Hacking group R.I.U. Star Patrol managed to take down Tumblr earlier this week and keep it offline for almost two hours, and now it’s planning on launching another large-scale DDoS attack that’s likely to impact many more users.
R.I.U. Star Patrol announced in a video interview published on YouTube that they are considering taking down PSN and Xbox Live on Christmas Day using coordinated DDoS attacks similar to those launched against Tumblr.
DDoS attacks aimed at PSN and Xbox Live happen on every Christmas, and both Sony and Microsoft previously promised to enhance their protection systems and block these attacks, but latency and short outages happened almost every time. It goes without saying that the companies are once again prepared to see DDoS attacks targeting their servers, but we’ll see how they cope with that this Christmas.
Neither Microsoft nor Sony responded to emails for comments by the time this article was published, but we’ll update the article if statements are provided.
“We’re doing it because we can”
In case you’re wondering why these hackers are trying to take down gaming networks on such a busy day for gamers across the world, their answer is as simple as it could be.
“We do it because we can. We have not been paid a single dollar for what we do,” they said. Previously, when taking down Tumblr, hackers said they did it “just for fun.”
Christmas is one of the busiest days for gaming networks, especially on consoles, as PlayStation and Xbox consoles and games continue to be among the most popular gifts across the world. Gamers activate their consoles and download games on Christmas, and it goes without saying that taking networks down would impact all of these people.
It remains to be seen if DDoS attacks will indeed be launched against PSN and Xbox, and if they are, to find out how Sony and Microsoft could reduce the impact on network performance.
