Do you remember when the PlayStation Network went down? No, we don't mean last night β we're talking about the last major outage, which occurred over Christmas. Sony's servers were down for days, and while the whole sorry affair was good for our traffic ticker, it didn't exactly reflect well on the platform holder. In fact, it was forced to apologise with a PlayStation Plus membership extension and a 10 per cent discount offer.
Well, the Lizard Squad member who initiated the attack, Julius 'zeekill' Kivimaki, was tracked down by Finnish authorities and convicted of a frightening 50,700 charges related to computer crimes. Despite this, however, the 17-year-old missed out on jail time, receiving a two year suspended sentence instead. All of his online activities will henceforth be monitored by Finnish authorities, so he may want to be careful what he clicks on.
At the time, the teenager gave an interview with UK channel Sky News, explaining that he attacked the PSN in order to "raise awareness" of the "low state of computer security" on the service. In reality, however, no information was compromised β instead, the tearaway simply overloaded Sony's servers, causing things to crash. Hopefully he's learned his lesson from all of this, though Lizard Squad doesn't seem all that remorseful right now.
[source kaleva.fi, via dailydot.com, eurogamer.net]
Comments 35
@ryanorly Oh god thanks for reminding me I was in love with Casper from the live action 90s film. That ending was so romantic omg.
@ryanorly
I truly wanna believe that if it wasn't for the L-squad, we would've been able to play online that faithful Christmas, but seeing the state PSN is in the last few weeks, I highly doubt it.
I hope no silly teens will try and attack Sony and MS this year so they can see for themselves it's mainly a capacity issue. The DDoS attacks gave them a solid excuse back then and for all future outages and although PSN and Live constantly get attacked, most e- security experts tell me that it doesn't have to be such a big deal: with the right capacity and simply redirecting "dirty" traffic there shouldn't be a worldwide problem. It will occasionally affect certain areas, but the network shouldn't be down all over the world for 3 to 4 days straight.
Don't know why, but the little Deerslayer girl from Toddlers and Tiaras came to mind... "Cut his eyes off." π
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d3KZfdn6vJw
"People should have something better to do on xmas instead of playing Video games". Yeah I guess ddosing large corporations is a much better way to spend xmas. /Ironic
Of course it's a teenager. If these guys were adults with actual jobs they wouldn't have time for this.
@Tunmats But many people play games with their family and it might be their only chance to do so. Children like these guys shouldn't speak about what's a better x-mas activity.
@Riririn I know and I agree with you. I was being ironic
@Tunmats I've learned its best to add /sarcastic or /ironic to internet comments
@AyeHaley I'll do that from now on
All them poor children at Christmas where in such disarray due 2 him.
Let's not go there -Tasuki-
@ryanorly But he doesn't look friendly at all, just kinda creepy.
Ok so this kid get 50k plus charges against him but manages no jail time, but If I drive with an open container of alcohol I would spend the night behind bars?
How did he miss out on jail time with over fifty thousand charges!?!
I'd like to give the git a good kicking for what he did and break his damn fingers...society is so bloody soft on the wrong people.
He was the ps4's bleedin grinch,he ruined Xmas for so many folk.
I think ras Al ghul was right from batman begins,criminals thrive on societies tolerance.
Why doesn't he take down the tax office rather tha people's fun....annoying.
Yea, he should have gotten some jail time
@Tunmats I thought the same thing!
@AyeHaley one is always sarcastic, always presume I'm being an a hole
@ryanorly he actually looks vaguely like Jim Carey's Grinch... ?
Welp in the end he basically surrendered his privacy by doing all this, sad.
Im gonna be honest he makes a load of great points. There are more things to do on xmas than sit in front of the tv in general whether it includes a console or not. And im a gamer of over two decades. As a ps4 owner and sony fan since i was a child i can easily say that the psn is a joke. I hate xbox but the xbl is alot better value for money. Sony still owes us for all these recent outages. Plus that idiot who bought the ps4 for the fella and says its still boxed coz its no point plugging in....... wtf buy a game disk and use it like a normal person... cant really diss the guy tbh
He's an ass who deserves jail. That's it. How can anyone listen to this script kiddie? Put some real code in front of this idiot and he would wet himself.
Language -Tasuki-
@Bad-MuthaAdebisi Futuristic Grinchen Lol
Sony should be in the dock (metaphorically speaking) for the ridiculously shoddy download speed I'm currently experiencing as entwined trickles its way down to my ps4 at a fraction of my connection speed.
They should also be in the dock for all the recent psn downtime.
But I doubt they'll even be charged - metaphorically speaking - since much of the gaming press don't seem interested in getting to the bottom of why the service that the ps4 is tightly bound to is so unreliable but prefer to just wait for Sony to spoon feed them the odd PR update as and when they choose to.
If the situation doesn't improve soon Sony are going to lose at least one fan (me) who's owned all the playstations so far but who's starting to think he should have switched to ms this time round.
/rant
@3Above You'd be potentially endangering lives. Not that I support what this guy did, but he wasn't.
Seems fair to me.
I really don't understand how he didn't get jail, I suppose this is one of the reasons why computer crime is attractive to criminal's.
@ryanorly LOL!
On topic - This dude is gonna get a real kicking one day...
@banacheck It's probably because he didn't steal anything like credit card numbers, names, addresses etc. All he and his group did was clog up the servers which is an annoyance but they didn't get anything. Probably also because it was a first offense and they probably did a plea bargin which probably is how he got the monitoring his online activity over jail time.
What's so bad about not being able to play some online games or download new ones for a week or so? I got a Ps Vita that Christmas, but I wasn't to upset. I couldn't download Borderlands 2 that came with it, but that didn't bother me because I already had it on my xbox. The only thing I could play was Little Big Planet. But in three days, my birthday came and I got a few more games. I was fine. I lived through it. So did everybody else.
It makes me laugh that most people, including some in these comments saw this attack as mainly effecting children at Christmas but, as a matter of fact more adults play video games these days than children do. He also suggests that people should be spending more time with there familys instead of playing video games which most people do but not all day.They've also just got a brand new system and who wouldn't want to enjoy some time with whilst mum cooks the Christmas dinner and Dad drink his beer and tells silly/funny storys. I bet he didn't spend much time with his family since he would have been busy doing the DDOS attacks.
Also im not a kid and normally work through Christmas so anytime I have to play video games is rare, so I don't appreciate when people like this snow white looking freak show thinks its funny to ruin Christmas for anyone looking to enjoy some time with there new system. I just wish I believed in Karma as he should go the next 10 Christmas's without a single gift/Card or family visit.
Out of all of the supposedly 50,000 crimes committed fraud was meant to be one of them, which usually carries a sentence of a few years, but instead this freak gets a job offer. How is that meant to deter people from following in his foot steps.
I just wish to apologize before hand to anyone from Finland but, your law system needs to be seriously looked at in cases like this because we all know that this pale faced, round headed freak (I refuse to use his actual name) and his childish group of hacker wannabes are laughing at this and are seeing it not only as win but as proof that nobody is taking this seriously.
Both Sony and Microsoft aswell as othe third party compainies should be pushing for some sort of financial payback.
If this had happened with anything else you could guarantee someone would have been looking at time spent behind bars.
The fact this guy is 17 and looks 47. And has a head shaped like a deformed potato is punishment enough.
I thought this was an article about Voldemort from the picture but then realized it was about Lizard Squad & didn't care anymore.
@Kellanved I as waiting for someone to make that comment, Bad analogy. But my point was that there are so many other "offenses" that garner incarceration but this guy essentially committed corporate terrorism and gets nothing short of internet probation.
@ryanorly
The law really is an Ass
@karlo5 Everyone prefers digital downloads now, sadly it looks like physical discs will eventually become dinosaurs in the future.
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