Kim Dotcom Saved Day When PlayStation Network And Xbox Live Went Down

On December 25, the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live went dark, but self-proclaimed hacker and Mega cloud storage supplier Kim Dotcom came to the rescue with a generous offer.

‘Tis the season for many gamers to play with their brand-new PlayStation 4 and Xbox One gifts, but December 25 turned out to be a bad day, thanks to a “cyber-terrorist” group by the name of Lizard Squad.

Winbeta managed to get an exclusive interview with Lizard Squad, and discovered that the group wanted to expose what they called the poor security provided by both Microsoft and Sony. By attacking on Christmas Day, they felt it would reach — and anger — the largest number of users, meaning that more people would call in to complain. They wanted to stress the importance of computer security.

To emphasize their point, Lizard Squad did note on Twitter that they could have taken down NASDAQ if they were interested in damaging the economy, but this was not their goal. They just wanted to make their point and have a few chuckles along the way.

Kim Dotcom immediately came to the rescue when he found out the networks were down, and made a generous peace offering to the Lizard Squad. At the time, Gizmodo reports Lizard Squad had been demanding 10,000 retweets before they would make gaming live, but Dotcom made a peace offering, involving an unspecified amount of lifetime Mega membership vouchers, including 500GB of storage, if they would stop the Grinch-like attack. Dotcom did, however, say that should the attacks resurface, those Mega memberships would immediately end.

Lizard Squad, feeling they had already made their point, happily accepted the offer, and they revealed on Twitter that the attack was over. They thanked Dotcom, saying his Mega service is “awesome.”

Thanks @KimDotcom for the vouchers–you’re the reason we stopped the attacks. @MegaPrivacy is an awesome service.

— Lizard Squad (@LizardMafia) December 26, 2014

Lizard Squad then mentioned on Twitter that their DDoS attack was “possible thanks to rooted undersea routers used on transatlantic cables,” and they have now officially “gone dark:”

Going dark, goodbye for now.

— Lizard Squad (@LizardMafia) December 26, 2014

This is not the first major deed by the Mega man in recent months. As the Inquisitr reported back in June, Dotcom offered a $5 million bounty to whistleblowers who could prove “unlawful or corrupt conduct” by the United States government in his Megaupload case.

In the recent event, gamers hopefully ended up having fun on Christmas day after all, once Kim Dotcom came to the rescue with his generous offer, and it is to be hoped that any glaring security gaps will immediately be plugged. Were any of you readers affected by the attack? Let us know in the comments section below.

Update: After being bombarded with thanks, Dotcom has responded on Twitter as follows:

Obviously, diplomacy works. I recommend that the U.S. Government gives it a try. #MakeLoveNotWar #UseMegaVouchers

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) December 26, 2014

Hey, and if you don’t know who Kim Dotcom is, the video below tells his tale.

[Photo: CC BY-NC 2.0 Melies The Bunny]