News Digest

Gamers, rejoice: Sony’s PlayStation back online after Christmas hack

Sony’s PlayStation reported that its network was back online and claimed that it had been attacked, three days after it and Microsoft’s Xbox went down in an outage. An allegedly coordinated Christmas day hack brought down the gaming consoles, both hot gifts for the holiday season, although Xbox has been working at near full capacity since Friday. Hacker group Lizard Squad took credit for the disruption and has targeted Sony in the past.

PlayStation Network and some other gaming services were attacked over the holidays with artificially high levels of traffic designed to disrupt connectivity and online gameplay. PlayStation Network is back online.

Catherine Jensen, vice president of consumer experience for Sony’s California-based US division, said in a blog post late Saturday

Game users took to Twitter to celebrate PlayStation’s return. “Was just about to pack this ps4 up and trade it towards an xboxone. Just in time.” Twitter user @xander63090 posted. Sony had earlier this month been hit by a sophisticated hacking attack that stole massive amounts of data from its servers. The U.S. has blamed North Korea for the attack, but analysts said a direct connection between the Sony PlayStation and Sony Pictures attacks was unlikely, and that the latest hack was probably the work of fame-seeking amateurs.