The feud between Daybreak Game Company CEO John Smedley and the DDoS group known as Lizard Squad raged on today, picking up almost exactly where it left off a year ago.
For those of you not familiar with the ongoing feud, let me tell you a quick story first. Last year, Lizard Squad, a group of, well, I guess hackers DDoSers came to the center of attention, launching a series of attacks that brought down PlayStation Network, Xbox LIVE, and a bunch of online video games. One of the victims of the DDoS attacks was Sony Online Entertainment, developers of PlanetSide, H1Z1, and a bunch of other online games. The attacks continued for weeks, but SOE CEO John Smedley took a bullish approach to the situation, addressing Lizard Squad directly, and pretty much telling them he wasn't going to take their sh*t. Things escalated, Lizard Squad brought down his plane with a bomb threat, Smedley vowed revenge, and eventually the FBI stepped in. Since then, things have been relatively quiet.
However, this week, reports of Lizard Squad member Julius "zeekill" Kivimaki's ridiculously mild sentencing on more than 50,000 charges of cyber crimes came in. Basically, Kivimaki isn't going to prison for his deeds, and will instead get a two-year suspended sentence with having his online activities monitored — a joke sentencing.
In response to the reports, Smedly took to Twitter with a series of tweets. Here's the gist of it.
Interesting day for the good guys – http://t.co/J44lKLI0Tm
— John Smedley (@j_smedley) July 8, 2015
that was the piece of garbage that brought my plane down, leaked my information and did all kinds of other crap to me.
— John Smedley (@j_smedley) July 8, 2015
what they won't tell you is he did time in jail already and got his ass kicked hard inside. @what_security – tell us that story Julius.
— John Smedley (@j_smedley) July 8, 2015
His parents need to be held accountable for his actions in addition to his going to jail. @what_security – So I'm coming for you Julius.
— John Smedley (@j_smedley) July 8, 2015
Smedley added some clarification to the story, explaining Julius' current sentencing took into account crimes "that had nothing to do YET with the PSN DDOS over Christmas" and that he has "15 other criminal cases awaiting prosecution in Finland."
Fast forward to today and, well….
We are currently investigating reported issues with connectivity both in-game and on our websites/forums. Thank you for your patience.
— Daybreak Games (@DaybreakGames) July 9, 2015
Lizard Squad originally had a tweet suggesting they were the ones responsible for the outage, though it appears they've since deleted the tweet. Smedley returned to Twitter, claiming that the games aren't down and that it isn't a DDoS attack.
games aren't down. Some people can't get to them because of an outage upstream of us on Level 3. sorry.. it's being worked on.
— John Smedley (@j_smedley) July 9, 2015
Well it's been a while since we've done this. One moment.
— Lizard Squad (@LizardLands) July 9, 2015
Oh boy, this is going to be an interesting one to follow…
***Update #1***
Smedley has now confirmed various titles from Daybreak Game Company are receiving minor DDoS attacks.
Getting a minor DDOS. We're working on it. should be back up soon. #annoying
— John Smedley (@j_smedley) July 9, 2015
