Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Hacker Taunts Blizzard After Knocking Gamers Offline (csoonline.com)

Posted by msmash on from the another-day,-another-hack dept.

Reader itwbennett writes: A person nicknamed AppleJ4ck, who has been previously been linked to Lizard Squad, a group notorious for DDoS attacks against gaming platforms, including the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, has taken credit for server outages affecting gaming giant Blizzard (Alternate source: ZDNet) Monday morning. The outages led to authentication lockouts for gamers attempting to access Overwatch, Hearth Stone, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Heroes of the Stone, and others. During the outage, AppleJ4ck said Monday's problems were just a test, promising more outages in the future.

24 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. DDOS is lame by KlomDark · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Never had any respect for lamers who just do DDOSs. That's not hacking, it's just being annoying. Doesn't take any special skills.

    It's nothing like breaking through some code or router or something that actually proves that you are of elite intelligence.

    Breaking directly into Blizzard is one thing, but just snowing them under with myriad packets just isn't impressive.

    Find something else to do with your life.

    1. Re:DDOS is lame by subanark · · Score: 2

      > Doesn't take any special skills.

      Depends on who you are attacking. Anyone who could find a weak point in AWS and take down a whole datacenter, would be impressive and quite scary.

      Sure, renting a bunch of zombie machines and doing DDOS is nothing special, but rolling up your own malware (or just convincing a shit load of people to help you) is much more impressive.

      Note: by impressive, I mean likelihood of a SWAT team to come down and bust your ass.

    2. Re:DDOS is lame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've said it before and I'll say it again.

      DDOSing is the online equivalent of the 3 stooges getting stuck in a door.

      Morons like that deserve to be smacked across the face, at minimum. Doing it on purpose to keep others out deserves what another AC said - to be skinned alive on public display to inform others of what they can expect for themselves if they want to be "cool" like that. I do not believe in reforming people who are willfully malicious. Snuff them out.

    3. Re:DDOS is lame by Killall+-9+Bash · · Score: 3

      No, skill is using a DDoS as a smokescreen for the ACTUAL hack....

      3 or 4 weeks from now, we'll hear all about how millions of BNet accounts have been compromised..... or worse yet, we won't hear.

      --
      "Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
  2. Internet not designed for this by DogDude · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is going to keep happening, because the Internet was never, every designed for something like this. Security is near impossible, because it was designed to be an OPEN system, not a closed one, with security everywhere. Like it or not, the Internet is going to continue to break in bigger and bigger ways.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
    1. Re:Internet not designed for this by fustakrakich · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It may have been designed to be open, but in practice it suffers a deep mono-culture of protocols (DNS and DHCP) and a lack of redundancy, especially at the proverbial "last mile", where the ISP can 'drop anchor' on your connection on a whim. It is still not an ad hoc network, which it needs to be if it is to be truly open, and if you want to keep it from breaking.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  3. Didn't affect me by The-Ixian · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I played WoW pretty much all weekend and did not encounter any issues.

    Hopefully apple jack continues to throw this level of expertise at the "real" attack.

    --
    My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
    1. Re:Didn't affect me by riis138 · · Score: 2

      Same here, no issues all weekend on both WoW and Overwatch.

      --
      Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl Sagan
  4. Re:Skin him alive on Twitch by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's funny how the DDOS of a gaming service is what it takes to get people upset here.

    Attack a bank? Obviously they should have paid more attention to security - it's really their own fault.

    Attack a politician? Well, they're evil anyway.

    Attack someone suspected of a crime, even though they haven't stood trial? Well, these things happen.

    Take down World of Warcraft? THIS SHALL NOT STAND!!

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  5. How about... by Lumpy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Game makers stop with the fucking cloud required crap?

    Let me run my own damn server, and authentication so I can just play it? Stuff that in your bunghole.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:How about... by Gojira+Shipi-Taro · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't think you understand what "MMO"s are.

      This isn't a case of people not being able to play single player games. Not even a case of people not being able to play something that could be reasonably hosted by individuals, such as Quake ][.

      Multiplayer games do have a huge audience for which much of the appeal lies in the service having huge numbers of other players. I don't play any of them anymore, but I can see how this could be a problem for a large number of people.

      --
      "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
    2. Re:How about... by cfalcon · · Score: 2

      If you want to play on a private server, go ahead. There's plenty of them.

      But if you want to play on a full Blizzard server, then you need a whole datacenter tracking MANY players, that's multiple machines, not just one, all interconnected. That's the world of warcraft- millions of players who can communicate instantly, and interact in game instantly. The reason everyone is connecting to these datacenters is because they provide a service you can't repeat locally. It's not about upload bandwidth, it is about latency, and a distributed network is inherently terrible at that. It is very much about processing power, and RAM, and these are serious machines all hooked together doing that to support that many players.

      Just think about designing it for a second- if I move my character from X to Y, on the live system my client tells the wow server what I did, which validates it (so I'm not teleport hacking), updates its internal state, figures out which players are close to me, and then sends data needed to draw my character to them. This means that your client doesn't need to know the whole of the world, it just needs the section you can see, etc.

      Now try this distributed. Every distributed node needs a constant copy of the world, and all must be in sync. You need a way to figure out how to resolve disputes, and if some of the nodes are compromised you need to find a way to figure that out. You have the same problems that bitcoin does, but you need to do it instantly and simultaneously. It's laughable.

    3. Re:How about... by jklovanc · · Score: 2

      Can you tell me why single player Diablo 3 needs to be connected? Especially considering that the connection, which only updates the chat, keeps going down so often. I can play WoW, WoT, STO, etc all day but get kicked off of D3 regularly.

    4. Re:How about... by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 2

      I don't think you understand what "MMO"s are.

      If I could play WoW solo or have my own server & only play with friends, I'd probably get back into it again.

      --
      Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
  6. We never thought that anyone would... by Tyr07 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...figure out the ping command. Sending packets? Only a mastermind.

    It's like claiming you won a discussion by saying 'Nuh uhh' more times or a blunt object because you're too dumb to use words.

  7. Someone put out the memo by stealth_finger · · Score: 4, Interesting

    DDoS isn't hacking.

    --
    Wanna buy a shirt?
    https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
  8. Re:Skin him alive on Twitch by Eosi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    DDOS and actual hacking are not the same thing. Therefore your message is wrong. No one cares if you DDOS Trump or Clinton, will not even make the news.....

  9. Re:Skin him alive on Twitch by Gojira+Shipi-Taro · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Comedy is when it happens to you.

    Tragedy is when it happens to me.

    Or something like that...

    --
    "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
  10. Re:Skin him alive on Twitch by simcop2387 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Nah, that might make the news. Trump would go on twitter immediately and blame the wrong people.

  11. Re:Skin him alive on Twitch by KlomDark · · Score: 3, Insightful

    DDOSing a bank is no hack, it gives you no access to money. Not a security issue, it's a network redundancy issue.

    Not impressed with DDOS kiddies. It's like farting in church. Might drive a few people away.

    But if you want to impress me: Build your own god.

  12. Re:Skin him alive on Twitch by Eosi · · Score: 2

    Ah true. Then he would say that he is really really rich, and can afford it.

  13. The real problem by JustNiz · · Score: 2

    OK so you have managed to build a botnet large enough to give you the potential to apply pressure to change the world in some small way, and the best you can come up with is to ruin the weekend for a few kids by disrupting traffic to some game servers? Pathetic, just Utterly Pathetic.
    Thats the real trouble with Lizard Squad and all the other DDOS skript kiddies these days. They have zero fucking style or imagination.

  14. We know one thing by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Funny

    With a name like AppleJ4ck, it does tell us that he's part of a team. Expect more hacks from Flutt3rShy, P1nkieP1e, R4riTy, Rainb0wD4sh and Tw1l1ghtSp4rkle.

  15. Re:Skin him alive on Twitch by Texmaize · · Score: 2

    Wouldn't a better and far more accurate joke be:
    Hillary would just hire someone to cover it up
    Reflexive liberal bias is still reflexive.

    --
    "Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.