Hackers Ruined Christmas For 100,000,000 People

do not feel guilty that you've taken so much enjoyment of gaming away from more than 100 million people over this Christmas period I mean I can really feel bad why are you not frightened of getting caught I'm not really that worried about it to be honest for the hackers it's all just a game and this was my only present for him as well actually a real man you must be powerful disrupting 10 euros well we have been called um the grinches of 2014 sir like most awful things it all started with League of Legends August 18th 2014 people find themselves unable to connect to the game and there's this brand new unknown Twitter account claiming responsibility over the next 48 hours they go on what can only be described best as an absolute attention-seeking Rampage their next Target is RuneScape and with all the game worlds knocked offline this is when people start to take notice RuneScape recently came under DDOS attacks it's one of those things where you know you really can't play the game vdos attacks have real victims that cost companies a lot of money you can go to jail for ddawson I'm not sure what the risk and reward is enlisted Squad was launching them willy-nilly making these games unplayable for hours at a time and the reaction they got I think was their first taste of infamy and it must have been intoxicating because to maintain the attention they were entering into an endless cycle of sensationalism upping the ante with each new attack on the 24th of August just six days after this group had appeared on Twitter they sent out a tweet quote we're putting a bunch of lizards in the pipes on their way to Sony up until now they've pissed off a couple neats and weeaboos but Sony PlayStation that's where the normies hang out and of course the same time this tweet goes live millions of them couldn't connect if I catch any lizard squat you [ __ ] with my game Jeep you lizard lame goofy ass but perhaps the person most upset by this was John Smedley president of Sony Online Entertainment so right as the attack went live lizard Squad posted this picture claiming they were a terrorist group an edgy joke to get the attention of media they or he is claiming to be a part of Isis and Smedley posted how stupid this is on Twitter quote I wish the national media would stop letting these DDOS trolls occasional use of Isis crap be taken seriously media please don't get trolled those Isis guys are pure evil and shouldn't be conflated with trolls honestly true but Smedley did make a mistake here because lizard Squad feeds on this type of negative attention and he was about to get on a flight to California today though they took things to a new disturbing level the Tweet stating we have been receiving reports that smedley's plane number 362 has explosives on board smedley's plane was diverted and grounded full deal they searched it for bombs and everything this is an act of terrorism just to make a threat against airliner that very very serious ramifications of course this made national news and the biggest question of all was who the heck is behind the lizard Squad Twitter profile at first they were loving the attention even sending out tweets mocking the FBI before finally finishing off the Night by also ddosing Xbox it was insanity but I think by morning they might have been a a little spooked all the news stories were out and it was clear these guys were about to be up against the full force of the United States Secret Service it had the wrapped attention of the FBI and TSA and it's at this point that the attacks stop the next five days is just a continuous stream of nonsense banter and antagonization on Twitter as they gulp up the attention from their newly amassed 50 000 followers this self-aggrandizing comes to an end on August 29th they make a tweet they're hosting an ask me anything on Reddit and the replies are just hilarious can't wait for the day the media reports you've all been caught what's it like knowing that in less than a week you would be irrelevant and forgotten but will still have ruined your life over something pointless and childish why would you want to cause chaos for a short period of time which people will get over for the price that could be many years of your life lizard Squad actually responded to this when they said because we're pretty confident we're not going to get caught for this the guy wrote back well then you're pretty stupid I think they might have actually taken these to heart because just a day later lizard Squad makes a post directing people to their website it was an announcement quote little thieves are hanged but great ones Escape these guys literally thought they were the greatest hackers of all time and these are all denial of service tax these are very primitive attacks so this is considered like Child's Play to real hackers they go on to write we set out on our journey two weeks ago with the plan to cause Havoc within the Gaming Community originally it was to see if we could evade being caught and to experience the raw thrill of Anarchy today we will be disbanding behind the green reptiles and other [ __ ] we have lives believe it or not I think it's hilarious at the bottom of their website they were manually linking all the news articles that covered them it's like a shrine to how this was all really about the attention now they mostly stuck true to their word but here's the thing about how hacking groups they all follow an arc hack something then hack something bigger and do it again until somebody makes a mistake that leads to one or more of the members being arrested and lizard Squad had yet to complete their Arc oh [ __ ] here we go again it only took three months on December 1st they were back kind of like how private internet access has my back when it comes to these DDOS attacks I scour a lot of sketchy websites to make these videos and one thing I'm conscious about is masking my real IP address not just because it leaves me vulnerable to being hit offline by people like lizard Squad but because it gives away my personal information what city I live in my internet service provider but with private internet access I'm able to mask all of that they have secure servers in all 50 states so I can make it look like I'm from anywheres this has other benefits too like sometimes companies want to charge you a certain price depending where they think you're from no problem connect to a different country and boom boom problem solved besides saving money there's a ton of other benefits too like if you use your Works Wi-Fi you should really be on a VPN because you don't want the IT guy seeing what you're doing online best part it's cheap if you use my link and code in the description you'll get 82 percent off in three extra months for free that's an amazing deal for an amazing product thank you private internet access now during the time they were away their original Twitter account was suspended and so in an effort to regain their infamy they were gonna have to come back with a bang December 1st the day starts with a single tweet it's a threat to Microsoft eight minutes later another tweet goes live they had make good on that threat nobody could connect to Xbox Live and upon seeing that error message well everybody thought of Blizzard Squad they immediately made two more tweets quote just some preparation for Christmas this is a small dose of what's to come of course the news outlets jump all over this their stunt had worked they were already back to 44 000 followers by the end of the day but things were only getting started because they had big plans for all of December yo they crashed machinima's website little Squad dead little Squad man the very next day Machinima posted a video in which they discredit the Xbox attack saying it was a mere coincidence in retaliation lizard Squad defaced their website but the most important outcome of this attack was that it got them on drama alert and no one has been arrested because you can't arrest a lizard oh yeah there's gonna be a lot of Christmas gifts for many companies around you know the 25th keemstar was criticized for giving these guys a platform many said he's essentially motivating them to keep going this guy writes no publicity equals lapse in interest equals no more DDOS attacks he's not wrong after that first video went live their followers more than doubled to 120 000. I mean that's more than what I've got here on YouTube this didn't quite matter though because keemstar's never been one to take criticism and so leading into early December they're doing all these different attacks they take out Xbox for a few hours hit off PlayStation again all the while posting General crap on Twitter for attention keemstar keeps reporting on this they're up to 150 000 followers and new stations are now starting to catch on that hey there's this big Christmas attack that's probably gonna happen but in the background there's a new Twitter account that's gaining popularity find a squad a hacking group that's allegedly here to be the hero of the story if anyone can save Christmas from the lizards it's going to be them and on December 11th the new Twitter account for lizard Squad is suspended and finest Squad is claiming responsibility and keemstar manages to get a member from each group to come on his show axbox live is going to go down on Christmas is that still the case possibly all main members are currently arguing at the moment we may have split up slightly think that Liz is called may have on its cause by now because we got suspended every new Twitter you guys make it's going to be suspended so we're Midway into December now and things are looking hopeful the lizard Squad account has remained down because the members are preoccupied posting from their personal accounts the docs is that is the names phone numbers street addresses of finest Squad members and in retaliation finest Squad is doing the same except on both sides none of it is correct Vice actually did an article on how some poor 71 year old grandma from North Carolina got hundreds of threatening phone calls for weeks because of it this drama wouldn't keep them distracted forever though what's happening on Christmas I know how these people think and since they want to get there and eat bigger I guarantee you they're probably going to do it Christmas was just a few days away and lizard Squad had regrouped created another Twitter and how did they prepare for their biggest attack yet by taking down an entire country's Internet it's the week of Christmas and North Korea is knocked offline and it didn't take long for lizard Squad to take credit for the the attack at this point it looked like it would take a miracle to keep lizard Squad at Bay during the big day 6.6 million Xboxes and 6.4 million PlayStations have been sold for Christmas and in the morning people across the globe would be unboxing them and diving into their first experience with next-gen consoles yet throughout the night a hacker war was raging lizard Squad is trying to get a head start on the attacks they DDOS Xbox but it's only down for 8 minutes then they try PlayStation again only 8 minutes find a squad is claiming to be counter-dosing lizard squads.net stopping the attacks dead in their tracks like holy cow these guys weren't just all talk the entire time they're actually stopping it lizard Squad gives up for the night but not without a threat quote operations will continue tomorrow as a result the group of kitties who think they are the finest will be proven incapable and now we were only hours away to seeing who was going to come out on top Christmas day was expected to be a big one for the game consoles users excited to hook up their new systems as of 9 A.M this morning Sony says the PlayStation Network remains offline Microsoft's Xbox Live gaming network is also out and users just can't log in and there's no indication when service will resume a group of hackers calling themselves lizard Squad are claiming responsibility via Twitter the news was a lizard Squad had won finest Squad had failed to stop them in fact finest Squad started asking for donations to help stop lizard Squad and this is when people started speculating either finest squad has been lizard Squad this whole time and this was all a ruse to make some money or the guy was trying to cash out before the attention would be gone regardless sustained attacks kept both consoles offline for hours you know what really pissed me off my son didn't like Daddy Daddy we should just play on the Nintendo or the Wii U like God damn Christmas as promised was ruined unless that is a new hero could Salvage what was left of it enter kim.com a rich guy internet entrepreneur who loves Call of Duty and is the founder of Maga a cloud service for storing files and he slid up into those lizard DMS ready to make a deal they agree on three thousand one-year Pro membership vouchers two Mega worth around three hundred thousand dollars in exchange for the attacks stopping lizard Squad takes the deal honors it and the rest of Christmas is saved people are calling Kim a hero but remember Lizard Squad still wasn't finished their Arc they had completed their biggest attack yet but none of their members had been arrested this was all about to change so what do you do with three hundred thousand dollars in vouchers you post them on the hacking form that's not only known for cooperating with the feds but also under your legitimate prolific profile that has a lot of information about who you are and you do this literally a day after you receive them December 26th and then what do you do after that well your big attack is over your attention is dwindling so of course you agreed to a news interview in which you show your face you don't feel guilty that you've taken so much enjoyment of gaming away from more than 100 million people over this Christmas period I'd be rather worried if those people didn't have anything better to do than play games on their consoles on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day I mean you can't make this stuff up this guy's literally on national news admitting to being the culprit why we did it mostly for to raise awareness regarding the low state of computer security at these companies they should have more than enough funding be able to protect against these attacks and early keemstar interviews other members were readily admitting that they were doing this all for attention but this guy wasn't about to say that on the news there's another guy that joins in too but he's a little smarter instead of outright saying he's a part of lizard Squad he comes on as a security analyst online security analyst Vinnie Omari is well connected to the community he expects more hackers to join in they go on to do an interview with the BBC and it's just hilarious they're trying so hard to act like what they've done isn't wrong in any way and the host just tears them apart presumably he wouldn't go into a child's house lift this PlayStation and Smash It On the Grind on Christmas day just so they couldn't play it no of course it's not that type of Dork are you no that's just horribly sick you've done the equivalent maybe you should have told them I'm the idiot that's disrupting children's lives on Christmas day so you've done this for the public good you want us to believe that yes we're also doing to amuse ourselves but there's definitely the aspect of public good offered your squad 3 000 lifetime encrypted vouchers to stop the hacking so there's nothing really to do with exposing a company for the group okay you took the Millennia around didn't you like a petty criminal it's three hundred thousand dollars worth of vouchers dirty grubby great these interviews were a bad idea just two days after this 22 year old Vinnie Omari from the UK is rated they have search warrants for all his electronics citing the attacks on Xbox and Playstation then just a few days later it comes out finland's National Bureau of Investigation has picked up 17 year old Julius kibamaki but this wasn't the end because there was still a few remaining members of lizard Squad but with two other members missing they didn't seem to be as capable on January 26th they claimed to have ddosed Facebook Instagram and Tinder but this claim was later proven to be false they also attempted to open up a DDOS For Hire website lizard stressor but they weren't Savvy enough to secure it and so the customer database got leaked and well authorities in the United Kingdom paid a little visit to six of the customers who had paid for it this was looking like the end of lizard Squad and for a while it kind of was the account they were using over Christmas got suspended and they wouldn't create a new account until late May of 2015 just in time for the outcome of Julius kivamaki's arrest a finished Court ruled not to incarcerate him and the new Lizard Squad account is boasting about this quote basically he'll be monitored for two years by local police zero time spent in prison the reality is Julius kivamaki will never be made to pay for his crimes and do you remember our old friend Smedley he was upset by this because it turns out Julius was directly responsible for that threat threat made on his plane and so upon reading the news of the Court's decision he tweets that was the piece of garbage that brought my plane down leaked my information and did all other kinds of crap to me his parents need to be held accountable for his actions in addition to his going to jail so I'm Coming For You Julius and one final Act of retaliation lizard Squad ddos's games that Smedley is directly overseeing H1Z1 PlanetSide 2 Smedley writes looks like we're getting hit again sorry folks and in a wild turn of events after this Smedley steps down from his role as CEO of Sony Online Entertainment and it's widely speculated it's due to him essentially getting the company attacked again over these comments he made on Twitter but we'll never know for sure now if I've learned one thing from doing these videos is that the FBI will let criminals Go free for years while they build enough evidence to ensure a strong conviction nearly two years had passed since the original arrests were made and so it was only a a matter of time before whoever was left running the account would face Justice and that day came on September 23 2016. Zachary buchta is accused of hacking computers with victims around the world this charge stems from an international investigation into hacking groups called Lizard Squad Zachary apparently cried in court as he was sentenced to three months in prison in order to pay 350 thousand dollars in restitution I think this guy actually got the most punishment out of anyone and coincidentally he's also the only one from the United States his criminal complaint also has a co-conspirator a Bradley from the Netherlands but I was unable to find any information if this guy ever actually faced punishment even though he was directly involved with all the same stuff as Zachary as for Vinnie Omari it's unclear what the outcome of his case was we know he made bail just one day after being arrested but I couldn't find any publicly available sources detailing whatever happened to him as of today all his old aliases have been left abandoned since 2016. regardless Zachary's arrest marked the end of lizard squad's reign of terror but their story left a lasting impression on many hacker groups to come but those are stories for another day thank you for watching and I'll catch you in the next one

Channel: Crumb

Views: 4,334,415

Keywords: Lizard Squad, LizardSquad, Documentary, FinestSquad, Vinnie Omari, Sunnyv2, Jake Tran, Internet Mystery

Id: ezkY3Mij894

Length: 19min 44sec (1184 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 26 2022