Flight Diverted After Hackers Targeting Playstation Network Tweet Bomb Threat

American Airlines flight 362 en route to San Diego was diverted to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport on Sunday after a hacking group targeting the Playstation Network (PSN) tweeted a bomb threat to the airline company.

The threat appears to have been made specifically to inconvenience John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, who was on board the flight, in addition to a cyber attack on Sony’s online service that has resulted in PSN being offline for most of the day. The group, identifying itself as Lizard Squad, also tweeted a video from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks of planes flying into the World Trade Center with the hashtag #PrayForFlight362 to Smedley’s Twitter account.

American Airlines confirmed that the flight was rerouted “due to a security related issue,” and Smedley addressed the incident on his own Twitter account:

Sony released a statement to Shacknews indicating that the FBI was investigating the threat but that no further details could be released “as this has now become a matter of national security.” Lizard Squad had made several tweets earlier in the day referencing Islamic State, the jihadist group terrorizing Syria and Iraq.

The seriousness of these tweets is questionable, as the group later laughed at the suggestion that the incident had become a matter of national security in a Facebook post.

Lizard Squad launched a cyber attack against PSN early Sunday morning, resulting in gamers being unable to play online or access the Sony store. Popular video apps like Netflix and Amazon Video appear to be unaffected. Sony confirmed that the denial-of-service attack had resulted in a PSN outage on the company’s official blog. The company also claimed that no personal information of customers with PSN accounts was compromised as a result of the cyber attack.

Lizard Squad has since claimed to have attacked Xbox Live, the online service for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Xbox One gaming platforms. Microsoft customer support has confirmed a disruption of service.