Hackers target PlayStation online store

Sony has been hit by another cyber attack as hackers breached its online PlayStation store.

A group known as 'Lizard Squad' has taken responsibility for the outage. Visitors trying to access the console's site on Monday (December 8th) were greeted with a message which said "Page Not Found! It's not you. It's the internet's fault". The hacking group confirmed it was behind the hack by tweeting "PSN Login #offline #LizardSquad" on its Twitter page.

The hack hit Sony's share price hard with the company seeing a 3.25 per cent drop to 2,590 as of 08:52 GMT on Monday. It is the second time in a matter of weeks that Sony has been targeted by hackers. Earlier in the month, five films distributed by Sony Pictures appeared to have been leaked online following a cyber attack on the organisation in November.

Among the titles being distributed online ahead of its scheduled release date is a remake of the classic film Annie. The movie is not expected to hit cinemas until December 19th but it has already appeared on the internet. Research firm Excipio added that other films such as Excipio, Mr Turner, Still Alice and To Write Love on Her Arms are also being downloaded.

There had been speculation that North Korea could be behind the attack. The country had highly critical of the Sony-produced comedy The Interview, which focuses on an assassination plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, something which the Asian country has since denied.

Lizard Squad's attack on the PlayStation store comes after the group carried out a similar move on Microsoft's Xbox Live. The group launched a distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) which overloaded the server's system preventing genuine gamers from getting online.

The group warned that the December attack was just a "small dose" of what's set to come over the Christmas period.

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