What do you think of LulzSec?

LulzSec is the moniker of a raucous band of Internet hackers who have set upon various corporations like Sony, Nintendo, Epic Games, and even potentially Bethesda Softworks (developer of Morrowind and Skyrim.) They’ve even deliberately picked a fight with the United States FBI and NATO.

The rampage of these Internet highwaymen has caused a particular amount of consternation in the gaming industry (and the security community) as they roll unchecked through numerous website properties held by these different companies and pillage their databases for passwords and user secrets (like names, credit card information, and the like.)

They’re not responsible for the shutdown of the PlayStation Network; but they did capitalize on it when they hacked into one of Sony’s properties earlier this month.

As their targets are mostly gaming industry fat cats, it seems that they may eventually set their sights on the MMO community—although possibly only by way of bigger players.

Have you been keeping track of what they’re up to? Have any opinion on the matter?

 

Is it the sparkle pony or the lion-with-flaming-wings that turned you against Blizzard?

 

Wow, that is terrible customer support. It's not exactly their call if he stole it or not -- they already have the money for selling the card to the store. I suppose that they just don't want to spend the money in every case to verify; proper customer service would be to just give it to him, warn him that it may not work so well in the future, and go from there.

I usually like Blizzard, but I've never had to deal with their customer support.

 

Looks like LulzSec has finally struck the MMO community: today they took their cannons to Minecraft and EVE Online. The former was sunk within seconds and remains offline as of this post; the latter capsized under the shelling and CCP took their network offline in order to deal with the incoming fire.

By these ship metaphors, I mostly mean that LulzSec used Distributed Denial of Service attacks primarily aimed at the login servers for both of these games and overloaded them. As a result, both EVE Online and Minecraft lost their web presence as well.

Almost amid the direct targets, Escapist Magazine's website has been offline for two hours this morning as they also have experience heavy DDoS attacks from LulzSec.

Most of these have been tested after claims made on their Twitter. Pretty much they appear to be true.

Oh, and LulzSec has also hacked the U.S. Senate's website, Senate.gov.

Perhaps we will see Blizzard get struck next, Supernatural.

 

It appears that they've moved onto destroy the League of Legends login servers.

 

I don't care hugely for League of Legends (it's not my kind of game) but it's definitely a new and interesting evolution in the behavior of these groups. By pulling the pants down around the ankles of these gaming sites is more or less just a ploy to strike at that community.

It's certainly good for the nerd rage -- which is probably what they want.

They'll continue to rack up the headlines, no doubt.

 

Very true, Aaddron, consumers as a group have relatively short memories when it comes to the rickety security of the services that they use. Especially when it's essentially a monopoly on a specific product -- for example, Sony is the only one who does what Sony does (no other PlayStation Network) and jumping ship to Xbox Live is a cultural change.

As a result, Sony lost a lot of money from their network breach and shutdown; but the people who stayed on board will probably not really change their habits much.

Well, that's how the results will pan out from LulzSec hacking and releasing user secrets from random websites with lax security. Hopefully it will convince lots of sites on the Internet to bulk up their firewalls and check their code. Especially Senate.gov and corps who work alongside the FBI.

However, DDoSing random gaming companies into oblivion -- like Minecraft and EVE Online -- I don't see forwarding that sort of "at least."

Today felt like a lot of juvenile headline grabbing and it really showed off the raw edges of their capabilities with the botnet they have access to.