Free Republic

LizardSquad copycats are trying to ruin Christmas for gamers Last year, the LizardSquad hacking group managed to ink its name into the history of Internet after taking down the Xbox Live and PlayStation networks during Christmas. With this year's holiday just around the corner, a new group, unoriginally named Phantom Squad, is now threatening to carry out similar attacks as well. If we believe their Twitter timeline, the hackers seem to have launched a DDoS attack against Reddit yesterday, even if nobody noticed its effects. Of course, a behemoth like Reddit is hard to take down in its entirety, but...

"Customers outside the United States should be advised that we further discovered evidence that information from an outdated database from 2007 containing approximately 12,700 non-US customer credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates (but not credit card security codes) and about 10,700 direct debit records listing bank account numbers of certain customers in Germany, Austria, Netherlands and Spain may have also been obtained. We will be notifying each of those customers promptly."

JAPANESE GAMES CONSOLE MAKER Sony is facing more problems after its Playstation Network was hacked and taken offline, with no estimate in sight for recovery. The company confirmed that its network was the victim of an "external intrusion" and that it voluntarily put it offline while it works on a fix for the problem. However, it's been nearly a week since the first signs of the hacking appeared and the network remains down, with users greeted by error messages and notifications about maintenance and suspended services.