Microsoft Xbox Live suffers DDoS attack from Phantom Squad, Sony PSN also threatened

Are Christmas videogames sieges now becoming a tradition?

A hacker group known as Phantom Squad has attacked Microsoft's Xbox Live online games service with a DDoS attempt which caused disruption for users during the last few hours.

While Microsoft appears already to have the problem at bay, Phantom Squad has also made threats about affecting Sony's PSN service in the same way.

The attacks appear designed to mirror last year's action against both Xbox Live and PSN by Lizard Squad. Phantom Squad, speaking on Twitter, seems keen to specify that it is "not affiliated with [Lizard Squad]" in any way, but nevertheless makes direct threats to repeat Lizard Squad's actions from last year.

"So we are going to DDoS Xbox&PSN on Christmas Day We Dont Joke We Are Always Watching Christmas Day PSN&Xbox This Is Not A Bluff" the group tweeted today, along with several threats that PSN or Xbox Live would "go offline for 24 hours" unless 1,500 retweets of the threat were made. That tweet in particular currently stands at 10 retweets.

There have been no reliable reports of PSN going down at all, while all the regional Xbox Live status sites we checked show Xbox Live in full working order. Computing also managed to log into a game of Titanfall on Xbox One with absolutely no problems.

According to Eurogamer, Xbox Live's support site did acknowledge an error earlier today, posting the following message:

"Hey Xbox members, are you having trouble purchasing or managing your subscriptions for Xbox Live? Are you also having an issue with signing into Xbox Live? We are aware of these issues and are working to get it fixed ASAP! Thank you for being patient while we work. We'll post another update when more information becomes available."

Phantom Squad has stated that it is carrying out the attacks in order to prove a point about security levels on Microsoft and Sony networks.

"The only reason we are doing this its @Xbox & @PlayStation Fault, Because we are proving there is no cyber security PSN Fix it b4 it happens," the group tweeted.

Last year, Lizard PSN on Christmas Day, taking the multiplayer gaming service offline for several hours on several separate occasions.