On August 24th, Sony’s Playstation Network (PSN), Blizzard Entertainment, and Riot Games experienced what’s known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack that caused a day-long outage and loss of services. The attack did not compromise customer records and service has since been restored to the gaming networks. However the group that claimed responsibility (known as “Lizard Squad”) took the unusual step of reporting a bomb on the American Airlines plane that Playstation’s President, John Smedly, was traveling on at the time. You can read more about the details of the attack and the fallout here: http://www.dailydot.com/esports/psn-blizzard-riot-ddos-attack/
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to make a server or a network resource unavailable to users, usually by temporarily interrupting or suspending the services of the host computer that is connected to the Internet. Hackers use multiple computers to send and distribute the same signal multiplied a thousand fold or more to one target computer or server, overloading the bandwidth and causing it to crash.
These attacks can prevent customers from visiting an online business and accessing services, buying products, getting information, or receiving support. They can affect even large companies with well-structured networks over the course of several days; costing millions of dollars in lost sales, freezing online services, and interfering with a company’s reputation and brand. It is bad for both the business and its customers.
Sorting out the motives of the attackers is difficult. Because they tend to remain anonymous it can be hard to tell which, if any, of the entities who claim to speak for them actually do. But, whatever the connection, it appears that an act of economic disruption has conflated into an act of terrorism.