European Hacker Group Lizard Squad Helped Guardians of Peace Hack Sony Pictures

The Lizard Squad, which brought down Playstation and Xbox networks this Christmas, reportedly helped Guardian of Peace mount the Sony hack.

According to BBC, Lizard Squad provided employee logins that GoP used to retrieve massive amounts of data that were later posted on the internet. This was admitted during an interview with one of the senior members of the group. The member said Lizard Squad knew some of the hackers of GoP but were not directly involved in the hack against Sony. The revelation throws doubt if North Korea has anything to do with the hack. The group also denied it had links with the Islamic State.

The Washington Post's Brian Fung who interviewed the Lizard Squad member asked what the motives were behind Playstation hack. The hacker, who identified himself as Ryan Cleary, said it was to expose security flaws in the company's network. Cleary said that his group has been warning companies including Sony and Microsoft that they would attack their networks, giving them ample time to shore up security.

Playstation's network was overwhelmed through denial of service attacks, causing it to crash. The Lizard Squad reportedly sent 1.2 terabits of data per second to bring it down. The Washington Post reported Cleary saying that most of the group is located in European Union and Eastern Europe and is not scared of FBI and American law enforcement.

Business Insider reported that the group which was very active on Twitter until Monday had gone quiet on Tuesday following Kim Dotcom's offer of lifetime premium membership to his subscription service for calling off the Playstation attack.