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Kim Dotcom takes credit for ending PSN, Xbox Live outage

The controversial tech entrepreneur offers hackers vouchers for his own Mega service in exchange for restoring services. It appears to have worked.

Ty Pendlebury Editor
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
Ty Pendlebury

Kim Dotcom on his own Instagram page. Kim Dotcom

Kim Dotcom, the polarizing figure behind the former file-sharing service Megaupload, says he is the reason service has been restored to two of the largest gaming and entertainment portals after they were taken down by hackers.

As a result of widespread DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks on Christmas Day, Xbox and PlayStation users were unable to access online services such as Netflix or new multiplayer games like Call of Duty Advanced Warfare and Destiny.

The latest attack doesn't appear related to the earlier Sony hack which targeted the movie "The Interview."

Hacker group Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the attacks on the gaming networks, and in order to help resolve the situation, tech entrepreneur Kim Dotcom offered the hackers vouchers for his own Mega service.

A Twitter account purporting to represent Lizard Squad announced that it would stop the attacks as a direct result of the offer.

When services began to restore overnight in the US, Dotcom then took to Twitter himself:

Xbox Live and PSN services coming back. Many regions fully restored. Full recovery imminent. Enjoy your gaming holidays. You're welcome :-)

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) December 26, 2014

According to recent reports Xbox Live appears to have been fully restored while some users are still reporting issues with PSN. Tests by CNET seem to indicate the PlayStation network is active, though slow.

Meanwhile, Lizard Squad says it has now set its sites on anonymizing site Tor because "only hackers, miscreants and pedophiles use Tor."

Dotcom launched his Mega service in January 2013 after his original MegaUpload service was taken down by U.S. law enforcement due to suspected piracy by its users.