It’s all the rage this week, DDoS attacks on game services. Perhaps people have more time on their hands than usual, but it’s extremely annoying.
The latest attacks have come from a person/group going by the name of DERP who have been systematically shutting down services for League of Legerns, World of Tanks, DOTA 2, EA servers, and even Club Penguin.
This story has a rather odd twist. The attacks have been quite public thanks to a Twitch streamer called James “Phantoml0rd” Varga who was targeted by the individuals while he was live streaming. He was told by the group that if he lost a game of DOTA 2 which he was streaming, they would shut down the servers. As his team started to lose the servers went down. This video shows how it all played out and it was probably not the best idea for Varga to interact with the perpetrators.
It gets weirder. Police then turned up at Varga’s home after a tip-off that he was holding hostages at the house. Varga was cuffed and bundled into the back of a police car for 30 minutes. A note from Varga explained the situation as it unfolded.
“Just had an automatic pointed at me, put in handcuffs and sat in the back of a cop car as I watched 6 policemen go through my whole house.”
As this mess unfolded the Twitter account for DERP continued with updates on their game server targets.
World of Tanks North America #offline
— Derp Trolling (@DerpTrolling) December 31, 2013
RIOT also confirmed they were one of the companies targetted.
We're one of the organizations targeted in today's DDOS attacks. Sorry if you weren't able to get in game today. We're investigating.
— Riot Games (@riotgames) December 31, 2013
Varga subsequently returned to his stream after the events to explain what exactly happened.
This morning DERP appear to have been outed by another hacking individual who posted their personal information on the Internet with a comment at the top of the documents saying “looks like your 15 minutes of fame is over”. DDoS attacks are not too complex to achieve so perhaps their actions are being frowned upon by the hacking community.
Companies involved appear to have stopped the attacks now, Blizzard’s service only went down for around ten minutes but not all were as quick to react. With any luck all services should be back to normal.
