The hacking group Lizard Squad was taken down by @AnonymousUK2015 (their Twitter handle) through a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, a weapon of choice typically used by the Lizard Squad themselves. Their website, “lizardpatrol.com” is still down, two months later.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack
A DDoS attack is an attempt to take down an on-line service or website by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources. The targets are a wide variety of important resources (ranging from banks to news websites) that prevents those who are targeted from publishing or accessing important information.
According to Tech Worm, the relationship between Anonymous and Lizard Squad has been strained, at best. Both are hacking groups, but one hacks for the rights of privacy and social issues, while the other hacks for “pure unadulterated profit.” For gamers out there, they are aware that Lizard Squad has been active since this past Christmas, by their DDoS attacks on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network servers. Anonymous then threatened them with action when they attacked Tor.
Tor Network taken down by the Lizard Squad
The Tor network, or Tor project, was originally designed, implemented and deployed as a project of the US Naval Research Laboratory. Obviously, it was developed with the US Navy in mind for protection of government communications. After this, it was used by activists, the average person, journalists, law enforcement officers, and military,
Simply put, “Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features.”
Right before the Lizard Squad hacked Tor and took it down, its future was about putting control over your security by placing it back into your hands. Which, of course, Anonymous fully supported as it solved a lot of the anonymity problems.
