Lizard Squad Goes Chameleon, Changes Colors, Attacks Malaysia Airlines Site
The folks at Lizard Squad just can’t get enough of making the lives of others miserable. In the past month, the hacker group claimed responsibility for DDoS attacks that knocked Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network offline on Christmas Day. While Microsoft was able to restore its services within a day or so, Sony took a few days longer to restore PSN services for gamers. Lizard Squad also took credit for an “assist” in helping Guardians of Peace (#GOP) carryout its November attack on Sony.
Lizard Squad is at it once again, this time setting its sights on the Malaysia Airlines’ website. Earlier this morning, visitors to MalaysiaAirlines.com were greeted with the tacky headline “404 - Plane Not Found,” which is a reference to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people aboard — no survivors or wreckage has been discovered.
Later on in the morning, a more familiar image was posted to the homepage; that of the tuxedo-wearing, pipe-smoking lizard who just so happens to be the official mascot of Lizard Squad. The image was accompanied by the text “Hacked by Lizard Squad, Official Cyber Caliphate.”
Despite the defacement of its website, Malaysia Airlines reached out to Reuters to assure users that no personal information was breached. "Malaysia Airlines assures customers and clients that its website was not hacked and this temporary glitch does not affect their bookings and that user data remains secured," said a representative for the airline.
However, Lizard Squad disputes that notion:
Going to dump some loot found on http://t.co/D9XYneQoaK servers soon
— Lizard Squad (@LizardMafia) January 26, 2015
[MEDIA STATEMENT]: We would like to point out that @MAS is lying about user data not being compromised. Refer to earlier imgur link.
— Lizard Squad (@LizardMafia) January 26, 2015
The hacker group posted an image (which has since been removed by the image hosting service Imgur) showing the flight itinerary for a passenger traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Taiwan in March. The person in question was contacted by The Associated Press and confirmed the leaked information.
Malaysia Airlines has reported the incident to CyberSecurity Malaysia, which is a division of the country’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.