Over Christmas break, an attack on Microsoft and Sony by the hacker group Lizard Squad brought down their online gaming networks. Now that attack is up for sale for anyone to use.
Lizard Squad used a DDoS attack on December 25 to flood the companies servers, which left millions of gamers without online capabilities for days. A DDoS attack is a popular tool used by people who want to take down a website or service (Sony was a victim of one of these attacks in 2011). It sends an absurd amount of communications requests to a computer network that it can't handle, essentially rendering it useless. This is what it looks like in a visual representation:
Now, Lizard Squad is claiming that the reason they brought down Xbox Live and PSN was to market their DDoS attack as a tool, that they're calling "Lizard Stresser." (The intro to their website is a Cisco ad). The hacker groups says that Lizard Stresser lets you use a DDoS attack on your own servers to see how well they would hold up. You know, it's like letting your buddy take a couple of shots at you so you can see how well those karate classes you've taken are working. According to their terms of service:
Permission is granted to stress test dedicated servers and networks owned by you. This is the opportunity [sic] to make your firewalls better, not to misuse against the law. This is a license given to you and anything you do while on http://lizardstresser.su/ is your own responsibility as we are not liable.
Right now the only way to purchase Lizard Stresser is with Bitcoin, the anonymous currency, or with PayPal in the near future. Once you pay them a fee, the group will launch the DDoS attack on a server of your choice. Any server. That means the servers of a business you don't like, or a competing website. The most expensive package will get you an attack that will last about 20 days, or 30,000 seconds, for $130 a month. A customer can get an unlimited amount of attacks for $500.
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Without correct power distribution, if you hit a home connection right now, you'll drop the entire city.
— R.I.U. Lizard Squad (@LizardMafia) December 30, 2014If you do want to misuse the tool, Lizard Squad prohibits users from hiding behind a virtual private network—so they won't be blamed for it. Of course, any online service will want to be prepared for potential problems that might come their way, such as a DDoS attack. But seeing how Lizard Squad had no qualms about taking down two online services during the holidays, don't be so quick to trust their intentions.
