Several high-profile gaming services, including Sony's Playstation Network, were on the receiving end of cyber attacks this weekend.
DDoS - or distributed denial of service - attacks were reported to have been behind issues that affected, among others, Battle.net (the service behind popular Blizzard games such as World of Warcraft), League of Legends and - most prominently - Sony's Playstation Network and Online Entertainment divisions.
In Sony's case, 'Lizard Squad' - the group claiming responsibility for the DDoS attacks on Twitter - went a step further and sent fake bomb alerts that are reported to have resulted in the diversion of a Sony executive's plane. John Smedley, CEO of Sony Online Entertainment, confirmed that his American Airlines flight had been diverted:
Yes. My plane was diverted. Not going to discuss more than that. Justice will find these guys.
— John Smedley (@j_smedley) August 24, 2014
A SOE representative told gaming site Kotaku that the FBI are investigating the incident.
Sony's Playstation Network is now back online after services were disrupted for most of Sunday.
PlayStation Network is back online & scheduled planned maintenance for today will not go ahead. Full details > http://t.co/qw7xG9Ixry
— PlayStation Europe (@PlayStationEU) August 25, 2014
DDoS events occur when websites are ‘attacked’ with a huge amount of traffic or requests, often from 'bots' programmed to overwhelm servers. Attacks are generally intended to disrupt or shut down a site or service.
Unlike the major hacking incident that affected Playstation Network in 2011, users' personal data was not at risk during yesterday's attacks, with Sony confirming "we have seen no evidence of any intrusion to the network and no evidence of any unauthorised access to users’ personal information".
