A recent rash of data breaches is pointing to a growing trend of cybercriminals targeting video game companies. Attacks in the past few weeks include Microsoft’s Xbox platform, Riot Games’ League of Legends and, most recently, Sony’s PlayStation Network.
The PlayStation Network went down over the weekend of Aug. 23-24, but has since been restored, Newsweek reported. The same alleged attackers behind the other breaches claim to have also disrupted service for Blizzard Entertainment, the makers of World of Warcraft, whose site also went down over the weekend.
A criminal network going by the name Lizard Squad has taken responsibility for the attacks, which often used distributed denial of service techniques to overload servers with data traffic, according to The Financial Times. The group has also tied themselves to a bomb threat that forced a flight with a Sony U.S. executive on board to reroute over security concerns. DDoS attacks are becoming more common and are “the weapon of choice for the modern hacker,” according to security expert Marc Gaffan.
So far Lizard Squad’s motives are not clear, though they did post a Twitter message complaining about the service of Sony’s PlayStation network before the attack.
“Sony, yet another large company, but they aren’t spending the waves of cash they obtain on their customers’ PSN service. End the greed,” read the tweet.
PlayStation Suffered a History of Cyber-attacks
Back in 2011 Sony was hit with another high-profile data breach where hackers copied the personal data of approximately 77 million PlayStation Network users and the credit card information of nearly 13,000 customers. The network was forced to go dark for a month while it was patched and rebuilt to offer greater security.
This cyber-attack comes at an especially bad time, as Sony has been investing heavily in the PlayStation Network recently in the hopes that it will serve as the centerpiece of the company’s bid to revitalize business after years of poor sales and losses in its flagship electronics operation.
As cybercriminals and their techniques become more advanced, so too must enterprise security methods increase their sophistication. One of the most reliable ways for businesses to defend against a data breach is to implement two-factor authentication.
This type of data protection requires multiple forms of identification before issuing access to privileged information or systems, ensuring only authorized users are allowed in. The need for strong authentication to defend enterprise information has never been greater, so don’t wait until it’s too late.
