Santa is finally coming for gamers, as Sony and Microsoft restore their online services. On December 25th both PlayStation Network and Xbox Live had been under attack by a group named Lizard Squad, making it difficult for gamers to log on. These attacks are not the first this month, but they couldn"t happen at a worse moment for the millions of users on both PSN and Xbox Live.
The day following the attacks Kim Dotcom took action and convinced the group to stop hammering the networks, in exchange for free vouchers from MegaPrivacy. While apparently happy with the bribe, Lizard Squad is turning to a new target: the Tor network. Meanwhile, the two online console services are slowly coming back online, as frustrated users found out via tweets from Microsoft and Sony:
These outages likely resulted lost sales for the two companies and created a sea of annoyed people that were planning on using their services on the busiest business day of the year who were stuck waiting for Microsoft and Sony to find a way around the attacks . A positive side-effect of this could be that people spent more time with friends and family, which is what Christmas is all about. Still, let"s all hope that Sony and Microsoft find ways to bolster their defenses against future DDoS attacks.
UPDATE: Sony has announced on their blog that PSN is now back online.
Source: Twitter for Xbox Support and AskPlayStation