John Bender
Banned
Well that's good for you. You're a lucky person.
LIZARD SQUAD is Back. Planning XBL Attack. "Biggest attack yet". [UP: XBL/PSN Down]
- Thread starter Horse Armour
- Start date
It was only down for a few hours yesterday for me. Otherwise it has been fully functional.
http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-live-status
Handy Fake
Member
Interesting stuff.
But as has been mentioned before, from what we can gather, this DDOS attack would be the least of their charges when the authorities come a'knockin'.
I wonder how much this costs for Sony. I mean, if there is a time when people impulse buy everything that time is Christmas. Not only that, but they are not generating any income from the store, since no one can access it. Some people will wait and buy whatever they want to buy when the store is back online, sure, but they lose a lot of missed opportunity here.
Sad.
Sad.
shysaursoft
Member
It was discussed yesterday, but since DDoS is a federally punishable offence, it does mean that US businesses can request federal assets be used to try and bring the responsible parties to justice - but that doesn't mean anything if you can't actually catch the people initiating the attack. It is very difficult to find the true instigators of a large-scale DDoS.
To quote Colbert: "I check CNN when I want reheated news from 3 days ago".
GribbleGrunger
Dreams in Digital
Yeah, but it was out all day yesterday and most of the night. Hopefully it's coming to an end and more people get back to normal. That goes for PSN as well, as I also have a PS4.
I wonder how much this costs for Sony. I mean, if there is a time when people impulse buy everything that time is Christmas. Not only that, but they are not generating any income from the store, since no one can access it. Some people will wait and buy whatever they want to buy when the store is back online, sure, but they lose a lot of missed opportunity here.
Sad.
I feel bad for the people unable to play, venting their frustrations using non-violent rhetoric. But feel bad for the corporation I guess.
MrChowderClams
Member
But, like you say, you can control the degree to which it affects your customers, so that the effect is not as severe, especially in the case where the attacks have been carried out before. I never claimed they could be stopped, merely that they can take protective measures to prevent such an attack from having a large effect. Given that their network is still down for people worldwide (what, 24h later?), they should probably have better protection.
I'm probably not the right person to ask lol that's a business decision made by Sony.
John Bender
Banned
For you, maybe.
Have several friends who can't login on LIVE / on their Xbox One since yesterday.
Same goes for a lot of PS4 users.
Get real. PSN and LIVE got attacked. Both still having problems.
It is what it is. Both got attacked. You can't do shit against it.
You can only hope this fuckers are getting arrested.
True dat!
You would just need to add more hardware, which costs money. But that's moot really because this doesn't have anything to do with fake logins apparently, but fake DNS requests that trick DNS servers configured a certain way to do things they aren't supposed to (according to other posters in this thread anyways).
They need to stop this like you would any other DDOS, and block traffic from these exploited DNS servers. This is one of those easier said than done things though since every attack is unique, but it is technically possible, so I don't exactly envy being a network engineer at Sony right now.
LifEndz
Member
Man, if it's another day of reading vigilante hacker profile pages, I think we'll all start talking like this.
shysaursoft
Member
True, but there is a cost to all of this. Let's say the average size of a DDoS attack for the year is 10Gbps. Sony pays their mitigation partner up front for services that will be rendered during a 10Gbps attack. Their mitigation partner uses the funds to set up the eventual routing that will be required when the attack happens, have the manpower ready to respond, all the systems and programs, filters, etc - then a attack happens and it's 100Gbps. Now what?
Systems go down, the mitigation partner does their best, possibly handling at least a quarter of the attack well, but the end user is still affected.
Next year, Sony invests the money for 100Gbps protection. It's costing a lot, draining money from the company. But hey, at least we're protected right?
a) An attack never happens, the money was wasted
b) An attack happens, it's 400Gbps. Dangit.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
DDoS is a global, fundamental issue with the very structure of the Internet. It's a real problem that can't be solved just by throwing money at it.
shadowsdarknes
Member
I'm playing PVZ on PS4 online right now.
Chaplain
Member
Couldn't they find them by locating where they post from on Twitter?
Well, considering Sony has been struggling like crazy and it already fired thousands of employees, and that PlayStation seems to be one of the few profitable branches of the company now, I do think it is sad for the company, yes. I don't see what is wrong with it. Companies are also made of people, and while I'm not the one to defend Sony or other companies when they make the wrong decisions, this is extremely unfair with them.
MrChowderClams
Member
So because it's hard, they shouldn't attempt to fix the problem at all? Not trying to be facetious, but I honestly don't get that argument. Are you saying that it is possible to mitigate an attack, but for whatever reason (lack of resources?) they haven't been able to do anything in the past few years?
Thanks for the info !
How is DDoS different from blocking everyone trying to go to a physical store ? The store would just call the police and you would be arrested.
I'm sure the person will resume normal brain function when the precious console online is returned. A shame that they don't have Steam or anything to fall back on apparently.
shysaursoft
Member
Since Twitter has an API that anyone can interface with, you could post to it through a hundred layers of anonymity, IP spoofing, and more. How we as regular people post to Twitter is reasonably straightforward, but someone wanting to not be found could very easily post to Twitter in a way that makes finding them through that, impossible. A short way of looking at it: Twitter only knows what it is told. And what it is told, like who the user is, their IP address, geolocation, can all be lies, and Twitter has no way of knowing they're lies.
The One and Done
Member
No need to lie.
Actually that's one of the reasons twitter is the major means of post stuff from those types of people..
SEGAvangelist
Member
Is XBL still down for anyone at this point?
The One and Done™;144864130 said:
How Is that a lie? XBL is working great for me right now. Ironcreed is having no issues too.
Jest Chillin
Member
Posting on twitter doesn't actually prove that a person was a part of the attack. Anyone could create an account and claim credit for anything that happens. It would be more appropriate for Twitter to just block/ban these dudes but apparently what they're doing doesn't actually violate the TOS (due to semantics).
BearFlexington
Member
The way I see it, LizardSuckwads or MS owes me money. Specifically a day's worth of XBL Gold and counting. Sure it's like a buck fifty but fuck it. It's the principle of the matter.
Playing with my money is like playing with my emotions
hedmunky84
Member
This is just completely unacceptable now! Both Sony and Microsoft get taken down, no surprise that XBL is getting going again much faster than Sony. I do not own an XBone, but I do a 360, and I never experienced anything yesterday. Unlike PSN on my PS4. I own a PS3 and it's core service was back up late last night. The PSN Store isn't though. And here is south Missouri I still have nothing on my PS4. I could play something offline, but my experience is that when I earn a trophy offline it doesn't register even when online services are running and I get logged on. So I'm not wasting my time. I'll play some backlogged games on my 360. Sony needs to take a hard look at ways to prevent this sh!t from happening again. It happens every month or so. PSN should be CPSN (Can't Play Sh!t Network)!
Also the rumor that Sony is giving a "Welcome Back" package, 2 free games, better be true. And M$ should do the same. We deserve, NO! WE ARE ENTITLED TO THEM because of their incompetence to keep networks up through attacks. I used to work for an ISP and DDoS attacks went through are networks all the time. It is NOTHING to stop them even before they go through to their intended destination.
Also the rumor that Sony is giving a "Welcome Back" package, 2 free games, better be true. And M$ should do the same. We deserve, NO! WE ARE ENTITLED TO THEM because of their incompetence to keep networks up through attacks. I used to work for an ISP and DDoS attacks went through are networks all the time. It is NOTHING to stop them even before they go through to their intended destination.
IceDoesntHelp
Banned
PSN is still down, my god...
Every month or so? Nope.
MandrakeUK
Member
PSN is still down for me with Destiny in the UK...
shysaursoft
Member
You are right - and have a right to be angry. Sony does need better infrastructure, and might want to invest in a new or better DDoS mitigation partner. But it is simply impossible to outright prevent any kind of poor end-user experience when a DDoS of this size is aimed at a company's online assets. It's a problem with the entire way the internet works, sadly.
PhazonBlazer
Member
I got on psn made an account and now downloading the ACU update
what a knee slapper. maybe add in a M$ or Shitendo ref in there for the ultimate console war shot across the bow
ss_lemonade
Member
PSN finally worked for me late yesterday (or around 12am). What's interesting is my newly purchased ps4 prompted me to do a system update eventhough PSN was still down. I guess newly purchased systems come with the latest updates downloaded?
Anyway, I was able to set the thing up, login to my PSN account, redeem my included killzone code, and left it overnight to download. I woke up to find the game downloaded but PSN seems to be down again? Accessing the store just leaves the system stuck loading. Same thing when I try to download themes. When that happens, no games would launch. I could play as long as I don't trigger anything store related I guess
Anyway, I was able to set the thing up, login to my PSN account, redeem my included killzone code, and left it overnight to download. I woke up to find the game downloaded but PSN seems to be down again? Accessing the store just leaves the system stuck loading. Same thing when I try to download themes. When that happens, no games would launch. I could play as long as I don't trigger anything store related I guess
MrChowderClams
Member
Ok that makes sense. It's not that they didn't protect, it's just that they didn't predict the degree to which an attack like this might have happened.
you realize that if you earn a trophy offline....you just sync your trophies when the system goes back up and it adds it online.........
Justice_Bolt
Member
Some people have no fucking life to do things like this.
Preventing artificial flooding of your servers? This is extremely difficult when the packets being sent to the server had bogus headers during encapsulation. Currently in school for networking and let me assure you, it isn't even as remotely as simple as you're trying to make it sound.
ComputerBlue
Member
Wutup big perm, I mean big worm!
But yeah, I agree. Both live and PS+ users should get their affected days compensated.
If the service is down for 2 days, extend everyone's membership by 2 days.
Garrett Hawke
Member
So how long has stuff been not working? When did the issues start?
shysaursoft
Member
There has been a crazy amount of escalation in terms of raw botnet power. In 2011 the average attack size was 1.4Gbps. Yesterday's attack clocked in at an estimated 400Gbps. (The group claims 1000Gbps, but they're kind of over-inflating). As time passes, more PCs are infected with the malware that makes them zombies in the botnet, and while anti-malware is helping somewhat, it is not able to slow down the rate at which PCs become infected. And every year, more and more PCs are coming online, infrastructure is getting bigger and faster, which means that when a botnet does activate and attack a target, it has more buddies to work with, and more bandwidth to exploit to try and hammer on a single point.
I'd put it at between 1:00 PM - 3:20 PM on 24 Dec 2014 EST, is when things started ramping up and issues became widespread, compounding existing issues of new consoles flooding the systems.
Christmas Eve