Xbox Live down: gaming service breaks itself, but hackers claim credit

Xbox Live outage is the second to have been claimed by hackers this week — but both seemed to be human error by companies

The NCA says role models and opportunities to use skills positively can steer young people away from cyber crime (Rex)

Microsoft’s online gaming service Xbox Live went down for about three hours yesterday — highlighting how easy it is to lay claim to cyberattacks but how difficult it is to find true perpetrators.

The site was down for around three hours but Microsoft said that it was resolved in the early hours of this morning.

Twitter accounts that claim to be associated with Anonymous took credit for the hack. They also claimed to have taken “online gaming data” during the attack.

But people close to the company said that the problem was caused by a bad software update, according to Business Insider.

It was the second high-profile outage this week that hackers appeared to claim but which companies blamed on their own mistakes.

Facebook, as well as a number of other networks, was offline for much of Tuesday morning. Lizard Squad initially appeared to take credit for the outage, but Facebook blamed the problems on “a change that affected out configuration systems”.

Difficulty in pinning down who is to blame for such attacks is becoming increasingly common. There is still no firm public evidence of who carried out the huge cyberattacks on Sony Pictures in December — though the FBI has repeatedly blamed North Korea.