Lizard Squad
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About
The Lizard Squad is a black hat hacking group known for orchestrating large-scale denial of service (DDoS) attacks targeting a variety of high profile video game companies beginning in August 2014.
History
On August 18th, 2014, the @LizardSquad[2] Twitter feed posted a tweet announcing that the hacking group had managed to take the online multiplayer game League of Legends offline.
RuneScape DDoS
The same day, @LizardSquad[12] took responsibility for taking the massively multiplayer role-playing game RuneScape offline.
Riot Games DDoS
On August 19th, @LizardSquad[5] took responsibility for hacking the video game publisher Riot Games and forcing them to upgrade their security.
Battle.net DDoS
Also on August 19th, @LizardSquad[7] tweeted that they had successfully taken the Blizzard Entertainment online gaming service Battle.net offline.
PlayStation Network DDoS
The morning of August 24th, @LizardSquad[6] posted a tweet alluding to an imminent cyber attack on the video game company Sony's PlayStation network gaming service.
The same day, president of Sony Online Entertainment John Smedley[3] tweeted that the company was currently facing a "large scale DDoS."
Immediately after, @LizardSquad[8] tweeted to the @AmericanAir feed that they had received reports of explosives smuggled aboard Smedley's flight (shown below, left). Smedley subsequently tweeted that his flight had been diverted for "security reasons" (shown below, right).[9]
XBOX Live DDoS
Also on August 24th, Lizard Squad[10] posted a tweet asking if anyone was having difficulty logging into Microsoft's Xbox Live gaming servers. The following day, the feed posted another tweet asking "How's Xbox Live Doing?"[11]
Support of ISIS
The @LizardSquad[4] posted a tweet announcing that "Kuffar" (non-muslims) would not be able to play online games until the bombing of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant stopped along with the hashtag #ISIS.
Sony PlayStation Network Hack
On December 7th, 2014, Sony's PlayStation Network was targeted and taken offline by members of the Lizard Squad, which led its users to a page with a message reading "Page Not Found! It's not you. It's the Internet's fault," as well as prompting a lengthy outage for the online media store and gaming servers.
Christmas 2014 Hack
During Christmas Day on December 25th, 2014, the Lizard Squad took responsibility for DDoS attacks that managed to take down both the Microsoft Xbox Live and Sony PlayStation Network online gaming services for most of the day. That evening, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom tweeted that he was pushing to give Lizard Squad 3,000 Mega lifetime premium accounts if they stopped the cyber attacks. Two hours later, Dotcom tweeted that he had successfully made the exchange and posted a screenshot of his communications with the @LizardMafia Twitter feed (shown below).
On the following day, The Daily Dot[21] published an interview with Lizard Squad hackers using the aliases "Vinnie Omari" and "Ryan Cleary," who claimed the DDoS against Microsoft and Sony "maxed out at 1.2 terabits per second." The pair claimed they targeted the companies to encourage them to hire better security experts and improve their equipment. Additionally, Clearly bragged that the hacking group had access to "devices that are in the middle of the ocean that have something like 100-gigabit-per-second Internet connections."
Daybreak Game Company Hack
On July 8th, 2015, 17-year-old Finnish Lizard Squad member Julius "zeekill" Kivimaki was given a two-year suspended sentence after being convicted of 50,700 "instances of aggravated computer break-ins," but would not be serving jail time. That day, Daybreak Game Company CEO John Smedley tweeted[26] a response to the sentencing, referring to Kivimaki as a "piece of garbage" (shown below).
On July 9th, Smedley replied to a post about the incident on the /r/Planetside[22] subreddit, where he described how hackers harassed him and expressed disappointment with the Finnish justice system. The next day, the @LizardLands[23] Twitter feed posted a tweet saying "Time for some more fun" (shown below).
That day, the Daybreak Games Twitter[24] feed announced the company was "experiences issues" and Smedley[25] posted a tweet acknowledging that they were being hit by a DDoS attack. Meanwhile, the DDoS attack was reported by the gaming news sites Kotaku[27] and PC Gamer.[28]
March 2016 Arrest Tweet
On March 31st, 2016, the @LizardLands[24] Twitter feed tweeted that 36 people were arrested in a "global raid on lizard squad members" (shown below). The claim was not verified by any major news outlets.
Blizzard DDOS
On April 10th, 2016, the private vanilla World of Warcraft server Nostalrius announced that they were being forced by Blizzard Entertainment to shut down servers due to copyright infringement claims. On April 13th, Lizard Squad's @LizardLands Twitter account retweeted a post including images purportedly showing the personal email accounts of various Blizzard employees (shown below).
The same day, the @LizardLands[23] Twitter feed announced that several Blizzard game servers in the United States were offline (shown below).
Shortly after, the official Blizzard customer service Twitter[22] feed acknowledged that the company was "monitoring a DDOS attack" compromising the performance of some of their online games (shown below).
That day, YouTuber DJ Keemstar posted a video to the DramaAlert YouTube channel, which featured a brief segment about the DDOS attacks (shown below).
Lin Wood Tweet
In January 4th, 2021 American attorney Lin Wood[25] posted a tweet claiming that a group called Lizard Squad had obtained evidence of Chief Justice John Roberts raping and murdering children by hacking one of the "world's most well known and 'elite' intelligence agencies". He went onto say that Lizard Squad members were arrested in relation to said hack. Vinnie Omari, a former Lizard Squad member has stated that Lizard Squad never took part in the espionage or hacking of any government.[26]
Reputation
News Media Coverage
In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the cyber attacks, including Shack News,[13] The Daily Dot,[14] CNET,[15] ABC News,[16] Motherboard,[17] IBI Times[18] and Tech Crunch.[19]
Search Interest
External References
[1] Facebook – Lizard Squad
[2] Twitter – Lizard Squad
[3] Twitter – John Smedley
[4] Twitter – Lizard Squad
[5] Twitter – Lizard Squad
[6] Twitter – Lizard Squad
[7] Twitter – Lizard Squad
[8] Twitter – Lizard Squad
[9] Twitter – John Smedley
[10] Twitter – Lizard Squad
[11] Twitter – Lizard Squad
[12] Twitter – Lizard Squad
[13] Shack News – Blizzard PlayStation Network and more
[14] The Daily Dot (via Wayback Machine) – Playstation Network and Blizzard hit with massive DDoS
[15] CNET – Sony says PlayStation Network back online
[16] ABC News – Sony PlayStation Users Heated Up After Apparent Network Problems
[17] Motherboard – Hackers and Trolls Target Sony- (unavailable)
[18] IBI Times – Sony Playstation Hacked
[19] Tech Crunch – PlayStation Network Suffers DDOS Atatck
[20] Twitter – @KimDotcom
[21] The Daily Dot – Meet the hackers who ruined Christmas for every gamer in the world
[22] Twitter – @BlizzardCS
[23] Twitter – @LizardLands
[24] Twitter – @LizardLands
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