Police in the United Kingdom have made six more arrests in connection to the Lizard Squad attacks that brought down PlayStation Network and Xbox Live over Christmas last year.
Bloomberg reports that the suspects were taken into custody after an investigation by the NCA (National Crime Agency). The Agency traced the purchase of Lizard Stresser, a toolkit used in the attacks.
All suspects are between the age of 15 and 18 years old. Lizard Stresser was used to execute DDoS attacks (Distributed Denial Of Service) using a network of computers and routers to swarm the targetted network with fake data. Unable to handle this amount of data, the service collapses, causing a DDoS.
Lizard Squad claim to be behind multiple instances of DDoS attacks in the past few years, and also claimed responsibility for a threat that caused the then-president of Sony Online Entertainment’s plain to be grounded.
One of the members tried to justify these attacks as a demonstration of the poor security of the networks. The teen was arrested in December and was given a two year suspended sentence in July by a court of his home country. The sentence for this type of crime can span anywhere from four months to four years.
The Christmas attacks last year were substantial enough that Sony offered subscription extensions, discounts, and other compensation for members of PSN to apologise for the DDoS.
