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Bad news for gamers! It's once again the time when most of you will get new PlayStations and XBoxes that continue to be among the most popular gifts for Christmas, but possibilities are you'll not be able to log into the online gaming console, just like what happens on every Christmas holidays. On 2014 Christmas holidays, the notorious hacker group Lizard Squad knocked the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live offline for many gamers by launching massive DDoS attacks against the gaming networks. This time a new hacking group, who managed to take down Tumblr this week for almost two hours, has warned gamers of launching another large-scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against XBox Live and PlayStation networks. Calling itself R.I.U. Star Patrol , the hacking group, posted a video on YouTube , announcing that they're planning to take down Sony's PSN and Microsoft's Xbox Live on Christmas Day by launching coordinated DDoS attacks. "We do it because w...

Remember the notorious hacker group Lizard Squad that spoiled last Christmas holidays of many game lovers by knocking the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live offline with apparent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks? But, Will you be able to Play Xbox and PlayStation Game this Christmas? Probably Not. Because a new hacking group is threatening to carry out similar attacks by taking down the Xbox LIVE and PlayStation Network for a week during Christmas. Be Ready this Christmas for Attacks on PSN and XBox LIVE In a series of tweets, a bunch of DDoS hackers calling themselves " Phantom Group " (@PhantomSquad) announced that they will disrupt the XBox Live and PlayStation networks in a coordinated DoS attack. The attacks could prevent millions of gamers worldwide from enjoying their newly opened Christmas gifts and accessing games online. Also Read: PlayStation 4 Jailbreak Confirms . Here are the tweets by Phantom Squad: We are goi...

Cyber attacks are getting evil and worst nightmare for companies day-by-day, and the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is one of the favorite weapon for hackers to temporarily suspend services of a host connected to the Internet. Until now, nearly every big website had been a victim of this attack, and the most recent one was conducted against the BBC 's websites and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump 's main campaign website over this past holiday weekend. Out of two, the largest DDoS attack in the history was carried out against the BBC website: Over 600 Gbps . Largest DDoS Attack in the History The group calling itself New World Hacking claimed responsibility for taking down both the BBC's global website and Donald Trump's website last week. The group targeted all BBC sites, including its iPlayer on-demand service, and took them down for at least three hours on New Year's Eve. At the moment, the BBC news organiz...

A sad reality for gamers all around the world who enjoy playing the very popular game Minecraft on their PCs. If you are one of them, you'll want to pay attention here. A plain text file containing over 1,800 Minecraft account usernames and passwords has just been leaked online, German media reports . The details available in the leak has been posted to Pastebin, which would allow anyone to log into a legitimate user's account in order to play online and download the full version of the game to their own computers. However, the more serious implication of the leaked credentials would be for those affected users who had used the same username and password combination for other online services, like shopping site, banking site, email service or for any social networking site. Minecraft is an incredibly popular online game bought by Microsoft just few months back for $2.5 billion. The game has more than 100 million registered accounts for its PC version alone, and...

A 23-year-old hacker from Utah who launched a series of DDoS attacks against multiple online services, websites, and online gaming companies between December 2013 and January 2014 has been sentenced to 27 months in prison. Austin Thompson, a.k.a. "DerpTroll," pledged guilty back in November 2018 after he admitted to being a part of DerpTrolling , a hacker group that was behind DDoS attacks against several major online gaming platforms including Electronic Arts' Origin service, Sony PlayStation network, and Valve Software's Steam during Christmas. "Thompson typically used the Twitter account @DerpTrolling to announce that an attack was imminent and then posted "scalps" (screenshots or other photos showing that victims' servers had been taken down) after the attack," the DoJ says. According to a U.S. Department of Justice press release published Wednesday, Thompson's actions caused the victim companies at least $95,000 in damages. T...

It was the sad Christmas day for gamers all around the world!! A lot of people get new PlayStations and Xboxes on Christmas, but this Christmas they bought the game, popped it into the console for online gaming, and what they found? Oh Crap! I can't log on . It was the notorious hacker group " Lizard Squad " who claimed the responsibility for taking down PlayStation Network, saying it has made unavailable both networks with apparent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks — intentionally overloading servers by sending a flood of bogus web traffic, which made logging into the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live difficult for most users. Now Anonymous has declared war against Lizard Group, warning that " now you are all going down. " Recently, in response to Lizard Squad launching DDoS attacks on the Tor network , the international activist group Anonymous has leaked the personal details of one of the group's alleged members, warning the hacke...

A UK man linked to the notorious hacking group, Lizard Squad , that claimed responsibility for knocking Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live offline on Christmas Day has been arrested by the United Kingdom police. Lizard Squad launched simultaneous Distributed Denial-of-Service ( DDoS ) attacks against the largest online gaming networks, Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, on Dec. 25, 2014. Then offered to sell its own Lizard-branded DDoS-for-hire tool called Lizard Stresser . SECOND ARREST As part of an investigation, the UK Regional Organised Crime Unit, in collaboration with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), have arrested an 18 year old teenager in Southport, near Liverpool, UK on Friday morning, and seized his electronic and digital devices as well. So far, this is the second arrest made in connection to the attack after Thames Valley Police arrested a 22-year old , named Vinnie Omari , also believed to have been an alleged member of Liz...

SCADA system has always been an interesting target for cyber crooks, given the success of Stuxnet malware that was developed by the US and Israeli together to sabotage the Iranian nuclear facilities a few years ago, and " Havex " that previously targeted organizations in the energy sector. Now once again, hackers have used highly destructive malware and infected, at least, three regional power authorities in Ukraine, causing blackouts across the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine on 23rd December. The energy ministry confirmed it was investigating claims a cyber attack disrupted local energy provider Prykarpattyaoblenergo, causing the power outage that left half of the homes in Ivano-Frankivsk without electricity just before Christmas. According to a Ukrainian news service TSN, the outage was the result of nasty malware that disconnected electrical substations. Related Read: Dragonfly Russian Hackers Target 1000 Western Energy Firms . First Malware to...

A 22-year-old man linked to the notorious hacking group, Lizard Squad, that claimed responsibility for knocking Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live offline on Christmas Day was arrested by the United Kingdom police on Monday. Lizard Squad launched simultaneous Distributed Denial-of-Service ( DDoS ) attacks against the largest online gaming networks, Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, on Dec. 25. Then offered to sell its own Lizard-branded DDoS-for-hire tool called Lizard Stresser. Vinnie Omari , an alleged member of Lizard Squad, arrested by the police investigating PayPal thefts and cyber-fraud offences occurred in 2013-14 while raiding his London home. Law enforcement officials reportedly seized phones, laptops and an Xbox from his home. "The arrest is in connection with an ongoing investigation into cyber-fraud offences which took place between 2013 and August 2014 during which victims reported funds being stolen from their PayPal accounts,...

Just a week ago on Christmas, the massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack from the notorious hacking group Lizard Squad knocked Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live offline, but as if it wasn't the end of disaster for Microsoft. This time it isn't a case of services being taken down — instead, the software development kit (SDK) for the Xbox Live is being freely circulated over the Internet. Another group calling itself H4LT has apparently managed to leak the Microsoft's official Xbox One developer SDK , potentially opening the door for homemade applications and allowing unapproved developers to create unofficial software for the system. The group announced the Xbox One leak via its official Twitter account, and also provided some screenshots of the November's release of the Durango XDK (Xbox Development Kit) files, including the accompanying development tools, device firmware and its documentation. H4LT group states noble reasons f...

A financially-motivated threat actor known for its malware distribution campaigns has evolved its tactics to focus on ransomware and extortion. According to FireEye's Mandiant threat intelligence team, the collective — known as FIN11 — has engaged in a pattern of cybercrime campaigns at least since 2016 that involves monetizing their access to organizations' networks, in addition to deploying point-of-sale (POS) malware targeting financial, retail, restaurant, and pharmaceutical sectors. "Recent FIN11 intrusions have most commonly led to data theft, extortion and the disruption of victim networks via the distribution of CLOP ransomware ," Mandiant said . Although FIN11's activities in the past have been tied to malware such as FlawedAmmyy , FRIENDSPEAK , and MIXLABEL, Mandiant notes significant overlap in TTPs with another threat group that cybersecurity researchers call TA505 , which is behind the infamous Dridex banking Trojan and Locky ransomware that'...

A 23-year-old hacker from Utah pleaded guilty this week to launching a series of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks against multiple online services, websites, and online gaming companies between 2013 and 2014. According to a Justice Department (DoJ) press release, Austin Thompson , a.k.a. "DerpTroll," took down servers of several major gaming platforms including Electronic Arts' Origin service, the Sony PlayStation network , and Valve Software's Steam, between December 2013 and January 2014, by flooding them with enough internet traffic. Thompson then typically used the Twitter account the @DerpTrolling handle to announce his attacks, subsequently posting screenshots or other photos of the server being unavailable after launching DDoS attacks. The attacks usually took down game servers and related computers of the victim companies for at least a few hours at a time, causing at least $95,000 in damages to the gaming companies around the world. "Denial-of...

It's easy to think high-tech companies have a security advantage over other older, more mature industries. Most are unburdened by 40 years of legacy systems and software. They draw some of the world's youngest, brightest digital natives to their ranks, all of whom consider cybersecurity issues their entire lives. Perhaps it is due to their familiarity with technology that causes them to overlook SaaS security configurations. During the last Christmas holiday season, Slack had some private code stolen from its GitHub repository. According to Slack, the stolen code didn't impact production, and no customer data was taken. Still, the breach should serve as a warning sign to other tech companies. Stolen tokens allowed threat actors to access the GitHub instance and download the code. If this type of attack can happen to Slack on GitHub, it can happen to any high-tech company. Tech companies must take SaaS security seriously to prevent resources from leaking or being stolen. App Bre...

Six British teenagers arrested and released on bail on suspicion of launching cyber attacks on websites and services with the help of Lizard Squad DDoS attack tool, called Lizard Stresser . Lizard Squad is infamous for hacking and knocking down the largest online gaming networks – PlayStation Network and Xbox Live – last year by launching massive Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. The notorious hacker group set up a website to let customers use its Lizard-branded DDoS-for-hire tool Lizard Stresser to launch similar DDoS attacks. The six teens, arrested by the National Crime Agency , are accused of using Lizard Stresser DDoS tool to launch cyber attacks against a school, a national newspaper, gaming companies and a number of online retailers. However, according to the law enforcement, none of the teenagers are believed to be the member of Lizard Squad, nor had any connection with the last year's Christmas hack against Sony and Microsoft's gami...