The 'Lizard Squad' Hacker Group Is Now Selling Its Attacks As A Service

Flickr/Nelo Hotsuma

The same group that claimed to have taken down PlayStation Network and Xbox Live over Christmas now appears to be selling its attacks as a service.

The product, called "Lizard Stresser," is a stress tester that might let you see how your own network stands up to DDoS attacks, like the ones that interrupted the gaming networks for several days last week. DDoS attacks basically overload servers with massive amounts of bogus requests.

Though Lizard Squad advertises the tool as a stress tester, there's nothing saying you can't use the service to take down the website of a rival business, for example.

Check out Lizard Squad's terms of service:

Permission is granted to stress test dedicated servers and networks owned by you. This is the opportunity [sic] to make your firewalls better, not to misuse against the law. This is a license given to you and anything you do while on http://lizardstresser.su/ is your own responsibility as we are not liable.

To ensure liability falls on you, the user, and not Lizard Squad, the Lizard Stresser service apparently prevents you from using virtual private networks to conceal your identity and location, Gizmodo points out. But if the tool lets you send DDoS attacks like the ones allegedly sent by the group last week, this could be a very powerful and dangerous tool to give people.

Still, it seems questionable why anyone would purchase this service.

Sure, there are plenty of reasons why a company would want to test if they could handle a DDoS attack, but this service is being handled by the same international group of anonymous hackers that thought it was funny to attack PlayStation and Xbox Live just to make young gamers upset - and they thought they could attack Tor, too, likely not realizing the implications of what they were doing. 

Perhaps the "Lizard Stresser" was the Lizard Squad's plan all along: To let its DDoS attacks over Christmas serve as a way of marketing its new service. But it's tough to pay for a service if you can't trust the company that's operating it.