Making use of website exploits to do hacking against websites took a back seat Tuesday for LulzSec—a group of malicious Internet hackers dubbed ‘pranksters’ by much of the media—for the use of a botnet for random DDoS attacks against various gaming industry websites. While the attacks seemed fairly random, especially noting the manifestos posted after each intrusion the group has committed in the past, the reason for the seeming change of modus opernadi is because they were taking suggestions through a telephone switchboard.

As part of what LulzSec called Operation #TitanicTakeoverTuesday, LulzSec set up a switchboard for fans to call in and speak with two of their members—the so-called Pierre Dubois and Francois Deluxe—and as part of their operation they warmed up their botnet.

In what seemed to be a continuation of their march against targets in the gaming industry—including attacks against Sony for having poor security, the game publisher Epic, industry developer Bethesda, and even Nintendo of America—they began by taking The Escapist Magazine’s website offline claiming to do so while using only a small amount of their total botnet resources.

“We’re firing at Escapist Magazine with around 0.4% of our total ammunition. Let’s see what their admins are made of – game is on, folks,” tweeted the hacker group.

They then turned their sights onto different massively multiplayer online game sites like CCP’s EVE Online, Minecraft, and League of Legends. In each case, the websites for the properties vanished under a torrent of data directed at them in DDoS attacks; but the hacker group claimed to be attacking the login servers, guessing the backwash sunk the websites along with them.

“@EveOnline our boats sunk your inferior spaceships, ujelly?” The hacker group taunted CCP by retweeting messages from their official Twitter account and then snarked about them taking down their network during the attack. “Silly Eve have taken their entire network offline after our very simple DDoS attack. Oh well, another day, another lulz!”

The only website that had anything related to their previous extravaganza that they took offline with their botnet happened to be that of Finfisher.com. According to LulzSec, “because apparently they sell monitoring software to the government or some shit like that.” An act that harkens back to the group’s declaration of war against the FBI and NATO—although, this attack also was a suggestion from their switchboard.

Taking Your Calls at 614-LULZSEC

During the course of the day, LulzSec invited fans and followers on Twitter to call into 614-LULZSEC, which piled up thousands of voice mails and sometimes callers got a chance to speak with one of the shadowy faces that make up the hacker group’s public mouthpieces on Twitter. The two that we know about at least. They fiddled with their hold music and take calls.

No doubt an action that continues to raise their visibility on the world stage as there’s already an FBI task force put together to determine the identities of the elements that make up this malicious prankster group. As of this morning, they have opened up the floodgates of their DDoS botnet again against game industry targets and likely we’ll hear more about their switchboard.

All of this put together suggests that they’re not just attacking websites, but they’re taunting law enforcement as they go. This sort of ramping up of juvenile behavior may mean that as a hacking group they’re on the road to a burn out or collapse when authorities finally do close in on them. They’re certainly sending up enough signal flares to help guide them in. Although, most of their hacks have been done in the past with the release of the exposed user secrets from delayed events; the DDoS attacks and switchboard are here-and-now.

More as it comes our way.