LIZARD SQUAD is Back. Planning XBL Attack. "Biggest attack yet". [UP: XBL/PSN Down]

The Artisan said:
now the question is, will these outages persist or can we (PLEASE) expect them less?
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I'm worried that this has set a precedent for groups receiving attention. I feel like XBL and PSN will try to get more methods to mitigate the problem, but that more people will attempt to do stuff like this. So :/
 
JCizzle said:
Why shouldn't they be investing to protect against ddos as a priority? This has happened twice in a few months and, if anything, will probably happen with greater frequency. What's a more important investment than making sure your customers don't lose service once a month for a day or two at a time?

Yeah it sucks they need to deal with it at all, but it's the reality at hand.
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Sony already invested in DDoS mitigation, and have quite an expensive partnership set up. And it wasn't enough. Because that's the problem with DDoS - there are certain things you simply cannot defend against. It's a real, large issue, getting larger every year. Blizzard, Valve, NCSoft - have all felt the sting of a large botnet attacking. None of them could defend against it.

The reality is, you cannot defend against a certain size of attack. At all. Period.

Although that being said, Sony does need to work on their infrastructure so that they can bounce back quicker - but that's been a known issue since the inception of PSN. It's always been a service full of holes, and Sony could do with giving it more attention if they're serious about it. Perhaps now that they're bouncing back from the hole the PS3 started them into - and in light of the original PSN hack and now this - they'll allocate more funds to have better infrastructure and better staff/partners.

Zukkoyaki said:
DDOSing Steam would be striking the hornets nest. Surely at least a few of those PC nerds have some legit hacking chops.
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This group, or someone claiming to be them, already took down Steam earlier this year.
 
Still can't do anything on mine. Was able to download the walking dead earlier today but can't play it cause of licensing issues, can't restore them, can't log into the account I created for my wife. Can't do anything.
 
Changed MTU to 1450 and since have been on twice, downloaded Battlefield 4, play CoD online. This is after not being able to connect for 3 days. If you are having trouble you should definitely try this.
 
Ghazi said:
I'm worried that this has set a precedent for groups receiving attention. I feel like XBL and PSN will try to get more methods to mitigate the problem, but that more people will attempt to do stuff like this. So :/
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I don't think more people will want to. They don't gain anything from it, nothing monetary and nothing they can identify with (we don't know who lizard squad is). And most people who pay attention to this shit are gamers

it'll be the same assholes doing it, but I don't want to continue having this fucking problem.
 
NYR said:
Maximum Transmission Unit.

Think of it like a pipe. By adjusting the MTU value, the pipe gets thinner, allowing less to travel through it. Usually, this would be a bad thing, but in this case, a smaller MTU means packets of data that can be sent and received are smaller. It seems Sony is blocking large packets of data, so by adjusting the max data packet size, you can connect.

It really adds credence to the fact all the consoles that are trying to re-connect are in fact DDOSing the network again.
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Thank you for the clear layman's explanation, appreciated.
 
NYR said:
Maximum Transmission Unit.

Think of it like a pipe. By adjusting the MTU value, the pipe gets thinner, allowing less to travel through it. Usually, this would be a bad thing, but in this case, a smaller MTU means packets of data that can be sent and received are smaller. It seems Sony is blocking large packets of data, so by adjusting the max data packet size, you can connect.

It really adds credence to the fact all the consoles that are trying to re-connect are in fact DDOSing the network again.
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So if that is correct, would that make lag worsen in some online games? Which would mean changing these settings for the long run would be a bad idea?
 
Miktar said:
Sony already invested in DDoS mitigation, and have quite an expensive partnership set up. And it wasn't enough. Because that's the problem with DDoS - there are certain things you simply cannot defend against. It's a real, large issue, getting larger every year. Blizzard, Valve, NCSoft - have all felt the sting of a large botnet attacking. None of them could defend against it.

The reality is, you cannot defend against a certain size of attack. At all. Period.

Although that being said, Sony does need to work on their infrastructure so that they can bounce back quicker - but that's been a known issue since the inception of PSN. It's always been a service full of holes, and Sony could do with giving it more attention if they're serious about it. Perhaps now that they're bouncing back from the hole the PS3 started them into - and in light of the original PSN hack and now this - they'll allocate more funds to have better infrastructure and better staff/partners.
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To help emphasize your point to others here Miktar, when Lulzsec DDoS'd Sony (and a ton of other companies, businesses and even Gov't websites) the Botnet is said to have been 800,000 computers.

.... a botnet used by the group in their distributed denial-of-service attacks. The botnet is reported to have consisted of about 800,000 infected computer servers
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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LulzSec

This current attack could've been as large or even larger.
 
ColEx said:
So if that is correct, would that make lag worsen in some online games? Which would mean changing these settings for the long run would be a bad idea?
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Yes, in theory, as it would lead to more data being separated into two packets instead of one, thus leading to a higher latency.

But going from 1500 bytes to 1473 bytes is not a deal breaker, you really shouldn't have much impact, if at all. Some of that 1500 is also for header info, so it is not like all 1500 has to be used or would be used, it is a theoretical maximum.

As mentioned, once the issue is resolved according to Sony, just turn it back to automatic.

Also, for real world proof, I played two games of domination in CoD this afternoon and went 14-7 in the first one, so it didn't really effect me...if anything, it made me better lol.
 
ColEx said:
So if that is correct, would that make lag worsen in some online games? Which would mean changing these settings for the long run would be a bad idea?
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Yes.

Under normal conditions, MTU should always be as large as possible given the transport medium (typically 1500).
 
Has this been posted yet?

A member of the Lizard Squad hacking group, who goes by the alias “ryanc” or Ryan, allegedly garnered the attention of a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation after speaking with the media about Lizard Squad’s Christmas-day attacks on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network (PSN).

[...]

Ryan told the Daily Dot he spent three months in a maximum security prison in Finland earlier this year, after he allegedly made a bomb threat to American Airlines. President of Sony Online Entertainment John Smedley was aboard the flight threatened by Ryan through Lizard Squad’s Twitter account.
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antibolo said:
Yes.

Under normal conditions, MTU should always be as large as possible given the transport medium (typically 1500).
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No, Most routers at 1500 size break it up into 2 messages....IT ACTUALLY GOES SLOWER.

Your MTU should be as big as your router / line can send messages in one go / chunk/

My optimum MTU for BT home hub 5 in UK is 1492. For your router / line it will be a number Between 1472 and 1500.
 
Boke1879 said:
Was able to log in last night and now nothing. Seriously Sony. This shit is unacceptable. I honestly hope the gaming media BLASTS them tomorrow for their incompetence on getting their network up and running in a timely manner.
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On what base would they blast Sony for incompetence? Do you, and the gaming media, know why it takes the time that it takes? Serious question. I think its fair to ask questions and be annoyed when it takes time, but i dont think its really fair to call it incompetence if people dont know why it takes time. Or maybe if the same problem had happened several times in a row and it took the same amount of time every time to fix it.
 
test_account said:
On what base and facts would they blast Sony for incompetence? Do you, and the gaming media, know why it takes the time that it takes? Serious question. I think its fair to ask questions and be annoyed when it takes time, but i dont think its really fair to call it incompetence if people dont know why it takes time.
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It's no doubt Live was up MUCH faster in regards to PSN during this DDoS attack. Live may still be having some issues but people are able to sign in. For alot of PSN users they still aren't even able to sign in on their PS4s. I haven't been able to log in all day.

Sony confirmed what we all knew. They were victims to a DDoS attack. Now there is no evidence that PSN is still being attacked. Why are users still not able to log in?

It's even more ridiculous that Playstation tweeted that PSN is coming back. Something has to be borked on their end or their servers just take a long time to recover. Either way this needs to change. We pay for this. I was able to log on only last night before going to bed. Can't do shit now.
 
PS4 owners , do you reiceve messages from people about Sony giving two free games in if you send the same message to your friends , the message include a code. is it fake?
 
Alebrije said:
PS4 owners , do you reiceve messages from people about Sony giving two free games in if you send the same message to your friends , the message include a code. is it fake?
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...if you don't send THIS message to five of your friends, the ancient gypsy curse will take your first born.
 
Chabbles said:
Any chain mail message you get on PSN is always fake.
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image.php


ice cold.... thanks.
 
Alebrije said:
PS4 owners , do you reiceve messages from people about Sony giving two free games in if you send the same message to your friends , the message include a code. is it fake?
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Wow, it's like the 90s all over again. "Forward this email to 10 friends, and Bill Gates will send you a million dollars!" :P
 
Boke1879 said:
It's no doubt Live was up MUCH faster in regards to PSN during this DDoS attack. Live may still be having some issues but people are able to sign in. For alot of PSN users they still aren't even able to sign in on their PS4s. I haven't been able to log in all day.

Sony confirmed what we all knew. They were victims to a DDoS attack. Now there is no evidence that PSN is still being attacked. Why are users still not able to log in?

It's even more ridiculous that Playstation tweeted that PSN is coming back. Something has to be borked on their end or their servers just take a long time to recover. Either way this needs to change. We pay for this. I was able to log on only last night before going to bed. Can't do shit now.
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Well, its true that PSN is coming back, more and more people seem to be able to log in, but fair enough about that. Maybe they could have waited a bit with posting that on Twitter if its still a widespread issue, i agree.

Its also true that Xbox Live did come up faster as you mention, but we dont know what work that is being done right now, both regarding Xbox Live and PSN. Are they simply rebooting the system or are they adding more security, trying to prevent it from happening "all the time"? They dont necessarily have to be under attack for things to take time to come back up, there could be other factors as well. Its speculations on both sides of course, because i dont know either, but i just wanted to say that i dont think that its fair to call that point for incompetence if we dont know. It would be nice if we could get a post mortem of what happened and what that has been done regarding PSN and Xbox Live, but i guess that we wont get that unfortunately :\ And yeah, hopefully things will be better once everything is up and running 100% again.
 
prwxv3 said:
DDOS is not hacking you can't get sensitive information from DDOSing. Any company get get DDOSed easily (unless you have huge server farms like amazon, google, ect. where they can migrate traffic). MS have been able to migrate traffic much easier then Sony because they have azure. Sony dont that the luxury and for them to get something like azure to just combat DDOS would be a major waste. They should be improving PSN a ton but not for protection against DDOS.
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not just that, PSN is hosted on amazon AWS i believe and they have DDoS mitigation being ran by prolexic. they are doing eveything they can bar sinking a shit tonne of money to make the servers bigger, which proably wouldnt work anyway :/
 
hodgy100 said:
not just that, PSN is hosted on amazon AWS i believe and they have DDoS mitigation being ran by prolexic. they are doing eveything they can bar sinking a shit tonne of money to make the servers bigger, which proably wouldnt work anyway :/
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Correct:

ThirdMartini said:
Sony/PSN is using prolexic for DDOS mitigation.

At this moment all auth requests are being blackholed behind prolexics servers. There could be several reasons for this.
* The auth server going offline on Sony's side.
* The auth server being overloaded
* Prolexic actively filtering traffic because of an ongoing attack.
* Some problem at prolexic (perhaps they can't handle the load either)

PSN also uses Amazon EC2 for their applications/multiplayer servers. And Akamai for game downloads, updates, firmware, etc. EC2 and Akamai also seems to be stable and explains why folks can get downloads and even play Online ( if they managed to login ) since those services are running in EC2 or over Akamais CDN.

When snooping traffic it's clear that the auth server is responding sporadically... and sometimes not at all. Which implies that it is at least alive but struggling.

It should also be noted that when a DDOS mitigation is done by first attempting to filter out offending traffic based on content... when that fails (IE: the attack is sophisticated enough) IP ranges begin to be blackholed altogether. This causes some regions to appear completely offline while others are fine. Those filters are then refined to allow legitimate users in. (Assuming the mitigation service is not overloaded). This is never perfect and extremely time consuming. ( BTW Mitigation services are EXPENSIVE ) To say Sony is not spending enough on infrastructure is a bit presumptuous.

The real problem is zombied edge devices. My little itybitty server in the corner of the internet gets 10s of thousands of hits from zombied IPs a day looking for vulnerabilities in my server. 1/2 the time I look it's from a Cheap wireless router that's been rooted and has an open telnet/ssh port or botnet client on it. ( It's so tempting rm -rf / and then burn the flash out on those things to kill them!! ) So it's not just infected enduser PCs anymore... it's all the cheap, insecure other crap people buy and plug into their internet connection. For all I know many of the folks here are running zombies without even knowing it and contributing to the problem. Perhaps while waiting for Sony to get PSN up and running folks should go see if their own gear has been compromised. :O
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test_account said:
Well, its true that PSN is coming back, more and more people seem to be able to log in, but fair enough about that. Maybe they could have waited a bit with posting that on Twitter if its still a widespread issue, i agree.

Its also true that Xbox Live did come up faster as you mention, but we dont know what work that is being done right now, both regarding Xbox Live and PSN. Are they simply rebooting the system or are they adding more security, trying to prevent it from happening "all the time"? They dont necessarily have to be under attack for things to take time to come back up, there could be other factors as well. Its speculations on both sides of course, because i dont know either, but i just dont think that its fair to call that for incompetence if we dont know. It would be nice if we could get a post mortem of what happened and what that has been done regarding PSN and Xbox Live, but i guess that we wont get that unfortunately :\
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I see your point and it's a good one. If they are "rebooting" the system or adding extra measures then they need to communicate that to us.

But going forward this is something they need to be on the ball about. Think of all the missed games sales on their store. Think of how many returned their consoles because they couldn't play online on Christmas day and beyond.
 
When i try to log out from Twitter on my PC, i just get an error. I actually cant log out, lol.


Boke1879 said:
I see your point and it's a good one. If they are "rebooting" the system or adding extra measures then they need to communicate that to us.

But going forward this is something they need to be on the ball about. Think of all the missed games sales on their store. Think of how many returned their consoles because they couldn't play online on Christmas day and beyond.
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Definitelly, i agree. It would be really nice if they gave some info on whats being done after everything is up and running. And yeah, i hope that they take it very seriously, trying to minimize the risk as much as possible of it happening again, indeed. Because as you say, they do lose money on this when PSN is down.
 
Well got my new PS4 connected up, had to change the MTU to connect to PSN and now PSN says it needs to verify my email before I can use it. And of course no emails are coming through :(.
 
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