Game consoles attacked by hackers on Christmas Day

PlayStation Network and Xbox Live were hit hard on Christmas day, December 25, 2014, by a group of hackers who carried out a coordinated attack on the two largest gaming networks.

A hacker group called Lizard Squad has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Playstation Network and Xbox Live went on social media to acknowledge issues with some core services. In both cases, users have had a difficult time logging in to the networks, which generally gives them access to connect with friends and play games requiring online access.

However, a message on the Xbox status page on Friday, December 26, 2014, said that live core services were "up and running". Meanwhile, PlayStation said its engineers were continuing to work on "network issues".

To make the most of the Xbox and PlayStation consoles, players have to connect to the internet in order to reach the console manufacturers' computer servers.

The outage has stopped people accessing some of the core services, such as registering a new account, connecting with other people to play the same game and connecting to entertainment channels via the console.

According to video games analyst, Guy Cocker, Xbox and PlayStation had been hit with a DDOS, or distributed denial of service attack, rather than more sophisticated attacks on Sony seen in the past.

The name, Lizard Squad, is the same used by a group of hackers that has targeted Sony in the past.

Earlier this month Sony was hit by a hacking attack that stole huge amounts of data from its servers.

A connection between Sony movie, The Interview, about a fictional plot to assassinate North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un, and the service disruptions has not been confirmed.