Call it a belated Christmas season miracle.
This is a story of an eccentric Internet entrepreneur who singlehandedly may have managed to save gamers around the world -- and the Christmas season -- from a hacking collective known as Lizard Squad.
Microsoft's Xbox Live and Sony's PlayStation Network both suffered outages Christmas Day that extended into today, frustrating gamers who were unable to enjoy their consoles for the holiday.
It seems all it took for Lizard Squad to call off the attacks the group said it perpetrated on the gaming networks was a little diplomacy from MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom, according to Dotcom and Lizard Squad tweets.
Lizard Squad: Who Is the Group Claiming Responsibility for High Profile Hacks? Hacking Victim Turns Tables on Attacker With Bounty Xbox Live, PlayStation Network Suffer OutagesThe multimillionaire, who is based in New Zealand, is embattled in his own legal woes. He is expected to find out early next year whether he'll be extradited to the United States, where he is wanted on charges related to piracy, copyright infringement and racketeering.
(Dotcom, who changed his name from Kim Schmitz, has said he is not guilty.)
Under the deal Lizard Squad said it reached with Dotcom, the group received 3,000 premium MegaPrivacy vouchers from Dotcom's company, which allows it end-to-end encryption and secure storage services.
While it appeared both networks were still dark this morning, Lizard Squad tweeted it had stopped its "distributed denial of service" attacks and said the current downtime is "just the aftermath."
Neither Microsoft nor Sony blamed the problem on hackers. Both companies said they were investigating the problems.
Cole Stryker, who explored the hacking culture in his book "Hacking the Future: Privacy, Identity, and Anonymity on the Web," said Lizard Squad's style of hacking seems very similar to the "early days of LulzSec," a former hacking group.
"Very trollish, prankstery," Stryker told ABC News earlier this year. "I don't believe this person genuinely wants to be involved in geopolitics. I think this person is just having a laugh."
Still, the DDoS (distributed denial of service attacks) for which Lizard Squad has claimed credit has caused plenty of inconveniences.
Earlier this month, the group said it hacked Sony's PlayStation Store.
Lizard Squad previously claimed responsibility for cyberattacks that briefly knocked the Vatican's website, Battle.net and League of Legends offline.