Lizard Squad: The notorious hacking group who brought down UK government website

Lizard Squad have an active Twitter account, used to claim responsibility for their hacks

NOTORIOUS hacking group Lizard Squad – renown for their infamous PS4 and Xbox Live Christmas attacks – appear to have targeted the National Crime Agency website in a revenge attack.

 

Lizard Squad are a notorious black hat hacking group who became infamous after bringing the Xbox and Playstation networks to their knees last year.

The group of anonymous hackers have targeted a number of high profile video game services and websites since they claimed their first attack in August 2014.

Since then, the Lizard Squad have claimed to have hacked nude photographs of Taylor Swift, made jokes about MH370 during an attack on the Malaysia Airlines website, taken down Facebook, Tinder and Instagram.

 

Lizard Squad typically use a DDoS attack to bring down a website. The technique, which stands for distributed denial of service, involves flooding a server with massive amounts of data from hundreds or thousands of unique IP addresses.

The sudden spike in popularity will often crash the website, leaving it inaccessible to visitors.

UK Government body NCA, National Crime Agency, last week announced six teenagers were arrested on suspicion of launching attacks using a service created by the group.

The suspects, who are aged between 15 and 18, were held during an operation targeting alleged users of a tool known as Lizard Stresser.

Lizard Squad have posted a tweet claiming responsibility for the attack

Lizard Stresser is seen as a "DDos for hire" facility which gained notoriety among the hacking community after the group known as Lizard Squad claimed to have knocked Sony PlayStation and Xbox gaming services offline last Christmas.

None of those arrested in the most recent police activity are accused of involvement in those incidents, nor are they believed to be members of Lizard Squad.

The NCA said they are suspected of maliciously deploying Lizard Stresser, having bought it using alternative payment services such as Bitcoin in an attempt to remain anonymous.

Organisations believed to have been targeted by the suspects include a national newspaper, a school, gaming companies and a number of online retailers. 

They have not been named and it has not been confirmed whether the attempted DDoS attacks were successful.

 

The arrests were made as part of an operation codenamed Vivarium, co-ordinated by the NCA and involving officers from several police forces.

As part of the same operation, officers are visiting around 50 addresses linked to individuals who are registered on the Lizard Stresser website - but who are not suspected of involvement in attacks.

Lizard Squad has previously had two members of its anonymous organisation arrested and unmasked.

A 17-year-old from Coquitlam, in Canada who used the online moniker "obnoxious" was arrested in December identified himself a Lizard Squad member. It is alleged he targeted female players of the League of Legends online game.

Vinnie Omari is another reported member of the Lizard Squad who has been arrested and bailed last year.