not safeguard their servers formidably. Lizard Squad has recently told Win Beta that their attacks will have more substance now that they have a purpose for their future attacks (which everyone hopes does not exist) — and that is to challenge the security system of the gaming giants, which has so far been proven to be rather weak and easily penetrable.
While Kim Dotcom appeared to have saved the day, rumor mills have been churning incessantly. Speculations suggest that Finest Squad is affiliated with Lizard Squad and they only have one leader. This is still unsubstantiated though.
