Back in 2014, a DDoS attack from Lizard Squad grounded the PSN and Xbox Live on Christmas Day. Lots of gamers who were planning on just couch gaming during the holidays were frustrated on that day, not to mention the outrage of anger on each provider's customer service lines.
However, those same gamers can now be at ease, besides the fact that it's been already 2 years, a couple of Lizard Squad hackers are now in custody. The individuals are Bradly Jan Willem Van Rooy and Zachary Buchta, respectively from the Netherlands and Maryland, US. These people were brought in on grounds of conspiring to damage computers. Both are teenagers.
It is, however, important to note that the apprehended Lizard Squad members pleaded that they are not directly linked to the said Christmas outages that happened in 2014. The two teenagers are just "casualties", per se, in an ongoing war against cyber terrorism, as reported by Game Rant.
A quick recap on the incident a couple of years ago, Xbox and PlayStation gamers reported problems connecting online. Those who got their consoles as holiday gifts had problems since they needed to download certain patches so that their consoles would work properly. Eventually things returned back to normal, but it happened after Lizard Squad broadcasted to claim responsibility. Over time, some Lizard Squad members were arrested, but it is uncertain if all responsible hackers were apprehended.
As stated above, neither of the two apprehended this week claim that they are directly responsible or had any connections at all to the 2014 incident. However, the fact that authorities are cracking down groups like the Lizard Squad would mean a decrease on the possibility that the said incident will happen again. Government involvement is badly needed now that games are regularly being shut down online by hackers. After all, if there's a parade, someone would always want rain to pour down and ruin it like for instance, 93,000 Pokemon Go accounts were hacked posted publicly weeks ago. As to why hackers do it, here's a video on one of the Lizard Squad members who admitted he took down PSN and Xbox Live during Christmas of 2014:
