Apparently, that Xbox Live service issue on Valentine’s Day was due to a hack. It was reported the next day to have been hacked by a group called New World Hackers. NWH claims to have organized a strong Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on the Microsoft online gaming network, kicking gamers across the world offline for approximately four hours. Most of the action happened on Twitter, with Xbox tweeting the beautifully vague assurance that “our steams are investigating Social and Gaming issues on Xbox One.” Frustrated users replied with scathing comments, ranging from threats to switch to the PlayStation Network immediately to rude demands that Xbox fix the problem post-haste. On Twitter, Xbox reacted with the benign attitude that this issue was individually-based, rather than network-wide. Each person’s demand for a resolution was met with a suggestion to power cycle the console and modem. Basically, “have you turned it off, and then on again?”
Nonetheless, Microsoft had the network up and running again within the aforementioned four hours. It is highly unlikely that Xbox “beat” the hackers, as they have barely acknowledged that anything at all happened. In addition, a member of NWH immediately took the credit, tweeting that “Xbox live just experienced a Powerful DDoS Attack By @NewWorldHacking.” Along with a Tweet by NWH themselves, displaying the attack with statistics on the Xbox server.
For those that are unaware, the New World Hackers are (according to their site) “a hacking group founded by Ownz in early 2012” they were “created to fight ISIS, also to test your security for vulnerabilities and weak protection”. They go on to state that they are “currently engaged in a cyber war… against anybody that violates human rights, whether it be large conglomerate corporations, public figures or ordinary businesses and people”. Most important of all is their claim that they “have pledged allegiance to Anonymous [and have] performed a large-scale of DDoS attacks that have downed major companies with low security measures.”
I hope that does not have you fearing that NWH will find your credit card number and use it to fund their movement. DDoS attacks alone don’t tend to result in stolen data and this is not a personal attack on the average gamer, this is an attack on the company of Xbox and Microsoft respectively. If they are a part of Anon as they say, they do not have any malicious intent against you or your information – unless you have violated their creed. The creed of Anon is simply this: complete freedom of information. This leads into the more complicated issues of censorship, multinational corporations (and governments) who operate in uncouth manners, and religions that seek to control information. The average gamer does not fit into any of these categories. Most of us just want to play more Destiny before it hits 3am.
NWH attacked Xbox for a variety of reasons, most of them being the monopoly Microsoft holds and the uncouth practice of hidden APIs in their systems. Again, it is not personal. New World Hackers are showing how easy disrupting the Xbox Live network was, essentially showing their power to Microsoft and cooperations like it. The hack is a statement on the freedom and security of information, personal or otherwise. How Microsoft reacts to the hack is mostly the point. If they react with nothing, no assurances to the average user, no guarantee of security or change in security policies to prevent future hacks; it is Anon’s was of saying, “see how safe you are with this cooperation that does not care who can access your personal information? We might not want your information, but about the ones that do? Isn’t Microsoft supposed to protect you from them?”