Guild Wars 2

Every few months it happens and usually at the most inconvient of times. If it was during the day, when most people are at work/school, it wouldn’t be so bad. However they seem to hit the game in the evening hours when they know people will be online. It also seems to be the same group of kids who brag about it on twitter (or at least taking credit for it). So why hasn’t this been dealt with already? I don’t recall other gaming companies having such a terrible problem…well except for that one time when Sony got hacked.

If they would stop putting all their eggs in one basket we wouldn’t have GW2 go down every time someone decides to DDoS Wildstar -_- Also if they could actually use some of that GW2 money to fund feature development on the game that’s earning it instead of siphoning it off to pay for other games that would be super.

I’m not sure it’s even possible to completely fullproof Anet’s servers or anyone’s against DDOS attacks.

and of course not changing backbone provider from Level3 dont help when they re route all traffic from USA through Europe then back to USA causing the lag most people see.

Went into Sparkfly 45 mins early to setup up a Teq kill. Played taxi for 20 mins filling the map. Got us all organized. Banners down. Feast of power food. Everything looking great. First phase, defense, and burn smooth as silk….then disconnected. FTW

Jack.1469:

I’m not sure it’s even possible to completely fullproof Anet’s servers or anyone’s against DDOS attacks.

A DDOS attack is basically impossible to prepare for, the only thing you can do is react to an attack.

Oh Wildstar shares the servers too? That’s kinda…I mean I get NCsoft and stuff but that just seems silly. You lose both games instead of just one. Twice the amount of people who don’t get to do anything.

Tman.6349:

Went into Sparkfly 45 mins early to setup up a Teq kill. Played taxi for 20 mins filling the map. Got us all organized. Banners down. Feast of power food. Everything looking great. First phase, defense, and burn smooth as silk….then disconnected. FTW

Same.

https://twitter.com/LizardSquad

it was DDOS from these guys it’s been making its way around ..gw2 facebook page etc

Basement dwelling “hacker” nerds sleep when the sun is out, thus attacks will only occur at night. I call them hackers even though they couldn’t hack their way out of a papper bag with a machete.

#offtheshelfhacks
#socialmisfitsunite

Jinroh.4251:

Oh Wildstar shares the servers too? That’s kinda…I mean I get NCsoft and stuff but that just seems silly. You lose both games instead of just one. Twice the amount of people who don’t get to do anything.

Tbh, this is really nothing new.

A lot of companies share data centers for their games. IIRC, even Blizzard.

If people would take decent care of their machines DDOS wouldn’t happen.

Don’t let your machine become infected with viruses and become a zombie. And fix your Mothers machine while you’re at it, it’s probably already a zombie.

Support ISPs that block infected machines from flooding the net.

Wanderer.3248:

If people would take decent care of their machines DDOS wouldn’t happen.

Don’t let your machine become infected with viruses and become a zombie. And fix your Mothers machine while you’re at it, it’s probably already a zombie.

Support ISPs that block infected machines from flooding the net.

A DDoS attack has absolutely nothing to do with viruses. Basically some idiot in his mother’s basement takes it upon himself to use a program to bombard the servers with information till the server can’t handle anymore, which will cause said server to crash. There is no way to block it or prepare for it.

Berelious.3290:

A DDoS attack has absolutely nothing to do with viruses. Basically some idiot in his mother’s basement takes it upon himself to use a program to bombard the servers with information till the server can’t handle anymore, which will cause said server to crash. There is no way to block it or prepare for it.

Actually it does.
DDOS usually uses infected computers in order to boost the power of said DDOS. It is rather hard for a single computer (or even a small group) to work fast enough to crash a server.

Jack.1469:

I’m not sure it’s even possible to completely fullproof Anet’s servers or anyone’s against DDOS attacks.

It’s not.

No matter how powerful/sophisticated of DDoS protection a router has, if it’s flooded with packets it will delay.

Berelious.3290:

Wanderer.3248:

If people would take decent care of their machines DDOS wouldn’t happen.

Don’t let your machine become infected with viruses and become a zombie. And fix your Mothers machine while you’re at it, it’s probably already a zombie.

Support ISPs that block infected machines from flooding the net.

A DDoS attack has absolutely nothing to do with viruses. Basically some idiot in his mother’s basement takes it upon himself to use a program to bombard the servers with information till the server can’t handle anymore, which will cause said server to crash. There is no way to block it or prepare for it.

What you’re mistaking is a DoS attack with a DDoS attack. A DoS attack is exactly what you described; some tryhard probably rented access to a shell booter and thinks he’s cool knocking people off for 5 minutes max or whatever. A distributed denial of service attack typically involves a botnet (hundreds/thousands of infected host computers used).

Berelious.3290:

Wanderer.3248:

If people would take decent care of their machines DDOS wouldn’t happen.

Don’t let your machine become infected with viruses and become a zombie. And fix your Mothers machine while you’re at it, it’s probably already a zombie.

Support ISPs that block infected machines from flooding the net.

A DDoS attack has absolutely nothing to do with viruses. Basically some idiot in his mother’s basement takes it upon himself to use a program to bombard the servers with information till the server can’t handle anymore, which will cause said server to crash. There is no way to block it or prepare for it.

He’s talking about zombie machines used to DDOS. Those are the ones that have been virused/malwared, not the server cluster.

Ahh yes, I can see how that would be different. Still, there would be very little ANet could do on it’s end to prevent it.

Tman.6349:

Went into Sparkfly 45 mins early to setup up a Teq kill. Played taxi for 20 mins filling the map. Got us all organized. Banners down. Feast of power food. Everything looking great. First phase, defense, and burn smooth as silk….then disconnected. FTW

I was there too.

Jinroh.4251:

Every few months it happens and usually at the most inconvient of times.

Pretty sure that’s the idea, to inconvenience people as much as possible.

Jinroh.4251:

So why hasn’t this been dealt with already? I don’t recall other gaming companies having such a terrible problem…well except for that one time when Sony got hacked.

The servers are suppose to be accessible, DDoS attacks attempt to overload / lock up the servers by sending or requesting a massive amount of data to / from the servers. It’s not that easy of an fix.
It’s like when you have a large crowd trying to storm their way through a single small door. Doors are meant to be used to pass through (so closing it would be silly) but the size of the crowd would inherently lead to bottlenecks.

The only real solution would be to try and track down the supposed hackers (they’re not actually hackers, but that’s just me being pedantic again) and file criminal charges (like Sony did). I guess ANet could increase server capacity or the bandwidth to the data center but these won’t work because the script-kiddies would just get more machines to DDoS with.

Yep. An analogy I like using is that a DDoS attack is some guy hiring 20,000 people to go queue in front of you at the bank/supermarket/toilet so you can’t get in to do your business. The bank’s security system is working fine, but the sheer bottleneck at the door means that legitimate customers can’t get in.

https://twitter.com/lizardsquad

same guy again

That Other Guy.7351:

If they would stop putting all their eggs in one basket we wouldn’t have GW2 go down every time someone decides to DDoS Wildstar -_- Also if they could actually use some of that GW2 money to fund feature development on the game that’s earning it instead of siphoning it off to pay for other games that would be super.

You have no idea of the costs you are asking (multiple data centers….for a game?) nor how funds are distributed (I doubt Anet ever got a dime from NCsoft anyway).

Only way to stop it is to backtrace it and send someone with a hammer to his house.

sigh

There really are a lot of useless people in the world….

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Only way to stop it is to backtrace it and send someone with a hammer to his house.

A hammer would be far too kind. The person needs some sturdy rope, a rusty pitted straight razor, a portable torch, and some other fun goodies. Let the games begin…

I wonder if GW2/ANET/NCSOFT uses a service like CloudFlare to help mitigate these?

You just change servers IP. Tho it would require prolly massive amount of work from NCSoft cause I doubt they’re prepared for this.

That Other Guy.7351:

If they would stop putting all their eggs in one basket we wouldn’t have GW2 go down every time someone decides to DDoS Wildstar -_- Also if they could actually use some of that GW2 money to fund feature development on the game that’s earning it instead of siphoning it off to pay for other games that would be super.

I’m wondering if you felt that same way during the 5 years of Guild Wars 2 development. Food for thought.

Are these lizard guys upset with anet over something? Or are they just randomly targeting random targets, ya know, randomly? And are they the same ones that did this a few weeks ago?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Only way to stop it is to backtrace it and send someone with a hammer to his house.

If only it was easy and straightforward – not to mention, cheap…

Tachenon.5270:

Are these lizard guys upset with anet over something? Or are they just randomly targeting random targets, ya know, randomly? And are they the same ones that did this a few weeks ago?

They’re targetting big targets seemingly randomly, and NCSoft is currently a big target. That way they get more attention, which is basically what they’re after.

Only way to stop it is to backtrace it and send someone with a hammer to his house.

DDOS’s are usually done by botnets formed by zombie computers infected with a trojan without their owners knowledge that controls them in the background. If you do a backtrace chances are you’ll only find thousands of different individual computers whose owners at some point clicked on the wrong link promising a funny facebook video or app to track who defriended them.

Solution: In order to afford better security and separate servers from Wildstar, ArenaNet can charge their people a $15/mo. subscription fee. Wait, why are you so quiet now? How about thanking them for the 29/30 days of the month it is not effected by outside issues and providing that to us for free?

Good day.

GOSU.9574:

Basement dwelling “hacker” nerds sleep when the sun is out, thus attacks will only occur at night. I call them hackers even though they couldn’t hack their way out of a papper bag with a machete.

Thanks for the good laugh you gave me.

ketorin.5923:

same guy again

Don’t advertise it by posting links, “fame” is what they want.

Yup, they will often provide links on their twitter they want people to follow so they can get the trojans through.

I wonder how the FBI will handle these fat kids. They will probably tell the parents to remove their laptops.

Chariot.5240:

Solution: In order to afford better security and separate servers from Wildstar, ArenaNet can charge their people a $15/mo. subscription fee. Wait, why are you so quiet now? How about thanking them for the 29/30 days of the month it is not effected by outside issues and providing that to us for free?

Good day.

Truer words have never been said.

I’ll point out: DDOS attacks are better [to the hacker] during peak hours. both for affect and for effect. (woot! I used both in the same sentence! I’ll go ahead and assume I’m using them correctly:)
hundreds of thousands of regular users = need less attacking computers and/or the attack is stronger (affect)
hundreds of thousands of regular users = hundreds of thousands are inconvenienced by the attack instead of just thousands (effect)

There is something we can do about it, make sure your computer is not one of the zombies used in these attacks, buy an antivirus.

knives.6132:

Chariot.5240:

Solution: In order to afford better security and separate servers from Wildstar, ArenaNet can charge their people a $15/mo. subscription fee. Wait, why are you so quiet now? How about thanking them for the 29/30 days of the month it is not effected by outside issues and providing that to us for free?

Good day.

Truer words have never been said.

Actually Wildstar is sub and should be on its’ own separate secure server. People are paying for it and should have it. So I will thank them when the sub paying WS players get what they are paying for.

Blude.6812:

knives.6132:

Chariot.5240:

Solution: In order to afford better security and separate servers from Wildstar, ArenaNet can charge their people a $15/mo. subscription fee. Wait, why are you so quiet now? How about thanking them for the 29/30 days of the month it is not effected by outside issues and providing that to us for free?

Good day.

Truer words have never been said.

Actually Wildstar is sub and should be on its’ own separate secure server. People are paying for it and should have it. So I will thank them when the sub paying WS players get what they are paying for.

You do realize that the solution to DDoS is reactive, not preventive, right? Paying people will get their money’s worth by experiencing quick resolutions, and by quick – I don’t mean on-the-fly.

Blude.6812:

knives.6132:

Chariot.5240:

Solution: In order to afford better security and separate servers from Wildstar, ArenaNet can charge their people a $15/mo. subscription fee. Wait, why are you so quiet now? How about thanking them for the 29/30 days of the month it is not effected by outside issues and providing that to us for free?

Good day.

Truer words have never been said.

Actually Wildstar is sub and should be on its’ own separate secure server. People are paying for it and should have it. So I will thank them when the sub paying WS players get what they are paying for.

They are on their own servers, just as GW2 is on their own server. You do realize it is NCSoft’s DATA CENTER – that is the key – basically a server farm. They use the same internet connection to get out is all.

The idea that using a sophisticated (and expensive) system to prevent DDOS for a non-subscription GAME is laughable. Even for a subscription game it’s out of the question. I hate to tell you guys, but the GW2 servers are NOT what anyone in the IT industry would consider a “fault-tolerant” application. Lives will NOT be lost nor any actual funds (other than Anet’s gem sales) will be lost by it going down for some period of time.

You can’t DDoS-proof servers. Not currently, anyway. It’s just not possible. The ANet staff work as fast as they can when it happens to get the servers back online, but it’s not a simple fix. Blame the kittens DDoSing games for fun and attention, not ANet.

It happens to Wildstar and Aion too, when GW2 goes down. Aion hasn’t been as affected by this latest DDoS, I don’t think, but they are experiencing high ping spikes when our servers go down.

You’ll survive not being able to log in for a few hours here and there. Eventually they’ll either get bored or get caught, and it will stop.

Played MMO’s for 10 years now (FFXI, WoW, Rift, LotRo, SWOR, FFXIV) never dealt with DDoS attacks until GW2, So not sure what other MMO’s are doing for prevention, but they have at one point been larger player base, and all have/had subs.

Chariot.5240:

Played MMO’s for 10 years now (FFXI, WoW, Rift, LotRo, SWOR, FFXIV) never dealt with DDoS attacks until GW2, So not sure what other MMO’s are doing for prevention, but they have at one point been larger player base, and all have/had subs.

WoW was attacked by a DDOS attack when I was playing (several years ago) in the european servers, I remember it was just impossible to log in for more than a minute back then.

In this year Blizzard was also hit by a massive DDOS attack that took down WoW, Diablo and Battle.net for more than a day IIRC, also I think the same month Steam was also hit and was also taken offline.

Heck, I even remember VISA being hit by a DDOS and taken offline, and that’s MUCH bigger than any MMO could hope to be.

There’s not really much any company can do to prevent a DDOS, most of what can be done is reactively, trying to reroute traffic, block unwanted traffic (made harder because if a botnet is used, traffic can come from all over the internet) and try to get servers back online as quick as they could.

Chariot.5240:

Played MMO’s for 10 years now (FFXI, WoW, Rift, LotRo, SWOR, FFXIV) never dealt with DDoS attacks until GW2, So not sure what other MMO’s are doing for prevention, but they have at one point been larger player base, and all have/had subs.

Thats because DDoS wasn’t as prevalent and widely conducted 10, 8, 6 years ago. The further ahead in time you go, the more prevalent it becomes. More people on the internet, more zombies to harvest, cheaper and more widely available hacks off the shelf that are even easier to use, etc.

Chariot.5240:

Played MMO’s for 10 years now (FFXI, WoW, Rift, LotRo, SWOR, FFXIV) never dealt with DDoS attacks until GW2, So not sure what other MMO’s are doing for prevention, but they have at one point been larger player base, and all have/had subs.

Do a search “Online games and DDOS attacks”. You’ll find that this is a trend that been developing and growing over the last few years.
I’m not sure if you meant it or not, but your post seems to indicate that Anet is doing something wrong and that they are more vulnerable than other on-line games. In fact, they are only one of many victims, some of which are also the ones you listed above.

DDOS attack again, from the same group.

I do not get it they are going to get cough at the end of the day and pay a high price for what being annoying?