The PlayStation Network suffered a prolonged outage yesterday after the servers came under attack from a hacker group known as Lizard Squad. This group had already attacked Blizzard, Grinding Gear Games, and Riot Games before deciding that it wanted to bring down the PSN. Users were kicked from multiplayer games and could not log in over the course of the attack.
Network update: our engineers are aware of the issues and are working to resolve them. We'll keep you posted – sorry for the inconvenience
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) August 24, 2014
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Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley explained on his Twitter account that the attackers were simply out to overwhelm the PSN servers and prevent people from logging in. Fortunately, this means that there was no breach of personal information and users will not have to worry about their accounts being compromised. However, the hackers also called in a bomb threat on Smedley’s flight causing it to be diverted. The FBI has been called in to investigated the matter.
Not all of the PSN has been restored yet, although PlayStation has been issuing updates as they resolve the problem. Some reports also indicate that Xbox Live is on the list of targets, although it appears the problem is not as widespread.
[Source: Engadget, PlayStation Blog]
