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Lizard Squad, Nihilistic Technofetishists For Hire
According to Lizard Squad, the Xmas Day attacks against the gaming networks of Sony and Microsoft were a marketing gimmick for their Lizard Stresser cyberattack service.
The service, dubbed Lizard Stresser, launched early Tuesday morning via Twitter (redacted below) and is fully operational, a Lizard Squad member who goes by the alias “dragon” told the Daily Dot via a direct message on Twitter and subsequent conversation through the instant messaging service Jabber. Customers can use the service against any target they wish, including large websites or Internet services, such as PSN or Xbox Live...
Science fiction fans have been decades ahead of this idea. In his 1975 novel The Shockwave Rider, John Brunner details the retaliatory tapeworms that individuals can use to punish others by damaging their data.
More precisely, William Gibson details the Panther Moderns, a group of cyberterrorists for hire in his 1984 novel Neuromancer:
The Moderns were mercenaries, practical jokers, nihilistic technofetishists.
I'd also mention the infowar operation from Bruce Sterling's 1998 novel Distraction.
Via Daily Dot.
Known as Lizard Squad, the hacker collective says it shut down the PlayStation Network (PSN) and Xbox Live network on Dec. 25 using a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, a common technique that overloads servers with data requests. The powerful attacks rendered the networks unusable for days, infuriating gamers around the world and causing yet-untold losses of revenue.
"The Panther Moderns differ from other terrorists precisely in their degree of self-consciousness, in their awareness of the extent to which media divorce the act of terrorism from the original sociopolitical intent..."
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