H1Z1, PlanetSide 2 DDoS'ed in Latest Apparent Lizard Squad Attack

Not long after Daybreak CEO John Smedley lashed out at one recently convicted Lizard Squad member, the hacking group has claimed responsibility for a new string of DDoS attacks against the studio's games.

Apparently, Lizard Squad is acting in retaliation for what Smedley had to say about Julius “Zeekill" Kivimaki, who was charged in Finland on more than 50,000 counts but will avoid jail time. In a series of Twitter posts on Wednesday, Smedley called Kivimaki a "dirtbag" and claimed he would attempt to take him to civil court.

Kivimaki, 17, was linked to the Christmas Day PlayStation Network and Xbox Live DDoS attacks that brought down both online services for days.

Writing on Twitter last night, Smedley acknowledged that Daybreak's games, including H1Z1 and Planetside 2, experienced widespread DDoS attacks. Smedley said every Daybreak game has been affected as part of at least two DDoS attacks, the second of which was far more substantial than the first.

As of this writing, the issues appear to remain unresolved.

"All games, websites, and forums are still impacted. We do not have an ETA for when services will be restored," Daybreak said on Twitter last night. A follow-up tweet posted this morning states, "We are still working to resolve connectivity issues affecting many of you. Thank you for all your patience and understanding."

In addition, Smedley has posted a new statement on Reddit in which he again speaks out against Kivimaki, his sentence, and the legal action he plans to take against Kivimaki and other hackers.

"I'm extremely angry that the Finnish justice system chose to let Julius Kivimaki off with a two-year suspended sentence. This guy is the worst kind of bad news," Smedley started off.

"He's been involved for years in every kind of terrible thing you can imagine including Carding, hacking, swatting people all over the world," he added. "He's also participated in a major way in DDOS attacks that caused a lot of grief for gamers and a lot of economic damage to the companies that make and run games."

Smedley went on to detail some of the harassment he attributes to Kivimaki. In addition to the grounding of his flight due to a fake bomb threat, Smedley claims that Kivimaki and others sent him "pictures of my father's grave with nasty stuff on it." In addition, Smedley said his entire credit history has been published online, along with his Social Security Number and his family's personal information.

On top of that, Smedley claims he has been "swatted" multiple times and that Kivimaki and company even filed false tax returns on Smedley's behalf.

"So to put this bluntly, I want this kid in jail for a long time," Smedley said. "You shouldn't be able to do crap like this without any hint of a consequence. I plan on doing everything in my power to see him get what's coming to him in court one way or another. What he just got convicted of were over 50,000 separate incidents of hacking and other nastiness. This has nothing to do with the downing of the plane or the DDoS stuff he did or the things he did to me (not just me btw he did this to a lot of other people too). Those cases are still pending, but they have him dead to rights."

"So you guys can debate this... and that's all well and good, but meanwhile this sh** is real to my life and my family's life and I'm sure as hell not lying down for it for a second," he added. "I've been working with law enforcement to put him and others into jail where they belong. Some of them are minors which makes it tough. Most of them are outside the US, which makes it tougher. But I'm patient and I'm going to be relentless about this."