Has North Korea now hacked PlayStation? Tech giant's video games arm is hit by group called 'Lizard Squad'
- Visitors to the site reported issues logging into the PlayStation Network
- Lizard Squad also claimed responsibility for attack on Xbox Live on Friday
- Sony has been subject to a series of cyber attacks - last month unreleased movies were leaked online, along with actors' confidential information
- North Korea denied involvement, but praised attack as a 'righteous deed'
Hacker group 'Lizard Squad' has claimed responsibility for attacking Sony's online PlayStation store, after the network went down on Sunday night.
After taking credit for temporarily disrupting Xbox Live on Friday night, Monday morning the group posted a link to comments regarding the PlayStation Network's online status. It then tweeted: 'PSN Login #offline #LizardSquad.'
The PlayStation Knowledge Center continued to show the network's status as online, but users reported issues logging into the system.
Hacker group Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for attacking Sony's online PlayStation store
Visitors to the PlayStation store site were met with a message that reads: 'Page Not Found! It's not you. It's the internet's fault.'
The disruption is the most recent in a series of attacks on Sony Entertainment, with a cyber attack last month resulting in unreleased movies being leaked online, along with personal information on some 47,000 individuals, including celebrities.
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A group calling themselves Guardians of Peace froze Sony Pictures' computer systems worldwide, posting a message that warned it would release 'top secrets' unless its 'request be met'.
According to website Re/code, Sony and security consultants were investigating the possibility that someone acting on behalf of North Korea, possibly from China, was responsible for the hacking attack.
Visitors to the site were met with a message that reads: 'Page Not Found! It's not you. It's the internet's fault'
After taking credit for temporarily disrupting Xbox Live on Friday night, the hacker group claimed responsibility for the most recent attack on Sony Entertainmant
North Korea denied involvement, but praised the attack as a 'righteous deed'.
The hack came just under a month before Sony Pictures was due to release The Interview - a comedy about two journalists, played by Seth Rogen and James Franco, who are recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The Pyongyang government denounced the film as 'undisguised sponsoring of terrorism, as well as an act of war' in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June.
In a further cyber threat on Friday, Sony Pictures staff received an email claiming to be from the same hackers, reportedly with warnings that they and their families were 'in danger.'
The email also warned that 'all hope will leave you and Sony Pictures will collapse', according to the industry journal Variety.
Sony Pictures described the hack attack a 'brazen' effort, but said it did not yet know the full extent of the 'malicious' security breach.
On the same day, Xbox Live was hit with a DDOS - or a distributed denial of service attack - which overloaded the system with requests until it shut down, preventing users from getting online.
Lizard Squad, which is known for using DDOS in its attacks, claims to be behind the outage.
The group has taken responsibility for taking offline other high-profile targets in the past including EA games, Destiny, Twitch and online game World of Warcraft.
On Twitter, Lizard Squad warned that the attack on Xbox was 'a small dose' of what is to come this this Christmas.
The PlayStation Knowledge Center continued to show the network's status as online, but users reported issues logging into the Playstation Network system
Last month's attack on Sony came just before the tech giant was due to release The Interview - a comedy about two journalists, played by Seth Rogen and James Franco, who are recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
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