Hackers not only managed to overwhelm the Sony PlayStation Network and take it down for several hours last Sunday, they also managed to have a flight carrying Sony Online’s President diverted after make a veiled bomb threat.
A group called LizardSquad proudly took credit for the attack and a Tweet was sent from their account to American Airlines that said a flight carrying Sony Online President John Smedley had explosives on board.
Smedley’s Dallas/Fort Worth to San Diego flight carrying 179 passengers was diverted to Phoenix in order to be checked for explosives.
The attack managed to shut down the PlayStation Network, used by millions of gamers, by overwhelming it with high traffic. This is what’s known as a distributed denial of service attack that overwhelms and shuts down servers.
Unlike a 2011 attack that shut down the PlaysStation Network for a month, Sony says this time no personal or credit card information of users was accessed. Senior Manager Sid Shuman said, “We have seen no evidence of any intrusion to the network and no evidence of any unauthorized access to users’ personal information.”
LizardSquad says the reason behind the attack was to show the company that they needed to spend more money on security and claimed to have also target Blizzard Entertainment and the Xbox Live Network.
LizardSquad claimed that companies needed to “end the greed” and spend more on security. None of which explains the business with the explosives.
~ Cynthia