Threat Diverts Sony President's Plane as Sites Disrupted
Sony says it has restored service to its PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network sites after the gaming and media delivery services were disrupted Aug. 24 by a "large scale" distributed-denial-of-service attack. The group behind the attack also appeared to be responsible for a security scare involving a U.S. airplane on which the president of Sony was flying.
"We have seen no evidence of any intrusion to the network and no evidence of any unauthorized access to users' personal information," says Sony's senior manager for social media, Sid Shuman, in an Aug. 24 blog post. The same day the DDoS attack began, Sony took the targeted networks offline - including the PlayStation Network, which counts more than 110 million users - to help mitigate the attack, which aimed "to overwhelm our network with artificially high traffic," he says.
Such attacks aren't rare, with DDoS defense service Incapsula reporting that it's seen the frequency of these attacks more than double since last year, with attack severity and duration also increasing. Incapsula says one of its online gaming customers was recently targeted by a DDoS attack that lasted 38 days. Other recent DDoS attack victims have included such businesses as Feedly, Evernote and Deezer, as well as code-hosting service Code Spaces, which was hit by both DDoS and extortion attacks that resulted in the deletion of large amounts of the company's data, driving it out of business.
In the case of Sony, President John Smedley says his company's online services were targeted by a "large scale DDoS" attack. "The problem is upstream of our network; we have no control. So they are flooding the routes to us too," tweeted Smedley on Aug. 24, before the attacks were resolved. He added that Sony was taking steps to filter the attack traffic, but said mitigating the DDoS disruptions was taking time because "upstream ISPs need to filter too."
Airplane Security Scare
A group - or perhaps just an individual - calling itself "Lizard Squad" has taken credit for the DDoS attack, and it also appears to be behind a security scare that targeted Smedley. On Aug. 24, American Airlines flight 362 was diverted after a report of a security threat was posted on Twitter. "@AmericanAir We have been receiving reports that @j_smedley's plane #362 from DFW to SAN has explosives on-board, please look into this," read a tweet from the Lizard Squad account.
Smedley confirmed that he was on the diverted flight. "Yes. My plane was diverted," tweeted Smedley. "Not going to discuss more than that. Justice will find these guys."
The FBI says it's investigating the incident. "Today AA Flight 362 traveling from Dallas to San Diego was diverted to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport," the bureau says in a statement. "The flight landed without incident. Passengers were safely removed from the plane. The investigation is still ongoing."
Who Is Lizard Squad?
Little is known about Lizard Squad, aside from its penchant for attacking online gaming sites, as well as name-checking the militant group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. "Today we planted the ISIS flag on @Sony's servers #ISIS #jihad," read an Aug. 24 tweet from the Lizard Squad account. "Kuffar don't get to play videogames until bombing of the ISIL stops #ISIL #PSN #ISIS," it also tweeted. "Kuffar" is a derogatory Arabic word meaning "unbeliever" or "infidel."
Of course, the references to jihad and ISIS could simply be scaremongering, if not a satiric "false flag" meant to drive breathless reporting. Indeed, Australia's News Corp wasted no time in saying that "a group of ISIS hackers" had claimed credit for the DDoS attacks against Sony.
Adding to the confusion, another Twitter user, FamedGod, claims Lizard Squad stole credit for the DDoS attacks. "Why must someone take credit of ones work? LizardSquad couldn't hurt a fly. Decrypting a memory dump and finding the server was all my work," read one tweet from the FamedGod account.