Christmas Under Attack by Hackers Threatening to Shut Down Playstation and Xbox Live with DDoS

History seems to be repeating itself as a group of hackers have issued warnings to Microsoft and Sony, threatening to shut down the servers for both Xbox Live and Playstation on Christmas Day with DDoS attacks. And this isn't the first time hackers have turned Grinch.

Last year, gamers around the world found themselves without access to servers for all their shiny new games opened Christmas morning thanks to a hacker collective with the nickname Lizard Squad. According to Uproxx, "These hackers claimed their Grinchy stunt was designed to teach Microsoft and Sony a 'lesson' and force them to tighten up their lax security."

Considering the fiasco did more to ruin Christmas for the millions of gamers around the world unable to enjoy games, it could be suspected the Lizard Squad just wanted an excuse to troll people hard. It's not like a two day outage on a normal weekend wouldn't be painful enough for both companies and players.

And now we're blessed this holiday season with threats from Phantom Squad, who threaten to take down Xbox Live and Playstation servers for a solid week starting on Christmas. Not only that, but "the two companies aren't the only network servers that Phantom Squad has threatened. They have also laid their eyes on 'Grand Theft Auto V,' 'Star Wars: The Old Republic,' and 'Call of Duty: Black Ops 3.' They claim to have already started making attacks on these networks."

Phantom Squad has also claimed to be responsible for taking down Reddit offline this week with a DDoS attacks (Distributed Denial of Service). This would be the same type of attack potentially targeting Xbox Live and Playstation.

Hopefully the companies will have significantly upgraded their defenses since last year, otherwise there will be a lot of angry gamers in a couple of weeks.

So what do you think of the situation? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below!