Lizard Squad

Lizard Squad is one of the most well-known and long-lived hacking groups and is proud to proclaim itself as the “King of DDoS attacks.” Over time, Lizard Squad has been held responsible for some of the most potent hacking attacks and has become genuinely notorious for its actions.

Initially, the Lizard Squad came into public view around 2014. Lizard Squad hackers launched their DDoS assault first on the League of Legends servers, then on the PlayStation Network, and then on servers run by Blizzard. The attacks devastated networks for at least a day and seemed to shut down all gaming activity.

At that time, the news of the attacks was on the front page of most newspapers. Press coverage was precisely what the Lizard Squad desired. It would seem that their primary goal was fame and notoriety. The group seemed to target only video game services, bringing havoc to Xbox and the PlayStation Network by taking their networks offline. The Lizard Squad appeared to be equal opportunity threats and targeted specific games’ online services. Impacted games included Call of Duty, Destiny, and FIFA.

Over time, the Lizard Squad has broached activities that no hacker group has ever done. For example, as the story goes, the Lizard Squad directly targeted the then-head of Sony Online Entertainment. At that time, the Lizard Squad was alleged even to have sent out a bomb threat involving this individual’s airline travel. This sort of activity was well above and beyond that seen before.

It was interesting to see that the Lizard Squad’s activity could be followed on their Twitter account. In a constant quest to be in the limelight, the Lizard Squad provided detailed information on their operations, claimed responsibility, and waved the specter of future threats through their Twitter account. All of it is out there for anyone to follow and see. In this sense, they were very media savvy and continuously used it to their advantage.

Regarding technical horsepower, the Lizard Squad boasted a powerful and widely distributed Botnet. At that time well over 100k bots and perhaps approaching 200k bots. Bots included every manner of personal computer endpoint, smart refrigerators, routers, internet of things devices, and much more.

There were times when the Lizard Squad was almost admired. The inflection point was shutting down the entire hermit kingdom of North Korea. The Lizard Squad allegedly took out all the country’s 1,000+ IP addresses in a single, highly intense, and swiftly executed DDoS attack. The entire country was without internet for several days.

At the time, it was unknown exactly who the Lizard Squad was, so this event raised its visibility globally. They shut down just about 100% of the North Korean internet capability for an entire day. At the time, the Lizard Squad stood up and claimed to be responsible for the attack and linked a complicit IP address that they used, located in North Korea.

In summary, in the face of online gaming, the DDoS attacks developed and launched by Lizard Squad have brought the entertainment world to a complete stop. DDoS has been the weapon of choice for hackers worldwide for many years. DDoS has been used to disrupt streamers, game events, major production companies, and their studios. While the internet is infested with many competent and dangerous hacker groups, the Lizard Squad still stands taller than the rest for the sheer audacity of their outrageous, groundbreaking attacks.

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