Destiny 2 Hackers 2023
Sadie
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I wanted to copy and publish it on my timeline, but unfortunately, the post did not come with the picture of Ahmed Datti. So, I decided to search for his picture on Google and add to my post to make it more appealing to read by my network and friends.
Just when I clicked to download the picture, my antivirus software pops up with a notice that it has blocked a particular script from running on my web browser and that it has also stopped a certain file from being downloaded alongside the picture into my computer. I took time to analyse the reported file and the accompanying script, I found out it has the ability to escalate system account privilege and assume the Admin level rights on my system, which would translate to having full control of my computer and other associated computers if on a corporate network.
To break into pieces the premise upon why I brought this to your knowledge, it is pertinent to enlighten Media professionals, media organisations and media freelancers of the potential cyber threats posed by hackers who use backdoor mechanisms to infiltrate your system.
Often, Media houses rely on Google searches to source pictures of events, people and places, to add "colour" to their reports. Cognizant of this, hackers deliver their malicious payload using images of much talked about people, events and places.
The moment you download the picture into a device without a licensed antivirus software with latest virus signature, a malicious script is downloaded and automatically executed in the device browser.
After returning from a road trip that kept me away from game consoles on Friday and Saturday, I returned to fire up Destiny late Sunday. The special vendor who only appears on weekends was gone so developer Bungie is making me wait another week to progress in the game, but that's another story. I couldn't play for other reasons. I kept getting booted from the game, logged out, and shown a slow-loading error screen which instructed me to head to the Bungie.net website and search for the error code "cattle." This always-only world sucks.
This isn't the first time I've been disconnected during Destiny. Most of the dozen or so times it occurred during a co-op Strike mission or during PvP Crucible matches, making it a real problem for consumers. It's a real problem that most of the time is a server-side issue on Bungie and publisher Activision's end. The online-only Destiny managed to launch without any major server downtime, a refreshing change from other recent unnecessarily-always-online launches including Diablo 3 and SimCity, but that's not necessarily what occurred yesterday.
As it turns out, Call of Duty - Actvision's other flagship property - was also knocked out, and it all may be due to hackers. Again. On September 20th, both Call of Duty: Ghosts and Destiny suffered online connection issues for which hacker group Lizard Squad took credit for, tweeting the following:
Bungie's help account on Twitter acknowledged the connection issues and suspiciously deleted the tweet which originally read, "We're aware of connection issues affecting portions of the Destiny player base and we're working to correct the problem. Please stay tuned." Online hackers aren't the only issue Bungie and Activision are dealing with since as the weeks go by, the game is subject to increasing amounts of criticism regarding its limited content, forceful grinds, punishing loot system (which is being addressed in the next update) and unimpressive upcoming DLC/expansion content if the latest revealing news holds true.
On September 3, 2014, Lizard Squad seemingly announced that it had disbanded[2] only to return later on, claiming responsibility for a variety of attacks on prominent websites. The organization at one point participated in the Darkode hacking forums and shared hosting with them.[3][4]
On April 30, 2016, Cloudflare published a blogpost detailing how cyber criminals using this group's name were issuing random threats of carrying out DDoS attacks. Despite these threats, Cloudflare claim they failed to carry through with a single attack.[5][6] As a result of this, the British National Fraud Intelligence Bureau issued an alert warning businesses not to comply with ransom messages threatening DDoS attacks.[7][8]
A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack occurs when numerous systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system, usually one or more web servers.[9] Such an attack is often the result of multiple systems (for example a botnet) flooding the targeted system with traffic. When a server is overloaded with connections, new connections can no longer be accepted.
Lizard Squad has claimed responsibility for launching a string of DDoS attacks against high-profile game-related services over the course of a few months in late 2014. On August 18, 2014, servers of the game League of Legends were taken offline with a DDoS attack; this was claimed as Lizard Squad's first attack.[10] Days later, on August 24, the PlayStation Network was disrupted via a DDoS attack.[11] On November 23, the group claimed they attacked Destiny servers with a DDoS attack.[12] On December 1, Xbox Live was apparently attacked by Lizard Squad: users attempting to connect to use the service would be given the 80151909 error code.[13] On December 2, Lizard Squad defaced Machinima.com, replacing their front page with ASCII art of their logo.[14] A week after, on December 8, Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for another PlayStation Network DDoS attack.[15][16] On December 22, though not game-related, Internet in North Korea was taken offline by a DDoS attack.[17] Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the attack and linked to an IP address located in North Korea.[18] North Korean Internet services were restored on 23 December 2014.[19]
On December 25, 2014 (Christmas Day), Lizard Squad claimed to have performed a DDoS attack on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. On December 26, 2014, at 2:00 AM,[when?] Lizard Squad appeared to stop attacking PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. Gizmodo reported that the attacks may have ceased after Kim Dotcom offered Lizard Squad 3000 accounts on his upload service MEGA.[21]
On December 26, 2014, a Sybil attack involving more than 3000 relays was attempted against the Tor network.[22] Nodes with names beginning with "LizardNSA" began appearing, Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for this attack.[23]
The relevance of the attack was questioned. According to Tor relay node operator Thomas White, the consensus system made that Lizard Squad only managed to control "0.2743% of the network, equivalent of a tiny VPS".[24]
On January 26, 2015, the website of Malaysia Airlines was attacked, apparently by Lizard Squad, calling itself a "cyber caliphate". Users were redirected to another page bearing an image of a tuxedo-wearing lizard, and reading "Hacked by Cyber Caliphate". Underneath this was text reading "follow the cyber caliphate on twitter" after which were the Twitter accounts of the owner of UMG, "@UMGRobert" and CEO of UMG, "@UMG_Chris". The page also carried the headline "404 - Plane Not Found", an apparent reference to the airline's loss of flight MH370 the previous year. Malaysia Airlines assured customers and clients that customer data had not been compromised.[25]
On July 9, 2015, game servers operated by Daybreak Game Company, including those of H1Z1 and PlanetSide 2, were disrupted by a DDoS attack that Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for.[26][27] The attack was performed in retaliation to legal threats John Smedley, the company's CEO, had made after being targeted by the hacking group.[28]
On August 24, 2014, Lizard Squad claimed that a plane on which the president of Sony Online Entertainment, John Smedley, was flying (American Airlines Flight 362), had explosives on board.[29][30] The flight from Dallas to San Diego made an unscheduled landing in Phoenix, Arizona. Sony Online Entertainment announced that the FBI was investigating the incident.[30]
On January 26, 2015, several social media services including Facebook and Instagram were unavailable to users. Tinder and HipChat were also affected. Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the attacks, via a posting on a Twitter account previously used by the group.[31] The outage, originally speculated to be a distributed denial-of-service attack, lasted a little under an hour before services were restored.[32][33]
Facebook later released a statement saying its own engineers were to blame, and that the disruption to its services was not the result of a third-party attack, but instead occurred after they introduced a change that affected their configuration systems.[34]
On January 27, 2015, Lizard Squad claimed to have compromised Taylor Swift's Twitter and Instagram accounts. Once they claimed to have access, they threatened to release nude photos in exchange for bitcoins. Taylor Swift, however, retorted that "there were no naked pics" and told the offenders to "have fun" finding any.[35]
On January 4, 2021, American lawyer and conspiracy theorist Lin Wood tweeted out baseless claims that a group of hackers named "the lizard squad" have evidence of a global sex ring involving several high-profile Americans, similar to the discredited conspiracy theory Qanon.[36] There seems to be no relation between the "lizard squad" mentioned by Wood and the black-hat hacking group Lizard Squad, and Vinnie Omari, a member of the Lizard Squad, denies any claim that his group may have information on a global sex-trafficking organization.[37]
Vinnie Omari is a member of the Lizard Squad who was arrested and bailed under the alleged offences of "Enter into/concerned in acquisition/retention/use or control criminal property, Fraud by false representation - Fraud Act 2006, Conspire to steal from another, unauthorized computer access with intent to commit other offences". He was used as a public face on television and as a spokesperson for the news to represent LizardSquad.[38][39]
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