DDoS attack
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New DoS attack exploits algorithms to knock sites offline
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have caused their share of online chaos in the past, from being used to target messaging service Telegram during the Hong Kong unrest to crippling emergency communication systems in the US. Now, researchers have described a new vulnerability which could affect sites all over the internet.
UK police arrest teens for using Lizard Squad's paid DDoS service
Six British teenagers have been arrested for using Lizard Stresser, a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) tool developed by the troublesome hacker collective Lizard Squad. According to the National Crime Agency (NCA), these individuals, who have now been released on bail, targeted a national newspaper, a school, gaming companies and various online retailers. They paid in "alternative" currencies such as Bitcoin in order to stay anonymous, however those measures have proven futile. Lizard Squad rose to prominence last year when it took down the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. The group quickly claimed responsibility and, as if it were marketing stunt, launched Lizard Stresser -- a takedown-for-hire service that allowed anyone to cripple unsuspecting sites.
PSA: PlayStation Network back online, service restored [Update]
The PlayStation Network appears to be fully armed and operational, according to an update post on the PlayStation Blog. The update confirms that the PSN suffered a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack on Christmas Eve Day, and though the group that took credit for bringing the service down claimed to have ceased its attack on December 25, it was not until late last evening that service was restored. Sony now reports in no uncertain terms that "PlayStation Network is back online." If you received or purchased a PlayStation system over the holidays, you should be free to enjoy your new console. Update: If you're a PS4 user still having difficulties logging in, the Ask PlayStation Twitter account suggests that age-old fix of restarting your system. A tweet reads, "PS4 users: If you are still having issues signing in to PSN today, please reboot the console and try again." [Image: Sony]
Xbox Live, PSN suffer outages in apparent denial of service attack [Update]
Update: In a tweet early this morning, PlayStation support wrote: "PS4, PS3, and Vita network services are gradually coming back online – thanks for your patience." Save for some apps experiencing issues, Xbox Live appears to have been cleared of connectivity problems. Original Post: The Grinch stole online connectivity this year, it would seem. Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network have been hit with online issues, with each service taken offline in an apparent DDoS attack (distributed denial of service). The targeted attack began late in the evening on December 24 and continues today. PlayStation Network services, including the Sony Network Entertainment website, are currently offline. Xbox Live services appear to be functioning in part on Xbox One and Xbox 360; however, some users are still reporting issues connecting to Xbox Live, playing games online and accessing cloud content – including any pinned games and apps. Sony and Microsoft have acknowledged the outages via their respective Twitter accounts. "We are aware that some users are experiencing difficulty logging into the PSN. We will update this article with any changes that occur in regards to this issue. Thank you for your patience," the PlayStation Network status page added. Sony's service has been taken offline for maintenance. The Xbox Support Page notes a select number of apps are currently experiencing issues.
World of Warcraft hit by DDoS attack on expansion launch day
There's something about a major launch that brings out all of the cyber griefers, and Warlords of Draenor's launch day is no different. Blizzard confirmed this evening that the game was hit by direct denial of service (DDoS) attacks that have been causing issues, and the studio is taking steps to combat it, including temporarily lowering the maximum populations on servers: We're excited to finally launch Warlords of Draenor and explore this new world with you, but we know that the experience has been less than ideal as we approach our first full day of launch. Europe was our first region to launch, and we encountered a few issues due to the sheer number of players attempting to enter Draenor from a single location. We worked to add multiple new ways to access Draenor, and this helped ease some of the initial rush into the new expansion as players were able to access it from their capital cities, as well as from the shrines in Pandaria. While that solution helped a ton for our North American launch, we ran into a few other issues, including a distributed denial of service attack, that resulted in increased latency. Later this evening, Bashiok updated players on the ongoing server issues as they unfolded over US prime time: We're continuing to work toward greater realm stability and address the service issues impacting latency. Our current biggest hurdle is the concentration of players in specific areas and zones, and an unexpected effect of that concentration on the realm stability. We're continuing to maintain a lowered realm population cap to help with the stability, which is resulting in increased queue times. We're seeing some increase in individual zones drop which are causing localized player disconnections as we get into primetime in the Americas, and if someone is disconnected they will quite likely run into a queue to log back in. Work is progressing on improving realm stability through fixes targeting individual in-game issues, as well as on the backend game and network services.
E-thugs target Destiny with DDoS attacks
Destiny has been made the target of a round of DDoS attacks, coming from the same group that previously took credit for executing a similar attack against Sony Online Entertainment and a bomb threat on John Smedley's plane (among other harassment). Players were told that the game was facing issues with logging in and matchmaking across the board, but Bungie declined to elaborate further at the time; the tweet on the matter has since been deleted. Our sister site Joystiq reports that the servers are up again. Hacker group Lizard Squad has taken credit for taking parts of the game offline, an attack which also affected Call of Duty: Ghosts. Congratulations are in order for Destiny, since nothing says you've arrived like people taking down your servers as part of a petty show of power.
PSA: PSN gets knocked down again [Update: Back online]
The PlayStation Network servers are currently out of commission for the second time in as many days. Sony posted a notice to its official Twitter account that its engineers are "aware of connectivity issues" and "are working to resolve" them. PSN suffered an outage for the majority of Sunday thanks to an apparent DDoS attack (distributed denial of service). Sony noted that no personal information was accessed in the attack. b=Both PSN and Sony Entertainment Network were "impacted by an attempt to overwhelm our network with artificially high traffic," though it's unclear if that's also causing today's issues. We'll update this post when PSN is up and running again. Update: Sony said that "network connectivity is being restored," and thanks players for their patience. [Image: Sony]
Connection problems for both North American and European players
Blizzard Customer Service is in the process of dealing with connection issues facing players on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. For the North American players, login errors have been plaguing both the Account Management website, and several games--World of Warcraft, Diablo III, and Hearthstone. (NA) We continue to look into the login issues for the website (Account Management, forums, etc) & in game. WoW - Error 113 D3/HS - Error 73 - BlizzardCS (@BlizzardCS) April 1, 2014 For players in Europe, Blizzard noted yesterday on their EU support blog that the high latency and connection issues are, in fact, the result of a series of DDoS attacks that have been levied at Blizzard servers for the past few days. Blizzard is monitoring the situation and asks that players follow their European customer service Twitter account for updates and further information.
Wurm Online still offline, offers bounty for DDOS attacker
Wurm Online's 1.2 patch was supposed to herald a day of rejoicing for the community, but that quickly turned sour as a severe DDOS attack on its hosting forced the devs to take the game offline for over a day now. "Shortly after todays update we were the target of a DDOS attack and our hosting provider had to pull us off the grid for now," Code Club posted. "As annoying as this may be, we are taking steps to turn this to everyones advantage. I announced earlier that we were already looking at migrating the hosting of Wurm. When the attack forced us offline, we went straight ahead and pushed for this to happen as soon as possible." The team is working on switching hosting and said that service should be restored within a day. Code Club is offering a bounty of 10,000 Euro "for any tips or evidence leading to a conviction of the person responsible for this attack."
Hackers harass League of Legends livestreamer with DDoS attacks and police calls
A vendetta against a livestreamer has caused real-world havoc. A user or group identifying itself as DERP has targeted a popular Twitch streamer, calling the police on him and performing DDoS attacks against the games he was playing on December 30th. The streamer's name is James Varga, and according to reports, the games he was broadcasting were shut down by hackers performing distributed denial of service attacks. These games included League of Legends, Dota 2, and those through Battle.net. Varga continued to communicate with DERP during this time, and either DERP or a third party escalated matters by calling 911 and claiming that Varga was holding hostages in his home. Varga was then briefly detained while the police searched his home, but he was released without charges. This is similar to an incident earlier last month when a World of Warcraft livestreamer was arrested after someone called the police on him to interrupt his stream.
EVE Online services restored
We reported earlier today about a DDOS attack launched against the EVE Online servers, but we have good news for the game's players. After a prolonged outage, the servers are back online, with an official update from CCP's COO. According to the update, the team is continuing to monitor the situation closely, but at this time it does not appear that there was any breach of the company's infrastructure nor any risk of personal data being leaked. As noted in the letter, the shutdown was an immediate reaction to the threat of any security breach, taken in the hopes of staving off any serious threats to the game or its players. The company apologizes to players affected by the downtime as well as the lack of any subsequent notification, but most EVE Online players will just be happy that the game is back online and should remain so barring any unforeseen complications.
