Hackers claim responsibility for PlayStation and Xbox Christmas slowdown

Hackers claim responsibility for PlayStation and Xbox Christmas slowdown
(Image credit: Juergen Schwarz/Getty Images)

Users of Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox Live gaming networks experienced connection problems on Christmas Day, and a hacker group called Lizard Squad claimed responsibility. The group said on Twitter that it had snarled both networks with distributed denial of service attacks, which overwhelm servers with phony traffic. Both companies said they were investigating the outages. Gaming networks often get swamped with traffic over the holidays as people sign on and download updates for new consoles.

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.