An unidentified hacker reportedly breached the Xbox 360 and PSP ISO forums, exposing the details of over 2.5 million gamers' accounts. According to independent security expert Troy Hunt, hackers targeted the "XBOX360 ISO" and "PSP ISO" forums back in September 2015, compromising the email addresses, account passwords and IP addresses.

The hackers behind the intrusions have not been identified yet. Users have been advised to change all of their accounts' passwords. "Data breaches are often sold via darkweb sites or within closed trading circles," Hunt, who runs the breach notification website HaveIBeenPwned, told the publication.

A group of hackers is threatening to take the gaming networks related to Xbox and PlayStation consoles offline for a week during Christmas, mirroring a similar attack last year that stopped gamers around the world from accessing games.

The group, which calls itself Phantom Squad, says it has already started attacking various gaming networks, including PlayStation Network, Xbox Live and Grand Theft Auto 5, and on Tuesday morning it said it had taken Reddit offline with a cyberattack. Experts have contacted Reddit to ask if it went offline as a result of a cyberattack, but at the time of publication there has been no response.

Microsoft accidentally leaked a website security certificate that, if used by an attacker, could open up Xbox users to impersonation attacks. The software giant warned in an advisory that the private keys to the xboxlive.com domain had been "inadvertently disclosed," but did not elaborate on exactly how it happened.

The certificate can be used by an attacker to impersonate the xboxlive.com domain and carry out a so-called "man-in-the-middle" attacks, which allows the attacker to intercept the website's secure connection. This could trick Xbox users into handing over their username and password, potentially leading to further attacks on the user.

The cyber-assaults disabling Sony PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox game consoles may have been done by hackers 'for laughs' - but is something more sinister going on?

​Every week, Ann and Jim Johnson put away a few pounds in their Christmas club. Their younger daughter got a doll’s house, their middle son a bike. But their oldest, Jamie, got a Sony PlayStation 4 – followed by several hours of anguished, then tearful, failure to make it work properly. He wanted to play with his friends and he couldn’t. It was the second disastrous cyberassault on Sony in a month. 

Ostensibly concerned that terrorists would disguise themselves as gamers in order to secretly communicate, agents from the NSA, CIA, Pentagon and Britain's GCHQ have posed undercover in online realms like World of Warcraft, Second Life, and Xbox Live. In fact, the practice grew so popular with the spy agencies that a special "deconfliction" group was established to prevent the agents from inadvertently spying on or trying to recruit each other.

Our country's best and brightest began disguising themselves as digital trolls, elves, and supermodels in 2008, after a top-secret NSA documents—provided by Edward Snowden described the games as a "target-rich communication network" that lets terrorists and other criminals "hide in plain sight."