Tweet
Yep, a group of people are DDoS'ing both online services and bringing their login and authentication servers down. As a result, new and existing owners of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are finding it difficult to get online. Xbox One owners are having slightly better luck since Microsoft's servers are a bit more robust than Sony's, as you might expect.
The group responsible, which shall continue to go nameless, has suggested that the attacks will continue throughout 2015. They have also trolled quite a number of people by saying that if they reach X number of retweets or new followers, they will quit the attacks. They have not and will not stop just because you retweet or follow someone. Two separate rival groups have apparently been trying to stop the first group, but to no avail. Many believe that two of the groups, perhaps all three of them, are simply the same group with the same members. Meaning that it's just one elaborate troll from all parties involved and is being done at the expense of the gullible, innocent consumers, and those working in IT to try and combat these attacks.
Kim Dotcom, founder of Megaupload and later Mega, actually tried to bribe the group that has been claiming responsibility for the attacks in order to get them to stop. Of course, it must have completely slipped his mind that incentivising such behavior would just result in more attacks in order to get more freebies out of other morons.
Naturally, other media outlets have reported on this. However, almost every article I've seen has used the term "hack" to describe what's going on. It's not a hack. A DDoS is not a hack by any means. Nobody is doing any "hacking" here. Nobody is infiltrating Microsoft's servers or data, nobody is infiltrating Sony's servers or data. Your information continues to be safe.
A DDoS is just sending a bunch of fake traffic from a bunch of compromised systems to a target all at once. It's like trying to squeeze ten people through a doorway meant for one person all at once. And since the first "D" stands for "distributed" that means it's very difficult to stop the attacks because they can come from all over the world. Every time I read that word, "hack," in a headline about this or any DDoS attack, I want to ask the editor why they're trying to scare their readers by blatantly lying to them. But hey, easy hits through fear mongering, right? Isn't that right CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Business Insider, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Silicon Angle, Hot Hardware, BGR, Huffington Post, Reuters, News.com.au, Fortune, and the list just keeps going on. God forbid actual news sites bothered with the simple facts and didn't try claiming this was a hack for free hits.
I just find it a bit strange how this group claimed to shut down North Korea's internet access, which appeared to be some kind of freedom gesture, then rolled straight into attacking their usual targets again, they really don't have a purpose other than showing off.
Your anger at the word "Hack" is the same as my anger towards the words "Cloud" and "App" :P, it's not a magical fancy cloud thing, it's a bunch of servers holding data for you like they always have, and we used to call App's Programs.