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[UPDATE: PSN services appear to have gone back to normal.
[UPDATE: PSN services appear to have gone back to normal. Enjoy your weekend!]
Over the 4th of July weekend, some people like to spend time outside at BBQs, hitting the beach, or just hanging out with their friends and families. Others use the time to catch up on their favorite games, like they do to relax on most holidays. Unfortunately, thanks to various DDoS attacks, gaming on holidays is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
And now it looks like yet another DDoS attack has targeted the PlayStation Network, one of the world’s largest online gaming platforms, during a holiday weekend. Tomorrow, the 4th of July, marks Independence Day of the United States, and seems like the perfect time to fit in a summer DDoS attack, though it could simply be that the PlayStation Network is experiencing technical difficulty issues, and thus suffering some unscheduled downtime.
For the last couple of hours, various services through PSN have not functioned as they should on the PS3 and PS4. Major services such as the PlayStation Store, PlayStation Video, PlayStation Plus, and the simple act of signing in to one’s profile are all dead on the water at the time of this writing, rendering the PlayStation Network effectively useless for the time being.
Usually whenever a DDoS attack occurs on either the PlayStation Network or Xbox Live, the notorious group Lizard Squad is quick to take credit. However, they have yet to update any of their many Twitter accounts, so it’s possible that another group is behind the attack, or as stated previously, PSN could simply be having technical difficulties.
The Lizard Squad and DDoS attacks on console servers have become a hot topic ever since both Xbox Live and PSN were down last Christmas. Compared to Xbox Live, PSN does seem to be targeted more often, having received DDoS attacks in August of 2014, as well as suffering possible DDoS-related outages last monthas well. As of the time of this writing, Xbox Live is working perfectly fine, so whatever is going on, it’s an issue exclusive to PlayStation at the moment.
These frequent outages and DDoS attacks may stir up bad memories for PlayStation owners that were around for the PSN hacking debacle of 2011. It was then that hackers attacked PSN, stealing a mountain of personal data and credit card information, and taking PSN down for nearly an entire month. This attack painted Sony in a very poor light, and it brought up a lot of questions about the quality of their servers as well as the security and safety of users utilizing PSN. Sony ended up offering free gamesto try to make up for the situation, but the potential for credit card and identity fraud from the attack left many gamers weary of continuing to use PSN.
If PSN is down all weekend, will it severely impact your holiday plans, or are you planning to spend some time away from gaming this 4th of July weekend? Let us know in the comments.
Source: PlayStation