Cold Open
The following presentation is not suitable for young children. Listener discretion is advised.
SFX: A fire crackles.
Christmas morning. For your favorite podcasting host, which I hope is me, this is one of my favorite days of the year. It’s a morning to run downstairs, check the tree and see if Santa overlooked the bad stuff you did and left you something good. It’s also a day to give. And I love giving a good Christmas gift. So this year I’m leaving you, the listeners of Modem Mischief a little something underneath the tree from me. A bonus episode. We’ll call it the Modem Mischief Holiday Spectacular. If you like this bonus episode, and want more of them, consider supporting us on Patreon. We release bonus episodes on the first Friday of every month over there. Don’t miss out. Goto patreon.com/modemmischief. You’ll be supporting an independent production which will help us keep the lights on. If you don't, I still hope you enjoy this one. My gift to you. No strings attached. And now...on with the show.
SFX: sleigh bells. Music transition
It’s a brisk, early morning in Sacramento, California on December 25th, 2014–Christmas day. The Hannigan parents are awoken by their son, Darren, who storms into their bedroom at 6 in the morning… the sun isn’t even up. Darren leaps onto the bed, begging them to get up. Ken Hannigan groans, how much sleep did he actually get, three… four hours? But Darren gets him smiling and even excited. Excited to see the look on his kid’s face when he opens the big gift, the one Ken Hannigan knows he totally nailed this year. The one he’s been putting a little money aside for each month.
Come on, hurry up! Darren shouts, bouncing up and down.
Alright alright, I’m up, Ken yawns, tapping his wife Lisa awake beside him, We’ll meet you by the tree. Go wake your sister…
SFX: Tearing paper, music shift.
It’s chaos in the living room while Ken and Lisa watch Darren and Maggie open their gifts, ripping into the colored wrapping like animals Darren is singularly focused, he’s looking for it. The gift he really wants, sure the new backpack and sneakers are cool, but what he really wants must be in this last box, it’s gotta be. It’s the right size and shape and it’s heavy…
SFX: Heavy box thudding, paper tears, opening a Christmas present…
Is this what I think it is? He asks nobody in particular. The box is open now and… it’s beautiful. A brand new Xbox. Darren screams in joyous hysterics. His parents smile ear to ear. Maggie covers her ears.
Soon it’s booted up and ready to go. All Darren needs to do is log on to Xbox Live to play the game he’s been dying to try, Red Faction: Guerilla. He’s the last one of his friends to play it and now’s his chance to kick all their asses, to dominate, to walk into school next week with his nose turned up at all those losers who will bow down at his…
SFX: *cock-blocking digital thud of an Error message on the TV*
What? Darren tries again…
SFX: *Same sound…*
What’s happening? Is it broken? Darren is in state, his palms sweating. He tries again, but no luck. No… nonononoNO! He cries, and then Ken now Ken is trying, his heart sinking because the gaming network is down, and not just in the Hannigan house, but across the city and the state. Across the globe, millions of people are shouting at their televisions, at their brand new gaming consoles, losing their collective shit. All the while, swaying drunk at his computer, Vinnie Omar chuckles to himself, holds his luke-warm beer up to his screen, and thinks that this might be the best 22nd birthday gift he could have possibly asked for.
I mean, hey: it’s not every day you get to ruin Christmas for gamers all over the world.
On this episode: sad children, drunken shenanigans and the Grinchiest Christmas hack of all time. I’m Keith Korneluk and this is Modem Mischief.
INTRODUCTION
You’re listening to Modem Mischief. In this series, we explore the darkest reaches of the internet. We'll take you into the minds of the world's most notorious hackers and the lives affected by them. We'll also show you places you won't find on Google and what goes on down there. This is the story of the Lizard Squad Christmas Day hack.
Act 1
August 2014, 4 months before the Christmas Day hack, Vincent “Vinnie” Omari, a lanky kid with short dark hair—a dank hoodie always draped over his thin frame—opens his computer and logs onto Dark0de, a black market cybercrime forum, and starts lurking, digging around, seeing what’s new—What malware is making the rounds today? Who’s hiring themselves out for hacking-for-hire?
SFX: Digital message alert…
He gets a message from somebody he’s been chatting with more and more over the past few months, somebody who goes by ZEEKILL.
Zeekill: Yo. You heard about these plans for PSN?
Curious, Vinnie types: Everyone has plans for PSN… who’s talking about it this time?
Zeekill: Some guys I’ve been in touch with…
SFX: Another message alert…
Vinnie is brought into another chat, this time with several others.
Zeekill: Guys, this is Vinnie, the one I’ve been telling you about.
A message from someone named FBIARELOSERS: We’re sure this guy’s got his shit together?
Zeekill: I’m saying he does.
Another message, this time from screenname UCHIHALS: I’ve checked him out Fbiarelosers…
Vinnie is excited, who the hell are these people…
Vinnie: What’s that LS stand for
SFX: message alert…
He is sent an image of a dashing looking lizard smoking a pipe, beneath the image the words LIZARD SQUAD.
Uchihals: We’ve got big plans, Vincent Omari… you in?
They know his name. How do they know his name? Vinnie is good, really good, and he’s made sure to cover his tracks… these guys, whoever they are, must be legit. He types the three words that bring him into the fold, into the den of the Lizard Squad, and begin his trajectory toward his rise to global internet infamy and his eventual downfall…
Vinnie: What’s the plan?
________________________
December 22nd, 3 days before the Christmas hack. The Lizard Squad has made good time on establishing their infamous reputation, becoming a globally recognized name in mere months. In fact, they’ve already taken down servers for League of Legends, Runescape, and Riot games… all within 24 hours. And today, nearing the end of December, they’re prepping for their White Whale, Xbox and the PlayStation Network…
So how does a hacking supergroup prepare for a global DDoS, or, distributed-denial-of-service attack? By taking down an entire country's internet.
As if the country didn’t have enough things going on, the internet suddenly goes down all across North Korea the week of Christmas. It’s pandemonium. Mind you, this is just eleven days after the Seth Rogen comedy The Interview was released direct to YouTube, which immediately garnered its own bizarre controversy, pissing off Kim Jung-un, sparking talk of getting banned and of possibly starting an all out war between the US and North Korea.
It didn’t take long for Lizard Squad to hop onto social media and take credit for the attack. Polishing their collective brass cajones, and revelling in the chaos they’ve created.
It’s been speculated that the Sony hack earlier that year in November was a hired hack by the North Korean government in retaliation for the theatrical release of The Interview… it’s also been speculated that North Korea hired the hackers they knew could pull off a hack of that magnitude, ones they’d seen on other gaming platforms before… keep your enemies closer, right?
Act 2
Christmas day, 2014. Gamers across the globe are taking to social media, blowing up Twitter and Facebook…
SFX: Series of overlapping voices:
What the HELL is going on??!?!?!??
WTF Xbox, what gives????
Hello Playstation? You dead?
Xbox and PSN down on Christmas day??? Get ready for a REVOLT!
Vinnie Omari is at his computer watching the havoc spread like a wildfire across the web, and he can’t help giggle gleefully as the Lizard Squad name starts getting tossed around.
Could it be LS?
This is Lizard Squad for sure…
Did Lizard Squad just make enemies of every gamer ever? Again?
Ah, what the hell, Vinnie thinks, so what if they did? Was it worth it? He cracks open another beer…
SFX: beer opening… a sip…
Hell yes it was. He decides the edging is getting to be too much, and he decides to let them have their villain… even if it is a yammering-drunk, moronic sounding villain. He opens Lizard Squad’s official Twitter account…
TWEET: jingle bells jingle bells xbox got ran, oh my fun it is to troll all of you morons… hey!
After a few less than brilliant clicks of his keyboard, Lizard Squad has officially taken credit for the Christmas Day hack.
The other Lizards are watching all of this unfold from behind their screens as well… watching Vinnie’s actions very, very carefully…
________________________
Meanwhile, Xbox and Playstation headquarters are in a frenzy. This is supposed to be PEAK gaming time and instead of drooling like zombies in front of their TVs playing their whatever-the-hell for hours and hours and hours, tens of millions of people are… what? Not playing their new consoles? It’s Christmas, what the hell else are they gonna do, huh? Play outside? Give me a break. This is the reason for the season, the what every gaming network has been working toward all year and it’s crapping out on them right before their very eyes. They are stuck helpless and with their proverbial dick in their hands…
Xbox is asking their best and brightest to fix this. Now.
We’re trying, sir, but—
But what? This is what you were hired for!
I’m not a hacker, sir, I can’t—
We have people like you on payroll so we don’t have to worry about hackers.
That’s not exactly the case here, sir. This is… this is advanced, next-level stuff.
So you know what’s happening?
Well, yes. It’s a DDoS. But I can’t stop it. We’re all trying.
Just tell me who the hell can.
Who indeed… When you have a hacker problem, who better than a hacker to try and fix it. And better yet, how about a rich one? Enter Kim Dotcom.
Act 3
What exactly is a DDoS attack? How does it work? Basically, it’s a clog. Think of a server like a city, and everyone is trying to get into it. The highways and city roads leading into it are connections to the server from your computer or somebody else's computer. A DDoS attack is the equivalent of somebody creating an army of self-driving cars and programming them to get onto the highway and just… park. Turn every road leading to the city into a parking lot so nobody can get anywhere. The Lizard Squad used a network of interconnected computers infected with malware to allow them access, then using these computers—called zombies—they invaded XBox and PSN, clogging the system and collapsing the network.
It’s something most hackers know about in theory. Lots might even be able to pull one off if they’re skilled enough. But it takes a special kind of hacker, or squad of hackers, to perform a nearly irreversible DDoS attack, especially one on this scale. XBox and Playstation needed a powerhouse to get their asses out of a bind, and that powerhouse came in Kim Dotcom.
Kim Dotcom—who deserves an episode all his own (and is getting one in the near future)—is a Finnish-German internet businessman and cyber-genius. He was also one of the first major hackers and one of the most influential of all time. But the most important thing to know for this particular story is that at the time of the Christmas day hack, he had a ton of influence in the realm of the world wide web. So when Kim sees gamers getting globally screwed by a DDoS, he jumps over to Twitter…
Kim: Asking Mega management to approve 3000 @MegaPrivacy premium vouchers for @LizardMafia if they stop attacking XBOX Live and PSN immediately.
Mega, or Megaupload, was, at the time, a digital file storing software company that Kim had started in 2005. What are mega privacy premium vouchers? In a sense, they were like Wonka’s Golden Tickets. Imagine a digital storage unit, not just safe and secure, but hidden away and made invisible from curious, prying eyes by super-encryption. A voucher gets you a storage unit for free… Now imagine how valuable one of those could be in the hands of a nefarious hacker.
It’s like negotiating with a loose-cannon gunman by saying if he lets his hostages go, you’ll give you a hundred pounds of ammo. It’s a hail-mary of a move, and it works. It’s been said that these privacy vouchers could have been worth tens of thousands of dollars if sold on the black market, someplace like Dark0de.
Which, for a good while, was enough to satiate the LizardSquad hackers. And by a good while I mean a few hours. Because there is no honor among thieves, and soon the gaming networks are down again. Cries of profanity are heard ringing ‘round the world.
If it isn’t money, or even super-encrypted invisibility they want, what the hell is it? In the past they said they were trying to make a point, to highlight the flaws in a gaming network’s system, to show some corporate gaming conglomerate that they weren’t really safe, not with a bunch of holes in the hulls of their flagships. But, when networks go down again, people’s worst fears are beginning to sound more and more plausible: that what Lizard Squad really, truly wanted was to just… screw with people for the fun of it. To watch the internet quiver at their feet and make people feel bad on Christmas. Maybe they were the villains for the sake of villainy.
But then a challenger entered the arena.
Just a few hours after the take-down of the XBox and PSN gaming networks, a group called Finest Squad, a rival group of hackers, makes its grand entrance into the battle via Twitter with an announcement that they’ll be taking down Lizard Squad and stopping the gaming hack.
Finest Squad and the Lizards had some history, but this was Christmas that was on the line. The fight was on…
Act 4
Snapchat and Twitter are flooded with videos of gamers, cameras turned on their angry, desperate faces, and they start begging.
Voice 1: Please please PLEASE, just let me play my game! COME ON!
Voice 2: This is so stupid, why are you doing this? WHY?
Voice 3: You’ve ruined my life, Lizard Squad! Screw you! You ruined everything!
If the powerhouse Kim Dotcom and his offer of, essentially, hundreds of thousands of dollars couldn’t save Christmas, maybe a rival group of hackers could.
“Finest Squad” sounds like a half-baked, uninspired and exceedingly juvenile attempt at sounding cool while also taking a jab at the Lizard Squad name, which was already a childish group name to begin with. But dumb name aside, Finest Squad was dead serious about taking Lizard Squad down and saving Christmas.
They started by trying to take down Lizard Squad’s Twitter and website.
This group of unknowns had come onto the scene and started talking a big game, but earlier in the year the rival group had managed to post some sensitive and private personal information about some of the members of Lizard Squad… allegedly. The Lizard’s said it was all bull, but they would say that, wouldn’t they?
The real test for Finest Squad would be stopping the Lizards on this of all days, Christmas day, when it mattered most… and after several attempts, they couldn't.
The Lizard’s attack continues undeterred, an immovable force. Their horde of zombies is holding fast…
It’s here that the tides finally turn, but for the reasons anybody hoped for. In fact, the Lizard’s abrupt halt of their cyber attack seemed to unsettle people just as much as it relieved them. The Lizard Squad reopened access to the servers on their terms, stopping while they were ahead, still on top. And in doing so, they sent a very clear message: You can have your game because we deemed it so. Remember who holds the cards.
________________________
As it turned out, the personal information on the Lizards that Finest Squad leaked to the public was of great interest to law enforcement. And, despite the fact that the Lizards said it was all fake bogus, it did lead investigators to their front doors… literally.
SFX: British police siren… knock on door…
Officer: Police! Open up, we’ve got a warrant.
Four short days after the Christmas Day hack, British police are knocking on Vinnie Omari’s front door. The 22-year-old Omari is up in his room, looking down at the Police cars parked in front of his house. The knocking is persistent, and he realizes there’s nowhere for him to run…
November 2019. A photo goes out to Twitter from the Lizard Squad account. The photo is of a police van parked outside of somebody's house with the caption…
Tweet: So long friends, it’s been a good run…
But the tweet ends with this…
Tweet: You cannot arrest a lizard.
Thing is, you can. And you can charge them with federal crimes, like hacking-for-hire.
Zachary Buchta, who went by the handle FBI-ARE-LOSERS, is arrested in the UK. The following day he tweeted that the Lizards are hiring the very best lawyers… but his eventual jail sentence said otherwise.
In total, 4 known members of the Lizard Squad were sentenced. 22 year old Vinnie Omari, 17 year old Zachary Buchta, 19 year old Julius Kivimäki, and 19 year old Bradley Jan Willem van Rooey. Whether there are more members still out there under a different name, we don’t know for sure. Maybe we never will.
Though the convicted Lizard Squad members wouldn’t be taken down all at once—with many of them eventually turning on each other before they were arrested—before they saw the inside of a jail cell, on that December 25th, they managed to do what they set out to do—vanish into the dark tangles of the web victorious, leaving everybody in their wake with the sinking-gut feeling that they would be back, and asking themselves who would be able to stop them when they returned. On that day in 2014, the Lizard Squad managed to solidify their infamy forever.
I’m Keith Korneluk and you’re listening to Modem Mischief.
Credits
Thanks for listening to Modem Mischief. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe or follow button in your podcast app right now so you don’t miss an episode. This show is an independent production and is wholly supported by you, our listeners and the best way to support the show is to share it. Tell your friends, your enemies, send it inside a Christmas fruit cake. And another way to support us is on Patreon. For as little as $5 a month you’ll receive an ad-free version of the show plus monthly bonus episodes (like this one) exclusive to subscribers. Modem Mischief is brought to you by Mad Dragon Productions and is created, produced and hosted by me: Keith Korneluk. This episode is written and researched by Dmytryk Carreno. Mixed and mastered by David Swope aka DJ Mixxy Claus. The theme song “You Are Digital '' is composed by Computerbandit. Sources for this episode are available on our website at modemmischief.com. And don’t forget to follow us on social media at @modemmischief. Thanks for listening! And happy holidays!