*You can listen to the audio version on Me-Time Gamer Podcast – Episode 1*

If you owned a console or got a brand new one during the holidays, you probably had a hard time getting into the networks, PlayStation Network and Xbox Live that is. If you didn’t know yet, these networks got a DDoS attack from a certain group that will remain unnamed because, let’s be honest, they don’t need more credit than they already have. In laymen’s terms, a DDos attack is a Distributed Denial of Service which means that it renders a service unavailable.

DDoSs go down as follow: when multiple systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system, usually one or more web servers. This is done when multiple bots or zombie computers send out an overload of demand on a service and then creates a problem with the network because it can’t give out as much as the demands. Are you still follow me? Good. Now, please do keep in mind this is not hacking, these attack do not give out any personal information or anything in that space.

Now, that we got the dirty stuff out of the way, lets get one thing straight, these attack cannot be totally stopped by big companies. Example: Sony and Microsoft, 2 of the biggest companies in the electronics domain and they couldn’t totally stop it. Yes i know, Xbox was up faster than Sony. The reason for this is that Microsoft is a bigger software company than Sony. Can PlayStation do better? Yes, of course and they will. The word around the net is that Sony was and is working on getting these attack to a minimum.

Here’s the kicker about this little outage we had during the holidays, it was all “for the lol” as the group puts it. They had no demands, no nothing, just being kids with time on their hands. You know what this problem might cause it the future? An increase in internet monitoring and other such impact that might change the face of the internet. I know some people would hate to lose their incognito status on the internet, but stuff like this just makes government spying worse because it is illegal to perform DDoSs.

Mega file hosting service and, now defunct, Megaupload.com founder Kim Dotcom bribed the groups to stop the attacks on the networks but giving them 3000 $99 Lifetime accounts for his Mega service worth 300 000$ if resold. This is unlawful and is giving in to terrorist demands, plain and simple. I don’t know what his intention is behind this, either it’s to advertise his service or he really just wanted to play video games. In any case, this should have not been the outcome of this situation.

The good news in all of this is that their was one of wrong doers arrested in England not too long ago. I won’t name names but apparently he’s 22 years old and was arrested on online-frauds committed middle of last year. So, he might not get charged for the Christmas outage but who knows, he might just give up the rest of this ragtag group of misfits and would solved this Scooby-Doo crime for now.

At the end of the day, gamers had somewhat of a bad holiday because they couldn’t connect to the service. Did it help the group’s cause? No! you just turned the gaming community against you and really just punished the gamers, not “The Man!” At least, we got a little pick-me-up from Sony in the form of a 5-days add-on to our PS Plus subscription and a 10% discount voucher good for one cart purchase. Was this necessary? No, but we can still appreciate what PlayStation is trying to do, help us get rid of our Christmas blues.

I would really like to hear what you guys think about this outage and what’s your thoughts about these thing happening. Were you mad? Do you think it was the right thing to do? Tell us in the comments below.

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