Lizard Squad

Lizard Squad is a black hat hacking group, mainly known for their claims of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks primarily to disrupt gaming-related services.

On September 3, 2014, Lizard Squad seemingly announced that it had disbanded only to return later on, claiming responsibility for a variety of attacks on prominent websites. The organisation at one point participated in the Darkode hacking forums and shared hosting with them.

Distributed denial-of-service attacks

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack occurs when numerous systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system, usually one or more web servers. Such an attack is often the result of multiple systems (for example a botnet) flooding the targeted system with traffic. When a server is overloaded with connections, new connections can no longer be accepted.

Notable actions

League of Legends DDoS

On August 18, 2014, servers of the game League of Legends were taken offline with a DDoS attack; this was claimed as Lizard Squad's first attack.

Lizard

Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with approximately over 6,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The group, traditionally recognized as the suborder Lacertilia, is defined as all extant members of the Lepidosauria (reptiles with overlapping scales) that are neither sphenodonts (i.e., tuatara) nor snakes – they form an evolutionary grade. While the snakes are recognized as falling phylogenetically within the Toxicofera clade from which they evolved, the sphenodonts are the sister group to the squamates, the larger monophyletic group, which includes both the lizards and the snakes.

Biology

Lizards typically have feet and external ears, while snakes lack both of these characteristics. However, because they are defined negatively as excluding snakes, lizards have no unique distinguishing characteristic as a group. Lizards and snakes share a movable quadrate bone, distinguishing them from the sphenodonts, which have more primitive and solid diapsid skulls. Many lizards can detach their tails to escape from predators, an act called autotomy. Vision, including color vision, is particularly well developed in most lizards, and most communicate with body language or bright colors on their bodies, as well as with pheromones. Lizards are the most speciose among extant reptiles, comprising about 60% of all living species.

Squad

In military terminology, a squad is a sub-subunit led by a non-commissioned officer that is subordinate to an infantry platoon. In countries following the British Army tradition (Australian Army, Canadian Army, and others), this organization is referred to as a section. In most armies, a squad consists of eight to fourteen soldiers, and may be further subdivided into fireteams.

The equivalent to squad is the Gruppe, a sub-unit of 8 to 12 soldiers, in the German Bundeswehr, Austrian Bundesheer and Swiss Army.

Standard NATO symbol – squad (7 or 8 – 12 soldiers) – in NATO armed forces:

Organization

United States

United States Army

Historically, a "squad" in the US Army was a sub-unit of a section, consisting of from as few as two soldiers to as many as 12, and was primarily used for drill and administrative purposes (e.g., billeting, messing, working parties, etc.). The smallest tactical sub-unit being the section, which was also known as a half-platoon (the platoon itself being a half company).