Xbox, PlayStation networks hacked on Christmas

UPDATE: Kim Dotcom appears to have saved Christmas for gamers, with a series of tweets suggesting he has convinced the hackers to stop.

UPDATE: Internet personality Kim Dotcom appears to have saved the day for gamers.

In a series of tweets, Mr Dotcom suggests he has convinced the group responsible for bringing down the Xbox and PlayStation gaming services to stop their attack.

The New Zealand-based founder of Mega posted an image purporting to be a conversation with the hacking group Lizard Squad, in which he offers free vouchers to his privacy service, Mega Privacy, in return for letting gamers play.

The Twitter user “Lizard Mafia” posted just after 3pm AEST that the attacks were stopped around two hours earlier, and “the current downtime is just the aftermath”.

Asking Mega management to approve 3000 @MegaPrivacy premium vouchers for @LizardMafia if they stop attacking XBOX Live and PSN immediately.

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) December 26, 2014

Attacks have stopped momentarily, awaiting @KimDotCom's response.

— Lizard Squad (@LizardMafia) December 26, 2014

A Christmas Miracle. How @MegaPrivacy saved @Xbox & @PlayStation from the @LizardMafia attack. Enjoy your games! :-) pic.twitter.com/qoaZ33eqCi

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) December 26, 2014

Attacks were stopped around 2 hours ago, the current downtime is just the aftermath.

— Lizard Squad (@LizardMafia) December 26, 2014

Going dark, goodbye for now.

— Lizard Squad (@LizardMafia) December 26, 2014

EARLIER: Online hackers have taken credit for a service outage of Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox game consoles that occurred as people unwrapped their new toys Christmas morning.

PlayStation and Xbox acknowledged the outages of their networks on Twitter and said they were working to restore service.

A Twitter user going by the name “Lizard Squad” took credit for the outage, claiming they had the “nation on strings”.

We're aware that some users are having issues logging into PSN - engineers are investigating

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) December 25, 2014

The account did not return request for comment and only became active on Wednesday.

The Lizard Squad name corresponds to a group of hackers that has caused havoc in the online world before.

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The group took credit for attacks that took down the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live network at the beginning of the month.

Users vented their frustration with the outage online, and Xbox said on Twitter it could not estimate when service would return.

Can some please tell me the point of DDoSing video games on holiday like this? RT & FAV if you think its pathetic. #FinestSquad.

— The Finest (@FinestSquad) December 25, 2014

A rival group calling itself “The Finest Squad” has previously vowed to prevent The Lizard squad from carrying out its attack and bring the hackers to justice.

As of Friday morning, Australian time, both networks were reportedly beginning to come back online.

The Finest Squad claimed on Twitter to have deactivated the Lizard Squad’s primary “botnet” — a network of computers used to flood targeted servers with messages in a “denial of service” attack.

Originally published as Xbox, PlayStation networks hacked on Christmas