Will hackers attack Microsoft’s Xbox Live this Christmas?

2 min. read

Published on December 24, 2016

published on December 24, 2016

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Christmas is a mere 24 hours away for most of us, however, will this year see a happy year of playing games online, or will we again see issues connecting to Xbox Live?

Phantom Squad, which has claimed to have attacked both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network in the past, has once again threatened to attack Xbox Live over the festive season. The attack, in the form of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), works by overloading servers with too much traffic, causing them to reject new connections and, in some cases, crash.

Whether this attack will actually take place or the amount of damage, if any, it will cause, is yet to be seen. As with any attack, the full force isn’t felt until afterwards.

Many users of Xbox Live have taken to Reddit to discuss the threat. One redditor, Stalfosed, struggled to understand why they do this:

Comment from discussion Stalfosed’s comment from discussion "People, beware! The DDOS group that claimed responsibility for taking down Steam 3 hours ago said that Xbox Live is next.".

In response, listen_to_robots explained the reasoning for announcing such attacks:

Comment from discussion listen_to_robots’s comment from discussion "People, beware! The DDOS group that claimed responsibility for taking down Steam 3 hours ago said that Xbox Live is next.".

Essentially, these attacks act as an advertisement for the attacker’s services. Attacking popular services such as Xbox Live assists in showing people interested in such services the full force that they carry behind them.

We’ll have to wait and see whether an attack actually takes place; until then, have a merry Christmas!

Radu Tyrsina

Radu Tyrsina has been a Windows fan ever since he got his first PC, a Pentium III (a monster at that time). For most of the kids of his age, the Internet was an amazing way to play and communicate with others, but he was deeply impressed by the flow of information and how easily you can find anything on the web. Prior to founding Windows Report, this particular curiosity about digital content enabled him to grow a number of sites that helped hundreds of millions reach faster the answer they're looking for.