Earlier this week, Daybreak Studios CEO, John Smedley, went on a bit of a Twitter rant directed at a cyber criminal responsible for calling in a bomb threat on one of his flights last year alongside a series of other personal attacks. While on Twitter, Smedley made a few legal threats, which DDOS group, Lizard Squad, did not take kindly to.
Lizard Squad are widely known for their DDOS attacks, particularly the ones that brought down the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live last year over Christmas. The attacker that Smedley is after is a part of the Lizard Squad group, though he was arrested earlier this year and recently charged with over 50,000 counts of cyber crime by a court in Finland. He somehow managed to avoid jail time, which has stirred up some controversy by itself.
Either way, following John Smedley's legal threats, Lizard Squad launched a DDOS attack on Daybreak Studios' game servers with the intent of taking down H1Z1, though it accidentally managed to bring down PlanetSide 2 as well in the process. The studio is working on bringing all of its services back to normal, though some issues seem to persist, according to their Twitter account.
In order to clarify why he is so angry at this particular Lizard Squad member, Smedley took to Reddit to explain how many personal attacks he has faced: “He was the guy that brought down my flight with a bomb threat. I've heard the entire recording where he convinced an airline customer service agent there was a bomb on the plane. He also in conjunction with others has sent me pictures of my father's grave with nasty stuff on it. I've had my entire credit history put out on the internet including my SSN and my families info. We've had multiple social networks and other things hacked and had my family members called.”
Smedley has also been a victim of swatting and has had numerous false credit applications submitted in his name, which has a negative impact on your credit rating.
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KitGuru Says: It is pretty crazy that you can be successfully convicted of 50,000 cyber crimes and still somehow manage to avoid jail time. Additionally, after hearing about all of the things John Smedley has been put through, it is no wonder why he is so angry.
Bunch of entitled whelps.
It makes you wonder what Smedley did to provoke them in the first place. The companies/games that were victims of the DDoS attacks weren’t just randomly selected. I’m not trying to justify it at all; it just arouses some curiosity.
“also in conjunction with others has sent me pictures of my father’s grave with nasty stuff on it” Oh that is way too far. These kids need to be thrown into jail for life. More needs to be done to catch these guys. Twitter needs to close their account, and help authorities track them down.
I would love to know how he avoided going to jail. Hell, I would love to know how he managed to pull off 50,000+ crimes before turning 18! Does this kid have a time machine or something?
When I read the CEO’s ‘rant’ I did think to my self that it was overly harsh, Yes LS have done dumb things by doing the bomb threat etc but the way the CEO was talking was as if he would have them all assassinated one by one. And we all know the folks with money can do that stuff and get away with it. I am not surprised LS retaliated.
dunno bout the 50k crimes, but the avoiding jailtime seems to be pretty easy in finland
Read what you just wrote, then say it out loud. Now repeat it several times. after that think about the repercussions that could possibly happen if they were jailed for life.
That is not at all what he said though.
” I want this kind in jail for a long time. You shouldn’t be able to do crap like this without any hint of a consequence. I plan on doing everything in my power to see him get what’s coming to him in court one way or another.”
How the hell did you read it like a wish to have them assassinated?
If he hacks a system, even automatically as part of the entire process of doing the primary hack, then each tiny hack/break-in is counted as one more crime to add to the list.
His general tone, use of threats in a public statement. The guy is obviously seething with anger and currently focusing it all at LS or more specifically the ones who delayed his flight.
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