Why did lulzsec hack minecraft

Tim Watson, head of De Montfort University's computer forensics and security group. More than most social groups, these are ones that will embrace activism. With these particular groups, profile raising and publicity seeking activities is more likely to be about raising issues that they have concerns about.

Just like journalists, hackers need to find a forum that's going to connect with as many people as possible, and the sweet spot is gaming. Millions of people are connected online via games, and these aren't like online banks: the security isn't as good, yet you give them a lot of personal details. Indeed, it would seem that Lulzsec's modus operandi is to raise awareness about lax security rather than to destroy games companies or steal and sell credit card numbers. After the raid on Bethesda , the group stated on its website that it would withhold from publication the personal details of more than , gamers: "We actually like this company and would like for them to speed up the production of Skyrim, so we'll give them one less thing to worry about.

Later, its DDOS attacks on Eve Online and Minecraft were designed to disrupt services rather than break them completely "We didn't hack any games," went one tweet. So is Lulzsec a sort of vigilante group, out to secure online safety for gamers? Or is it just a laugh at the expense of gamers as they sometimes claim?

Certainly the Titantic Takeover Tuesday attacks had no altruistic motives "let's all laugh together at butthurt gamers" one Tweet on Tuesday night declared. Whatever the case, the organisation has highlighted the possibility of security deficiencies.

As Sanjay Sarathy of Vindicia, a company that creates billing systems for various games publishers, argues: "If what I'm reading is true, particularly about the second Sony breach in June, LulzSec are outraged at the poor security standards of game publishers.

They're quoted as saying, 'Every bit of data we took wasn't encrypted. Sony stored over 1 million customer passwords in plaintext, which means it's just a matter of taking it. How is it possible, in the digital age, for corporate culture around security to be so lax? Whether we agree with the vigilante activity or not, the hackers have sent a lot of senior level-types back to double-check what level of security their business provides customers.

The people running online games have realised now that security is a competitive advantage. If you're trying to persuade someone to type in their credit card details in order to play a game, being able to say our game is safer than the next company's is a selling point that's on the public consciousness.

So what we should see is what Lulzsec and Anonymous wanted all along, which is more secure environments for people to play safely online. The problem is, that hacker groups tend to mutate and evolve quickly and their impersonal, dislocated nature means keeping tabs on members — and their motivations — is all but impossible, even from the inside. So does that mean LulzSec isn't a fan of free speech? If they don't like something someone writes about them, they simply aim and fire?

Or perhaps it's all just random ransacking. LulzSec did announce via its Twitter account that it was taking recommendations from its followers to determine who it should attack next. And the group did recently tweet : "We did it because they couldn't stop us. Certainly LulzSec has been very busy in the last few weeks. And yesterday it attacked not only the game sites, but a porn site and a Senate website as well.

While attacks on big and seemingly "faceless" corporations may not have inspired much ire from some corners of the gaming and online worlds, these attacks on smaller companies and groups have certainly fired many people up. I know thats what you want but wtf what did they do? Minecraft, Eve Online, League of Legends, and The Escapist are the most recent high-profile games industry targets to get hit by hackers. All three of the sites went down at some point yesterday. At the time of writing, all are back online.

Written by Kieran Harris on the 6th of September at Written by Ben Lyons on the 9th of June at Cookies Gamereactor uses cookies to ensure that we give you the best browsing experience on our website. If you continue, we'll assume that you are happy with our cookies policy OK.