Pirates attacked Thursday networks Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, making the online connection of game consoles impossible during the Christmas holidays. Friday night, only two service was available.

Gamers have spent very bad Christmas. The online services used by game console owners PlayStation (Sony) and Xbox (Microsoft) have been largely inaccessible in the world the day and the day after Christmas.

The Xbox Live service was restored Friday mid-afternoon. However, Playtation Network still did not work Friday night.

Microsoft and Sony have been the victims of an attack by Denial of Service (DDoS): Hundreds of thousands of PCs, but also smartphones and tablets, have concurrently connected to servers to saturate.For some games on both consoles, the online connection is required to play, make updates or dematerialized buy games.

The attack had yet been announced in advance by the group of hackers Lizard Squad. Pirates far from unknown for Sony: they had hacked for a few hours the Japanese company server 8 December, making it unavailable online connection.The group announced new attacks for Christmas.

On Friday, the group of hackers, who did not give details on the motivations of these hacks, welcomed on his Twitter page of its growing number of subscribers. The authenticity of the account remains, however, difficult to verify.

Several experts remained skeptical Friday about the prolonged failure of serversXbox and Playstation . These groups are used to this kind of attack, I do not understand why they did not do more to protect themselves, said AFP Jean-François Beuze, president of the company expert in the field of ICT, Sifaris .

The specialist refers to a possible space of Sony and Microsoft for publicize these events and urge the [US] government to make an example by arresting members of Lizard Squad.

Tired of waiting, a well-known video game fans personality has even appeared in the negotiations Friday. Kim Dotcom , the founder of Mega – a secure online storage service – offered Lizard Squad free premium accounts, on the sole condition that they leave the servers of Xbox Live and PlayStation Network quiet (see updates from Kim Dotcom below).

Officially, the Lizard Squad ceased attacks Friday 3 am, but the networks were still upset Friday night on the PlayStation Network.

For Microsoft and Sony , which has recently been the subject of a cyber attack on its cinema subsidiary attributed to North Korea, injuries related to these hacks are not yet quantified.

In April 2011, Sony had suffered a massive hacking of about 100 million users of personal data. The firm had to disable the network for three weeks, and had estimated its losses in the billions of dollars.