The PlayStation Network is finally back online after a prolonged outage since the Christmas day DDoS attack. While earlier reports had indicated that Lizard Squad had stopped clogging up traffic to both PSN and Xbox Live after Mega founder Kim Dotcom had paid their ransom, the hackers had resumed the attack for no particular reason.
Xbox Live had recovered last week after the hackers decided to stop paying attention to it and simply focus on PSN. There was no reason given other that it was done “for the lulz”. This happened shortly after some 3,000 vouchers for online cloud storage Mega had been given to them in exchange for stopping the attack. However, Lizard Squad appears to be done with gamers for now and have instead moved on to attempting to crack the anonymous TOR network.
Several developers who planned special holiday special events for gamers had decided to extend the events in light of the service disruption. Grand Theft Auto Online will extend the holiday bundle DLC until 5 January, and has asked players to check their inventory for a few extra gifts. PlayStation exclusive Destiny will also be extending the availability of the Xur merchant, who only appears on weekends, for an extra 24 hours.
There may still be some disruptions as people try to log back into PSN, but at least it is back on its feet for now.
[Source: PlayStation Blog]
