The Lizard Squad hackers, who have reportedly been implicated in the Sony Pictures hacking scandal, have been on the attack.

To mangle an Australianism, they have been flat out like a lizard hacking, asking for certain numbers of retweets and tweet favouriting to bring the networks back up, with the ‘official’ Lizard Squad Twitter account being suspended.

However @LizardSquad69 has been active, asking for levels of retweets and favourites to allow the networks to come back up, with reported Lizard Squad member @GDKJordie promising ‘more fun and games tomorrow’.

What it all means is that one of the busiest times of the year for Xbox and Playstation owners wanting to use the Xbox Live and Playstation Network online services was ‘ruined’ by hackers in it for the ‘lulz’ - which is Internet hacker speak for ‘the laughs’.

Meanwhile the anti-Lizard Squad of ‘white hat’ hackers, the ‘good guys’ known as ‘Finest Squad’ report that both Xbox Live and Playstation Network should be back soon.

About 2 hours ago Finest Squad said ‘Xbox and PSN have been restored. Give it about 30 min to an hour for full service’.

However the Xbox Live service status page says that while everything else is up and running, Xbox Live Core Services are still ‘limited’.

The AskPlaystation Twitter account says “Our engineers are continuing to work hard to resolve the network issues users have experienced today. Thanks for your continued patience!”

So, if you’ve been having issues, you’ve probably known full well why if you’ve been following the news online, and while service is promised to be restored, there’s no guarantee the rest of 2014 will be smooth sailing.

It seems the hacking wars are still in full swing - with both Xbox Live and the Playstation Network involved in ‘games’ they likely never thought they would ever be playing!