Xbox Live Outage Courtesy of Hacker Group Phantom Squad

<p>The holidays just wouldn&&num;8217&semi;t be the same without another distributed denial-of-service &lpar;DDoS&rpar; attack&comma; this one claimed by Phantom Squad&period; Last night&comma; several Xbox Live users were met with difficulties when logging into the service&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Phantom Squad&&num;8217&semi;s official Twitter account&comma; since taken down&comma; has been threatening to take down both Microsoft&&num;8217&semi;s Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network&period; In a bout of tweets this past week&comma; the newly organized hackers claim that Microsoft and Sony are to blame for poor security measures&colon;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;Xbox Live and PSN have millions upon millions of dollars&&num;8230&semi; but do they use that money for better security&quest; No&period; &&num;8230&semi; So until they open their eyes Xbox Live and PSN will remain vulnerable&comma;&&num;8221&semi; -Phantom Squad &lpar;December 16&rpar;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;I get asked a lot on why we do this&quest; Why do we take down PSN and Xbox Live&quest; Because cyber security does not exist&&num;8221&semi;-Phantom Squad &lpar;December 13&rpar;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Famous &&num;8216&semi;hactivist&&num;8217&semi; group Anonymous&comma; well known for exposing corporations with poor online security measures&comma; weighed in on the matter with the following tweets from their official account&colon;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;If PSN or Xbox live goes down&comma; Microsoft and Sony are the blame&period; You would expect these corporations to have sufficient DDoS protection&period;&&num;8221&semi;-Anonymous &lpar;December 16&rpar;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;We won&&num;8217&semi;t take down PSN or Xbox live&period; But if you worry about not being able to play games on Christmas you need to re-evaluate priorities&period;&&num;8221&semi;-Anonymous &lpar;December 16&rpar;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>If last year&&num;8217&semi;s DDoS attacks&comma; then coordinated by Lizard Squad&comma; have anything to say&comma; this Christmas may be another rough one for people who hope to play their new games&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&lpar;Source&colon; TechNow&comma; Eurogamer&comma; Neowin&comma; WBALTV&rpar;<&sol;p>&NewLine;