Debunk: Xbox Live was down, but not due to DDoS attack

The obvious answer as to why Xbox Live has been up and down (but mostly down) over the last couple of weeks is, of course, that the service has undergone a massive distributed denial of service attack. (Feel free to blame the illusory Sony / Nintendo fanboys, if you must.) Naturally, we're already starting to see some of those rumors catch hold, in no small part due to the fact that while GM of Xbox Live Marc Whitten did offer a free game for peoples' trouble in his public memo a few hours ago, he didn't speak to the cause of the outages. We did, however, get some conclusive inside information from a trusted source, and confidently relay to curious Live users that the issues were not at all related to a malicious attack. Yeah, we know, it tones down the drama quite a bit (and actually makes the Xbox team look a little worse than if they were attacked), but the speculation that the service was out due to a two week long internet assault? The stuff of myth.

[Ian @ Jan 4th 2008 3:26AM]

god if someone tried to hack one system for 2 weeks and they DIDNT catch them.. that would just be sad.(if it was only one person) i find it kinda hard to believe that anyone really thinks it was under attack the entire time

[Andrew Jones @ Jan 4th 2008 10:10AM]

This probably started off with a much more accurate version - what is ESSENTIALLY happening is a DDoS attack from all of the people trying to connect to the service simultaneously. Somebody misunderstood, took that to mean that somebody was actively attacking Live, and there we have the internet myth.

[Vol @ Jan 4th 2008 1:47PM]

Here's what happened.. they sold about 800K+ 360's for Christmas. Probably 600K were unwrapped on Christmas morning and the service was bogged down. Imagine 800K new users coming onto a network. That doesn't happen without its pains.

Even though they said they were prepared.

[waiownsyou @ Jan 4th 2008 3:32AM]

I think it's safe to say that Engadget bloggers use the XBOX Live more than the people who work at Microsoft Game Studios.

XBOX Live is down?! O RLY?!

[Blake Bowen @ Jan 4th 2008 3:35AM]

In a loose sense, doesn't the act of people playing on live qualify as a "massive distributed denial of service attack?"

[Dave @ Jan 4th 2008 4:10AM]

No.

A denial service of attack is a deliberate attempt to "deny service". Normal users are trying to "use the service".

[mtl @ Jan 4th 2008 9:13AM]

By using the service, they are potentially denying it to others.

[BigDaddyM @ Jan 4th 2008 3:36AM]

I am more willing to believe that Microsoft was unprepared for the surge of users in the holidays than the black ops of a hacker, especially considering the time frame.

However, anything is possible.

I also believe that a DDOS is a better escape goat than too many users. Blame some mythilogical basment dweller...
M

[ck @ Jan 4th 2008 4:33AM]

"Escape goat"?

That is too awesome.

[T H @ Jan 4th 2008 4:55AM]

I def loled

had to say it out loud in fact

"escape goat"

loled again

[Wwhat @ Jan 4th 2008 1:30PM]

scapegoat
n noun
1 a person who is blamed for the wrongdoings or mistakes of others.
2 (in the Bible) a goat sent into the wilderness after the Jewish chief priest had symbolically laid the sins of the people upon it (Lev. 16).
n verb make a scapegoat of.

ORIGIN
from archaic scape 'escape' + goat.
---
So it does come from escape goat anyway which makes it a bit irrelevant if someone uses the proper word 'scapegoat'

[Wwhat @ Jan 4th 2008 1:34PM]

Oh and what is 'def' and 'loled'? abbreviation should be closed with a dot and acronyms should use capitals if I'm not mistaking.
But you linguists would know better I guess.

[Sam @ Jan 5th 2008 5:04AM]

its "mistaken" =P

[spiky.bobby @ Jan 10th 2008 2:00PM]

Its so mind bottling!

[superted @ Jan 4th 2008 4:09AM]

oh maaaan, this has been frustrating.

Surely that Major Nelson guy who claims to be the face of Xbox Live should be fired by now... 2 Weeks downtime for a paid service is very poor indeed.

My bet is that we all get 200 points (meaning we'll need to add more points to actually buy something)

[Rk @ Jan 4th 2008 7:40AM]

Why? Like you said, he's the face - not the brain.

[Dalrik360 @ Jan 4th 2008 5:07PM]

You know ive had no truble with xbox live so i dont know what the big deal is so it was down deal with it it happens thats life

[David W. @ Jan 4th 2008 11:20AM]

he just says what microsoft tells him to say...he's simply a tool (a cool one), but a tool none the less...he has absolutely nothing to do with this

[superted @ Jan 4th 2008 11:24AM]

I'm just venting it seems...

The service looks to be up and running correctly now. Fingers crossed.

[Carbonize @ Jan 4th 2008 12:58PM]

Actually MS is going to give everybody a free XBLM game according to 360 Fanboy.

[FIR3BRDRACR @ Jan 4th 2008 4:10AM]

you know, im actually all for them being honest...
"hey, we screwed up, heres a free game"
enough said
(back to COD4!!!!)

[Paul @ Jan 4th 2008 4:12AM]

Will Engadget stop with the xbox live downtime crap? Seriously, this is like the 20th post about it since it began.

[Tim Brown @ Jan 4th 2008 6:52AM]

Its better than all the iPod/iPhone/iTwaddle posts, that we have been inundated with of late ;P

[TrentD @ Jan 4th 2008 8:32AM]

I'm interested in it - that's the point of a blog - to aggregate information in one place where people of similar interest can read it.

There are plenty of articles here that don't interest me. I just don't click them. And I certainly don't take the time to post in the comments section :)

[nohbudy @ Jan 4th 2008 4:27AM]

While this sounds nice, it is the usual Ryan snide comments. I have not heard anybody blame PS3/Wii users, but you are tying to make it sound as the 360 fans or Microsoft were using them as an excuse? So are you saying that the Apple keyboard failures is the fault of Microsoft? That the heat problems Apple laptops had is the fault of Dell? No? Figures.

You also say "but mostly down". Care to give us some stats on that? You have been continuously updating us with the status of LIVE, so you must have some hard facts to back that up. Was it (being you used the word "mostly") 51%, 60%, 70%, .. etc? You must know, so give us the stats.

After this site caused the drop in apple stock, you would think that you would be a bit more careful with your rumors, but this is Microsoft, and knowing your track history, anything you can do to knock them down a bit is all good-ness. Right?

[Ogo2k @ Jan 4th 2008 4:32AM]

not really the thing of myth, but good talk anyhow...

[Me @ Jan 4th 2008 4:39AM]

I am a spammer: [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]

[Scrapp @ Jan 4th 2008 4:55AM]

The outage is probably due to automatic software updates.

John Alden, Vice President of Business Development for GameRail , a private network service that enhances the performance of online multiplayer games, says "Every time you log on as a first-time user you're getting software updates." He also states, "Just like with any software you buy, the first thing it does is run home to mama for an update. The initial onslaught of Halo 3 players saturated the network with updates, which are fairly large files."


http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=142220

[David W. @ Jan 4th 2008 11:26AM]

I never thought about that...it does make sense

[Alan Strangis @ Jan 4th 2008 12:01PM]

I'd say that, combined with the number of older 360's sold without the Fall Update would definitely cause a problem.

I had the holidays off and played online almost every day. Only one day did I encounter any real problems from here in Toronto. At the same time, a friend only a couple of kilometres away had issues much more frequently (and sometimes at the same time as me).

[Josef @ Jan 4th 2008 5:11AM]

Well, this XBL post is better than the previous 312 XBL posts in that it actually contains new information (not DDoS, check). But Ryan, you can stop with the daily "hey, it's still down" posts. It's probably a safe bet that anybody that cares about it already knows about it.

[Chris @ Jan 4th 2008 6:53AM]

"and actually makes the Xbox team look a little worse than if they were attacked"

who are you to make this comment?

[superted @ Jan 4th 2008 7:17AM]

he's a commenter, it's a comment

I also slightly agree with him/her

[Wwhat @ Jan 4th 2008 1:38PM]

Seems clear, an attack is out of the xbox team's hands, a screw-up they created themselves is something they are responsible for.
And failing because something you did yourself is generally considered more embarrassing

[Aaron Wanker @ Jan 4th 2008 7:40AM]

Okay, to address the first of your three complaints. I did not get the impression, and I still don't think that Ryan was trying to blame sony/nintendo fans, when I first read that part of the post, that humurous thought had entered my mind, but only as a humurous thought... especially given the satirical way in which the article is written.

Now for # two. I would say that by mostly down, he means "most of the time when I tried to log on, XBL was down", not "We were told that the network was down X% of the time." I would say this constitutes a proper use of the phrase "mostly down"

And for three. I wasn't checking Engadget when the Apple thing went down, but from what I see, there was no deffinitive proof that the stock dropped specifically because of Engadget (I could believe that, but I'm speaking objectively there). Subjectively, it looks like an acceptable possibility, but I don't think that it was on purpose. The research I've done on it (not too much mind you), says that it was indeed a mistake, and that as soon as Engadget saw that they were wrong they corrected the erronious info. I don't think that in twenty minutes, enough stock holders saw the post and immediately sold their stock. If so, it's amazing how fast word from one website spread so far and wide. Also, knowing that Engadget will update posts, shouldn't one wait to see if there are any updates before selling stock? all in all, on the stock issue I don't think Engadget is solely to blame for the Apple stock drop, and that the incident may have produced a few nit-pickers.

[Aaron Wanker @ Jan 4th 2008 8:41AM]

Sorry, that was meant as a reply to nohbudy.

[nohbudy @ Jan 4th 2008 2:01PM]

While what I wrote has a bit of truth to it, I am just trying to be as annoying, and as much of an ass as possible to show how much of an ass Ryan is being with his flame bait posts as of late.

[Aaron Wanker @ Jan 4th 2008 3:13PM]

I never denied that what you said had no truth (I know that I'm not God, I don't know everything). But I will say that your being a complete asshole (which I also do not deny), will not solve everything. Look at how you reacted to my response (I believe I did detect some defensiveness), don't you think that Ryan would probably have a similar reaction? that would defeat your own purpose, of trying to make him stop posting what you claim to be "flame baited" articles, that as far as I can tell, most other people have no problem with.

think before you type.
I'll say it again
think before you type.

[nohbudy @ Jan 4th 2008 5:36PM]

"Look at how you reacted to my response (I believe I did detect some defensiveness)"

I think you misunderstood. The only defensive tact that I was taking was explaining in why I used the tone I used in my original post - taking the most extreme position possible in much the same way that many people have commented that Ryan uses in his posts. My response to you was in no way meaning to be against you, but was said in the most sincere way possible. If you think that I was talking to you in that way, then I do apologize.

[Juice @ Jan 4th 2008 8:52AM]

Let's all vent over here.

http://www.xboxlivesucks.com

:D

[NLN350 @ Jan 4th 2008 8:58AM]

WTF, This is supposed to be a paid subscription and all we get is a massive down time?! C'mon Microsoft you can do better than that!!!

[lmjabreu @ Jan 4th 2008 9:19AM]

They can?

[Josh Jacobs @ Jan 4th 2008 9:14AM]

my xbox has suffered a ring of death plight recently, i cant complain about te outages...

[KillerScene @ Jan 4th 2008 9:14AM]

Has everyone else forgotten that these Xbox Live problems all started on the very same day that Microsoft offered HD download of "300" for an introductory one-day offer of 100 m$ points to the whole of europe?

Coincidence?

My guess is that they underestimated the take-up of this offer, and it was so vastly over-subscribed it brought the servers to their knees.

Microsoft are being coy because they don't want us all to know that the much trumpeted, all-new HD video download service they launched in europe over xmas is anything less than a flawless new content delivery system, the dawn of a new age if you will. I, for one, would be interested to know just exactly how many users took up that offer. BTW, I did, and my download finally finished last night, a full six days after I bought it.

[Michael @ Jan 4th 2008 9:22AM]

If I had to make an educated guess, I'd point the finger directly at Call of Duty 4 for these reasons:

1. The game (multiplayer specifically) has had a huge popularity spike over the last month, as evidenced by the total number players online across the server and playlists.

2. The game downloads and uploads a bunch of data every time you start multiplayer, find a match, get a match, etc. It must be a bandwidth nightmare for Live, especially with more and more players online.

3. COD4 is the only specific game still (somewhat) shitting the bed on Live.

[Wwhat @ Jan 4th 2008 1:40PM]

IF that is the cause then the management of the network is to blame don't you think? they know what they let loose on it and they have the money to expand capacity or streamline it better.

[Nina Mo @ Jan 4th 2008 11:08AM]

I was irritated but then again I figured it was the normal Chirstmas spike in users. Just get it fixed and yup I'm down for a new game.

[Minch @ Jan 4th 2008 11:58AM]

ha... I just logged on and realized that I was getting a free game. neat. I didnt have a single day of lost service...My XBL worked fine throughout.

[Speddy @ Jan 4th 2008 12:12PM]

HR, Marketing and Management have to blame.

Now think really hard why. Come on. You can do it. Now go watch Office Space.

[Karl Viklund @ Jan 4th 2008 12:51PM]

Who cares? If you want to get locked in to a singel wendor, a singel platform, please us Microsoft Xbox and Xbox live. The same goes for PS3 and Wii. Use a PC and you will stay happy.