Islamist hacktivists Lizard Squad may have been behind today’s horrific downage of our most beloved social media platforms, according to reports.
The group – which last month claimed responsibility for attacks on PlayStation and Xbox networks and yesterday took down the Malaysia Airlines website – Tweeted: “Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, AIM, Hipchat #offline #LizardSquad” shortly after reports of the above mentioned sites going dark worldwide this afternoon.
The Daily Mail (an uber-trashy UK tabloid that no-one ever 100 percent trusts) is therefore saying Lizard Squad has “claimed responsibility” for the outage, which lasted around 40 mintues, from around 1:45pm Hong Kong time.
We have to admit we were sceptical, not just because it’s the Daily Mail, but also because, if it was the group, why didn’t they leave their calling card, a lizard in a top hat with a monocle and pipe?
But then we saw that the Wall Street Journal were treating the Tweet as evidence too. We’re slightly more convinced now.
The lizard image greeted visitors to the Malaysia Airlines website this week (brave people booking a flight with them!) along with the message “404 Plane Not Found”, an apparent eery reference to flight MH30 that disappeared last year with 239 people on board.
Lizard Squad refers to itself as a “Cyber Caliphate” in support of ISIS, so we take it they’re pretty liberal kinda dudes.
