Xbox Live temporarily knocked on its face thanks to hackers

After such a good Black Friday showing for the company’s current-gen console, Xbox Live has just about recovered from a DDOS attack earlier today, which led to server downtime for many users on both sides of the Atlantic.

Although the service seems to be stable at the time of writing, earlier today the hacker group named Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for plunging the service into darkness.

The hacker group seems to enjoy messing with gamers’ livelihoods, having previously taken credit for knocking down PlayStation Network earlier this year, as well as League of Legends and World of Warcraft servers too.

Although it seems that the outage has predominantly affected North America, users have been complaining as far afield as Great Britain according to social media, and Xbox Live Support isn’t best pleased.

Earlier, the company’s support Twitter account suggested that the FBI has acquired the leader of the hacker group:

We’ve officially located the “leader” of @LizardPatrol , safely secure in the FBI’s grasp. @XboxOneNetwork , #XboxSupport #XboxLive ^HJ

— Xbox Support (EST) (@XboxSupportEST) December 2, 2014

@LizardPatrol Our good friends at Sony hopefully will not experience this. #XboxLive is safe, and your “team” has been notified to the FBI.

— Xbox Support (EST) (@XboxSupportEST) December 2, 2014

Regardless, it seems that Lizard Squad isn’t about to play scared or back down, issuing its latest threat on Twitter, promising further outages as we get closer to Christmas.

Who’s next? #LizardSquad

— Lizard Squad (@LizardPatrol) December 2, 2014

Microsoft has yet to issue an official statement regarding the matter, but both the Xbox Status site and the Twitter account suggest that there is currently no issue with the service.

If your console’s responding with the ominous 80151909 error code, follow the directions as laid out in the link. If the issue persists, shake your fists in extreme rage and contact Xbox Support.