Microsoft and Sony battled to counter a conspicuous cyber attack on their video games networks over Christmas, leaving millions of customers unable to access entertainments and play games.
Microsoft’s Xbox Live network and Sony’s PlayStation store faced blackouts on Christmas, with serious interruption to the systems persisting on Boxing Day as well.
Around 24 hours after the reports of an assault, Xbox said its core services had come back to normal. Similarly, Sony said it had resolved the issue. However, the attacks have yet again raised concerns over the competence of tech companies’ online defense systems, with customers left off wondering how a basic assault can bring down a significant number of the world’s largest gaming networks at such a crucial time.
An online hacker group is known as Lizard Squad, that has long ago disturbed gaming networks, claimed responsibility for the recent episode. The group is said to have used a denial of service attack, a strategy intended to swamp a site or online system with internet traffic, constraining it to topple over.
Sony And Microsoft Being Attacked By Hackers
Gamers complained about problems accessing online components of well known titles including Call of Duty and FIFA Football. Though, sporadic outages can occur on these systems, the Christmas period is a crucial time for both gaming companies as thousands of customers will have received their new consoles as Christmas presents.
Sony took to Twitter to acknowledge the outage that occurred on Christmas Day, saying its engineers were handling the issue. On Friday afternoon, it released a statement saying that engineers are now seeing reduced reports of such network issues and that it will continue monitoring.
On Christmas Day, Microsoft said it was aware of the sign in issue with the Xbox live. By the end of Friday morning, it had announced that most of its operations had been restored back to normal.
In spite of their relative speed in restoring their services, both the companies were subjected to massive criticism on social media sites.
The Playstation issue accompanied Sony officially reeling from a string of prominent digital assaults, including a blackout of more than two hours on December 8. The computer systems of Sony Pictures Entertainment were targeted by hackers furious at its film “The Interview”, a comedy about a death endeavor on North Korea’s pioneer Kim Jong Un.
The hackers released private data and messages from the organization’s computer networks over the web. Sony initially dropped films releases after serious threats were made against theaters. However, it later backtracked, permitting it to show up in around 300 films on Christmas Day. It additionally released it on the web, while Microsoft allowed customers to get to the film through its Xbox Video store.
