Xbox Live has been compromised and service outage reports were reportedly logged by users earlier today at around 12PM EST/9AM PST. Cyber-terrorism group Lizard Squad has once again taken responsibility for the attack.
The group is infamously known for taking down both Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network on Christmas day last year, which resulted in the arrest of two members. In an exclusive WinBeta interview with Lizard Squad, they admitted that the motivation behind last years attack was simply done for their amusement at first, until they started pursuing a “real cause” which was to prove that internet giants like Microsoft and Sony cannot protect their customers and therefore cannot be trusted to securely hold private information.
This time around, the group noted that they carried out the attack with help from another hacker group called Like No Other. Although the reasoning wasn’t specifically mentioned, a series of tweets they tweeted may give you an idea:
Xbox (360) Live #offline
— Lizard Squad (@LizardPhoenix) February 16, 2015
Haha “Xbox” is trending Worldwide. We’re back 🙂
— Lizard Squad (@LizardPhoenix) February 16, 2015
Xbox owners reading this now should be happy to know that Xbox Live is back up and running with no issues across all of the main service categories. These include the core Xbox Live service, purchase and content usage, TV, music and video access, social networking and gaming, and the Xbox website. Although there are a few issues related to some of the third-party apps, those don’t seem to be related to the attacks.
Microsoft has yet to comment or verify the service takedown, but we’ll update you accordingly once they do. In the meantime, you can read our full interview with Lizard Squad here.
