How To Stop Ddos On Ps4? Top Answer Update

Editor: This post was last updated on May 19, 2022.

Nowadays, the term DDoS probably makes the heart of most webmasters beat faster. While many don’t know exactly what a DDoS attack is, they do know the effect: an extremely sluggish or downed website.

In this article, we’ll focus on how to tell if you’ve been DDoSed, how to spot a DDoS attack, and how to protect your website in the future.

Hopefully we can help you deal with DDoS attacks without a full meltdown.

What is a DDoS attack?

DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service. As the name suggests, a DDoS attack focuses on damaging a service, such as:

a website

an Internet Service Provider (ISP)

the Nasdaq exchange

a NASA probe

a game server

Virtually anything connected to the Internet is a potential target.

The same goes for the source of DDoS attacks: common culprits are hacked web servers and Internet of Things devices like smart appliances, routers, and even CCTV cameras.

Causes can be accidental or intentional. But a large criminal industry has developed that offers DDoS attacks as a service. There is a market for attacks on websites, including competitors who want to tarnish others’ reputations and those who refuse to go online for political reasons.

A DDoS attack works simply like this: an attacker uses a number of computers over the Internet (or what is known as a “botnet”). These machines send a high volume of fake traffic to the target site, all in an attempt to overload server resources and crash the site.

There are many types and sizes of DDoS attacks, and they can be devastating regardless of size. Even a single system (DoS) attack can take down a site, so consider the ruthless efficiency of a multi-system DDoS attack. A powerful DDoS can be as little as one request per second and still wreak havoc on a website.

Some services are specifically targeted. Interestingly, however, the process is largely automated, and most affected websites are selected at random. Of course, this doesn’t matter if you’re a target. Regardless of the reason, the results can be detrimental, especially for an ecommerce site.

If you want to learn more about the types of DDoS attacks, read our guide on what a DDoS attack is.

What are the signs of a DDoS attack?

There are two key indicators that you may be at risk of a DDoS attack:

When the site is unavailable

When accessing the website takes a long time

If you’re seeing these website latency issues unexpectedly, it’s time to investigate.

Legitimate traffic or a DDoS attack?

Since a DDoS attack generates a lot of traffic to your website, a difficult situation arises. How can you tell if your website is suddenly doing really well (in terms of traffic) or if you are currently experiencing a DDoS attack?

When a website goes down due to a surge in legitimate traffic, the time frame is generally short before you’re up and running again. Sustained spikes in traffic are rarely random, and you can likely identify the reasons for them in legitimate cases. Let’s say a big ad campaign or viral content.

However, more subtle attacks are not so easy to spot. Let’s say an online retailer with blackhat hacking skills wants to keep people off a competitor’s website without them knowing. The hacker can DDoS the competitor’s website several times a day — possibly at random times throughout the day, just to annoy the competitor’s customers about how slow the website is. If the hacker’s server was triggering 500 hits per day (nothing out of the ordinary), the site would have gone down at intervals no longer than a few seconds. Even mild DDoS attacks like this one damage the victim’s business and reputation.

In general, the best way to investigate potential DDoS attacks is with analysis tools. Check if a specific traffic source is still querying a specific record long after the website’s Time To Live (TTL) has expired. (This is the timeframe you allow your website to discard stored data and free up resources.) If this is the case, it’s likely a DDoS attack, since legitimate traffic doesn’t behave that way.

How to know if you are DDoSed

Some fairly obvious signs of a DDoS attack are:

Problems accessing your website.

Files load slowly or not at all.

Slow or unresponsive servers, including “too many connections” error messages.

Unusual traffic patterns such as peaks every 5-10 minutes or peaks at unusual times of the day.

A deluge of traffic originating from a single device type, geolocation, or web browser version.

More specific signs of DDoS vary depending on the type of attack.

Live example of a DDoS attack

To give you an idea of ​​what a DDoS attack looks like, we developed this live example of a website receiving DDoSed. Within a few minutes you can observe how the server resources are exhausted and how it affects the performance of the website.

After watching the video, you will be able to better understand the characteristics of an attack on your own websites.

4 steps to defend against a DDoS attack

The following four steps will protect your website from DDoS attacks:

1. Monitor your website activity

Keep a close eye on your network activity so you can spot when something is wrong. This helps you spot traffic spikes and determine if a DDoS attack is occurring.

2. Improve the capacity of your website

Mitigate the impact of traffic spikes by having high enough capacity to maintain good site performance. Hosting solutions with higher processing and storage resources – or those that can auto-scale – handle the load better than lower tiers. And a content delivery network (CDN) helps take some of the weight off, too.

3. Use a website security provider

Many companies sensibly choose not to deal with the DDoS challenge internally and therefore partner with third-party providers such as Sucuri.

4. Use a web application firewall.

For example, the Sucuri website firewall DDoS mitigation feature automatically blocks fake traffic and requests from malicious bots without affecting your legitimate traffic. Our cloud-based network can mitigate large network attacks (Layer 3 and 4) and we specialize in treating Layer 7 attacks on web applications.

What happens as a result of a DDoS attack?

The cost of protecting against a DDoS attack is typically much less than the financial impact of a DDoS attack on your website (or any other hacking attempt).

Since these attacks can cause server downtime, DDoS attacks can put a significant strain on developers or IT resources trying to bring the website back online. Worse, they can significantly disrupt website traffic, user experience, and ultimately the buying process.

For example, an attack on an e-commerce store during the busy holiday shopping season could impact the entire company’s profitability for the year.

How to protect your website after a DDoS attack

While DDoS attacks are common, that doesn’t mean you have to accept them as part of your company’s online presence.

Limiting the number of requests your web server accepts over time is one way to mitigate DDoS attacks. Unfortunately, rate limiting is often not enough to effectively ward off complex DDoS attacks.

On the other hand, using a web application firewall like the Sucuri firewall can go a long way in mitigating a Layer 7 DDoS attack. Because the firewall filters traffic between the Internet and the origin server, it can act as a reverse proxy, protecting the website from malicious traffic.

The Sucuri Web Application Firewall uses a distributed anycast network that distributes data traffic to multiple distributed servers. Because this approach effectively distributes interference and helps make large volumes of traffic more manageable, websites can use this service to further reduce the impact of a DDoS attack.

When it comes to attacks on your website or livelihood, it’s always better to be proactive than reactive.

What is DDoS in gaming? Cyber ​​Attacks on Gamers in 2022 A DDoS attack can cause disruptions in your network and at the very least disrupt your gaming experience. Learn what DDoS in gaming is, why it’s important, and how to avoid and prevent it.

Imagine this: You are playing a game of Counter Strike against a team that you have been trying to beat for a while. Right on the verge of victory, you’ll get lag spikes or your game may freeze. While it could be a coincidence, it could also be a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. Knowing what gaming DDoS is can help you avoid such a situation. Key messages: DDoS attacks are designed to overload servers and cause them to either react significantly more slowly or crash completely.

Using a DDoS attack in the online gaming industry can give you a competitive edge over your opponents by compromising their network connection.

If you are a gamer who wants to protect yourself from such attacks that put your internet connection, data and privacy at risk, you should use a VPN. While DDoS attacks mainly target large companies, networks and websites with large infrastructures, gamers have found that their PCs and networks have been a prime target for attackers in recent years. Attackers also target the infrastructure of major online gaming platforms, making it impossible for players to use them. If you’ve recently been the target of such an attack and want to learn a little more about DDoS attacks, how they work, and how to protect yourself, read on. Is DDoS illegal in gaming? While laws vary by location, a distributed denial of service attack while gaming is illegal in most countries.

Is DDoS a crime? Yes, DDoS attacks are a crime that has different penalties depending on your location.

What does it mean if you DDoS? A DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service attack, means you send rogue data requests to a specific server with the aim of disrupting the server and either making it incredibly slow to respond or crashing it completely.

What is DDoS in gaming? DDoS attacks are usually carried out against websites, but they can also happen to online games. The attacker’s goal is to disrupt your internet connection in a way that causes problems with online play, such as: B. latency peaks or disconnections. Playing a competitive online game could cost you your victory. Imagine playing a game of Fortnite but every time you try to build there is a one second delay. Or you’re playing a game of Counter Strike: Global Offensive, but your bullets fire half a second late. Although these are seemingly tiny periods of time, they are more than enough to give your opponent a competitive edge. What is a DDoS attack? A DDoS attack is a cyber attack in which the attacker sends illegal requests to a web server, either causing it to run significantly slower or crashing completely. As a result, legitimate requests cannot be fulfilled and authorized users do not have access. How they work is explained in more detail in our post on DDoS attacks – we recommend you read it. How does a gaming DDoS attack work? There are two ways attackers can launch attacks: against individuals and against an entire network. When a person’s personal system is attacked, the entire online gaming session becomes extremely slow and unplayable, giving the attacker a considerable advantage. This requires the attacker to know your IP address, which can happen if you download malware that sends your IP address to the attacker. If they know, they need a network of computers called a botnet to repeatedly send requests to your network. Nowadays you can rent a botnet for the sole purpose of launching a DDoS attack. The only reason anyone could do this while gaming is to give themselves a competitive edge over you in-game – and if you don’t protect yourself, it works. On the other hand, full online gaming platforms like PlayStation Network and Xbox Live have also suffered attacks that rendered them unusable for long periods of time. Players could not access these networks, frustrating millions of players. Examples of DDoS Gaming Attacks DDoS attacks against gaming networks and online gamers as individuals have happened before, with arguably the most notable example being the 2014 Christmas DDoS attack on both Sony’s PlayStation Network and the Xbox Live network is. The attack affected nearly 160 million players and it took some time for networks to return to normal. A more recent example also involves high-level Apex Legends players, who have used DDoS attacks to overload the game’s servers and gain an advantage. When knocked down, they triggered a DDoS attack on Apex Legends gaming servers. After videos of the situation in question were posted, players were promptly banned from the game. There’s also the Mirai botnet, which has been conducting cyberattacks against a French telecoms provider and a US tech company. While it was initially feared that this was an attempt by cybercriminals to disrupt the upcoming election, it turned out to be three college students trying to gain an advantage in Minecraft. Minecraft has a grueling world of private servers with owners making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month from it. The students behind Mirai wanted a piece of that pie. They targeted tools that protected such servers from DDoS attacks with the aim of subsequently attacking the servers and possibly stealing their customers and moving them to their own servers.

Can DDoS gaming attacks be avoided? For the most part, DDoS attacks can be avoided, but taking steps to protect yourself as an individual player is very different from protecting an entire network. When trying to protect a network or website, the most important aspect to consider is your hosting provider and their firewall. While it’s not a panacea, it’s a great way to block basic attacks and give you time to react. Monitoring is the other thing you want to do because the best defense against a DDoS attack is to catch it early. As an individual, the first thing you should do is use common sense. Do not open spam emails or download software from shady websites that may contain malware that will send your IP address to a potential attacker. The second is to use an antivirus or anti-malware software and the third, and probably the best thing you can do, is to use a VPN or virtual private network. Can a VPN protect against DDoS attacks? Yes – in fact, this is one of the things VPNs are best at. In order for attackers to perform a DDoS attack, they need your IP address. When you access a website (or game server) directly, that IP address is logged by the website or server. However, a VPN routes your connection through one of their servers and gives you a new IP address that hides your real one. Unfortunately, if an attacker already has your IP address, there’s not much that a VPN can do. A reputable VPN provider will do a lot more than just give you new IP addresses. It also gives you an encrypted connection that’s nearly impossible to compromise, as well as features like a kill switch that disables your internet access when you’re disconnected from the VPN server. You can also change your location virtually – for some online gamers this might come in handy if they want to play a game that isn’t available in their region or get easier lobbies. While the gaming industry used to frown on using VPNs because they introduced additional latencies, the technology has improved by leaps and bounds. Each VPN from our list of the best VPNs for gaming does a great job of protecting your connection from DDoS attacks with little to no impact on latency.

How to Prevent DDoS Attacks While Gaming If you are trying to enjoy your online gaming without DDoS attacks interfering with your network, the best thing you can do is to get the best VPN for DDoS protection that will ensure that your IP address remains private. If you’re still worried about speed, check out our recommendations for the fastest VPNs – they all do a great job. Users who don’t mind spending a little more for a premium VPN should read our ExpressVPN review, as it’s an excellent choice when it comes to protecting your home network from DDoS attacks. NordVPN is an alternative (you can read our NordVPN review), a cheaper choice that does just as well in the security department and works almost as well. Aside from a VPN, there are two other things you should do: 1) use antivirus software and 2) be careful what you click online. Antivirus software helps if you accidentally download malware that could compromise your IP address, but it’s still a good idea to be careful about what you download and what you click on.

What to do if you think you’re DDoSed DDoS attacks often come without warning, and realizing one is happening to you is easier said than done. If you think you’re the target of one, you should first unplug your modem and router, then turn off your computer and turn it on again after five to 10 minutes. If you continue to have problems, you may be DDoSed. Most ISPs give you a dynamic IP address that changes every 24 to 48 hours, and the attacker will not know your new one. However, if you cannot wait that long, you can contact your ISP and ask them to change your IP address immediately. While members of the gaming community should know how to deal with a DDoS attack, preventing it is even better. Using a VPN for your home network and a good firewall for your website or private server is a great way to ensure you don’t fall victim to this dangerous recent gaming industry trend.

Final Thoughts Ultimately, nobody wants to deal with a DDoS attack while gaming. You’ll turn a fun experience into a frustrating one, and if you play something competitive, there’s a big chance you’ll lose the game. That being said, you can protect yourself by being careful about what you do online and by using a reliable VPN. ExpressVPN and NordVPN are two excellent VPN options that help keep your IP address private, thereby protecting you from DDoS attacks. Have you ever been the target of a DDoS attack? How did you deal with it? Let us know in the comments and, as always, thanks for reading.

What is a PDoS attack?

A disc operating system (DoS) attack interferes with computer hardware by slowing it down, disrupting it temporarily, or shutting it down completely. We can compare this to the effect that a stroke has on the deep layers of the human brain. We present here two forms of these crimes.

The first attack is physical “phlashing,” which corrupts a hardware device to the point where it becomes unusable and data is lost. The second is a massive cyber attack from a remote source that temporarily or permanently disables the equipment.

These forms of sabotage are growing in popularity among cybercriminals because they offer a way to disrupt data-dependent organizations with relatively little effort.

How physical “phlashing” attacks work

A criminal may be able to enter an insecure facility and physically upload a corrupted BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) from a portable device. They could also achieve the same by managing it from the general management interface.

For example, you might replace the device firmware with modified, corrupted, or corrupted firmware images. Techs call this process “flashing” when it’s legitimate and phlashing when it’s not.

These PDoS (Permanent Disc Operating System) attacks are carried out by a person who is present. For example, there is a $3 USB device on the open market that a Russian hacker turned into a “computer killer” in a video. This originally innocent air purifier can be connected to any device with a USB interface.

Push it into the slot and a negative 220 volt surge is released, destroying critical components, although it is possible to replace them. If you don’t have your servers and routers in a secure environment, $3 and watching a video can be enough to destroy them.

There is growing evidence that bots and malware can overheat a smartphone by maximizing its processing power. This can cause the lithium battery to bulge and possibly explode. So the same is possible with laptops.

Denial of service attacks on computers

So far we’ve mainly talked about PDoS (Permanent Disc Operating System) attacks with a person present and the Mission Criticality of physical security. As data colocation centers eliminate these opportunities, criminals are increasingly turning to the Internet for alternatives that do not require them to be physically present.

Temporary denial of service DOS attacks occur when a malicious attacker decides to prevent ordinary users from contacting a computer or network for its intended purpose. The effect can be temporary or indefinite, depending on what you want in return for your efforts.

They achieve their goal by flooding the target resource/machine with unnecessary messages, thereby overloading the system to the point where it can no longer carry out its normal routines. A more extreme distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack obfuscates its origins by attacking from a variety of sources and can be impossible to stop.

We can compare this effect to a crowd trying to suppress a Black Friday sale, blocking the entrance and denying other customers entry.

Why are these attacks increasing, what has changed?

Experts originally assumed that the effect of permanent PDoS attacks was limited because they thought criminals would find the prey more lucrative elsewhere. After all, why would a victim want to pay when the damage is permanent and cannot be undone? However, there are signs that criminals are using PDoS threats as blackmail.

The 2017 Petya attack took ransomware to new heights by disabling computers to wreak havoc. However, most of the victims were able to recover without paying when experts discovered that Petya was only deleting software. It is unclear whether the mistake was intentional.

Some malicious trolls may find these persistent disabling attacks more effective than distributed devices. The Netherlands has drawn a line by accusing Russia of cyber warfare despite the latter claiming “a misunderstanding”.

There are several lessons learned from these PDoS attacks. First, we now have a massive army of Internet of Things devices, and they are wide open to exploitation by bots, which is becoming increasingly difficult to combat. The second lesson is that we need military-grade security for our data. There is mounting evidence that the hacking group APT28 has strong ties to the Russian government.

And finally, we must learn to become smarter and more vigilant. That brings us to the heart of this article. How do we know when we are threatened by a PDoS attack?

What are the Symptoms of a Denial of Service Attack?

The United States government is increasingly threatened by attacks on its key facilities. Therefore, its Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) has issued security tip ST04-015. This identifies the following symptoms of a denial of service attack.

Unusually slow network performance

Slow to open files or access websites

Unavailability of a particular website

inability to access a website

Dramatic increase in email count (bombing)

Simultaneous symptoms may also include (a) disconnection from a wireless or wired Internet connection and (b) long-term denial of access to the Internet or Internet services.

The report mentions the possibility of a sufficiently large-scale attack that compromises “entire geographic regions of Internet connectivity…without the attacker’s knowledge or intent.” This can occur due to “misconfigured or weak network infrastructure equipment”.

Your best defense against a permanently disabling PDoS attack

Your best hope is to regularly patch and update your devices to withstand these attacks. However, there is no single silver bullet for taking down cybermonsters, so constant vigilance is key.

To avoid a PDoS attack, you should regularly review who is authorized to flash your computers and integrate the shutdown process into employee termination procedures. After all, there’s a lot to gain by making sure your mission-critical equipment is in a safe place.

Colocation centers are among the most secure silos to prevent physical attacks on hardware. In addition, they have specialists available to share trends in cyber attacks and solutions. If you need help, they’re just a phone call away.

No, it will not stop DDoS. The DDoS will continue on the host it is currently targeting. Straight back to the goal.

If you suspect you actually mean “would resetting the IP stop the attack [on me]”, the answer might be. Firstly, this is highly dependent on your ISP’s infrastructure.

Resetting your IP address may mean that you are resetting the IP interface, or it may be that a DHCP release/renewal is sent as part of the process. Either way, if your device doesn’t send out a DHCP release, any DHCP server will simply return the same IP address since there’s still a valid lease on your CPE device.

Even if it sends a DHCP release (i.e. releases the lease), there’s a good chance you’ll get the same IP address. Many implementations of DHCP use the same IP address that the CPE device was previously leased for if not leased to another client.

In any case, you have a good chance of getting the same IP address from your ISP and remain “under attack”. Coming back to the targeting mentioned earlier, DDoS attacks can be launched against a hostname or a range of IP addresses rather than a single IP address.

So even if you have a new IP address, are using a dynamic DNS service, and the attack targets your hostname, you are still the target of the attack. Or if the target is an IP range and your new IP is still within the range, then you will still be a target of the attack. It may take some time for the attack to ramp up again, but the problem will likely return soon.

So what should you do?

I recently read that certain industries – including the one I work in – are more likely to be the target of a DDoS attack than others. Can you give me some tips on how to prevent DDoS attacks?

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks are an insidious foe for online retailers and others who rely on their websites to run critical business functions. For example, the damage caused by the DDoS attacks Anonymous launched against several major websites this summer was measured in thousands of dollars per hour. These attacks are also extremely difficult to counter due to their distributed nature. It is difficult to distinguish legitimate web traffic from requests that are part of the DDoS attack.

There are some countermeasures you can take to prevent a successful DDoS attack. One of them is the implementation of intrusion prevention systems (IPSes) with DDoS detection capability, but the effectiveness of this approach is limited. Even the best IPS technology is only marginally effective against DDoS attacks, and it’s often possible for those performing the attack to consume all of the available bandwidth on your network. Whether the attacker floods your server or your Internet pipe, the effect is the same: users cannot access resources on your network.

The most effective (and not so effective!) way to protect your network against DDoS activity is to work with your internet service provider (ISP) to provide your network with clean bandwidth. ISPs are undoubtedly the experts in DDoS mitigation and are uniquely positioned to protect their customers’ networks from malicious traffic. ISPs can detect and filter out potential DDoS packets before they reach your limit, preventing such attacks from consuming all of your available bandwidth.

Unfortunately, while ISP partnerships are effective, there is no magic bullet to protect against DDoS attacks. Because of this, we continue to see news of hacker groups successfully conducting these attacks against major online sites. If there was a foolproof mitigation strategy, these sites would surely be using it!

Ask the expert!

Got an annoying problem for Mike Chapple or one of our other experts? Ask your company-specific questions today! (All questions are anonymous.)

The short answer is “until it stops”.

Afaik, there are no good stats on averages and intensities – most attacks are not reported publicly. As many have pointed out, the best, and probably only, option is to have an open discussion with your ISP and rely on their knowledge and experience.

Depending on the available tools and the skills of the administrators, you are usually offered various compromises between the accessibility of the site to the outside world and the effectiveness in filtering DDoS, which usually works well enough.

If this type of attack happens to you frequently or lasts longer than a few days, it may be worth investing in a better equipped ISP, or if you are far enough upstream to be responsible for your own DDoS protection, invest into better security tools and people.

Cyber ​​attacks on internet-connected resources have increased over the past 12 months – with Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) being one of the most significant. DDoS can disrupt a company’s Internet connection and serve as a pretext for more malicious attacks such as ransomware. However, understanding the financial impact can be difficult to calculate.

DDoS attacks have been around for over three decades. Broadly speaking, it is a class of cyberattacks that uses multiple compromised systems to send malicious traffic across the internet in order to overwhelm the resources of a targeted application, service, or platform. As a result, the victim of a DDoS attack can experience degraded services or even a complete outage – and the impact can spread beyond a single target if that victim is in turn a supplier to others.

Take the recent example of a DDoS attack on Voipfone, a highly respected voice over IP and broadband internet provider in the UK. It was plagued by a DDoS attack that caused “significant service disruptions” for two days in early September. The ISP issued a statement saying it suffered a “planned and organized DDoS attack” targeting Voipfone and similar organizations in the UK. Also, it had received a sizable ransom demand from a “Russia-based criminal hacking organization called REvil”.

However, understanding the cost impact goes beyond paying a ransom. The factors depend heavily on the nature of the victim’s business, the extent of the disruption, and the duration. On the one hand, consider popular or high-traffic websites like e-commerce, gaming, and web hosting that can lose hundreds of thousands of pounds for every minute they’re down. According to Corero’s white paper The Need for Always-On in DDoS Protection, the average cost of a DDoS attack in the US is around $218,000, not counting ransomware costs.

Remediation and compensation are also a factor. For some organizations, such as B. Web hosting provider, an outage can affect thousands of customers and lead to high balancing costs, especially when there is a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with contractual obligations and penalties. These direct costs can be neglected compared to reputational damage, especially when the attack is used as a red herring to a data breach where intellectual property or personal customer data is stolen or compromised.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that can take down network resources and websites can be hired online for as little as $5 an hour. With an average financial impact of $100,000 for just one hour of downtime, this is a serious return on cybercriminal investments. And that’s just for the “bargain basement” attacks. Further up the food chain come more sophisticated DDoS-as-a-Service attacks with enterprise-grade support and the ability to wreak havoc.

DDoS for Hire services have removed two key barriers to entry for would-be cybercriminals: technical skill and cost. In recent years, an additional twist has been added: blackmail. Why bother sustaining a large DDoS attack when the mere threat can be enough to make a company pay?

How much “investment” would it take for an inexperienced cybercriminal to actually harm an e-commerce site owner – without necessarily launching a DDoS attack? Before we jump into the real world, let’s take a look at a hypothetical scenario…

Little effort, big effect

Ransom Value for Attackers:

$9,300 profit1

$700 weekly botnet rental2

48 hour attack

2 attacks per week

Average ransom = $5,000

Profit = $9,300

Ransom Value for Website Owners:

20,000 daily visitors (4% conversion rate)3

800 purchases ($131 average online sale)4

$104,800 daily turnover

$209,600 in lost sales

Don’t play games: the high cost of a network DDoS attack

Now let’s look at a real-life example involving a global online gaming company in 2020. They received a ransom note threatening a DDoS attack and decided to ignore it. Soon after, they noticed proxy errors on their website and couldn’t reach their origin servers. Further investigation revealed that they were not receiving any packages from their servers at all. When they contacted their ISP, it turned out that they were cut off as “noisy neighbors” – i.e. H. the attack on their website affected the resources of other customers, so the ISP “locked” them to protect others. The costs?

Twelve hours downtime

39 engineers work around the clock to limit the damage

30-minute status updates that impact resources across the organization

$42,000 = the cost of website downtime

$44,000 x 12 = Chaos in the contact center, loss of productivity for 39 agents for 12 hours

Total = $616,000+

When you consider that downtime can cost up to $300,000 an hour5, it could have been a lot worse. A quarter of DDoS targets are hit 10 times or more6.

DDoS and the end result

Even a few minutes of downtime can have far-reaching effects on a business. Recovering from a DDoS attack can take days or even weeks. Ninety-one percent of organizations have experienced downtime from DDoS. And since payment to stop a ransom DDoS attack is typically demanded in cryptocurrency, there is no traditional “follow the money” way to track down the criminals behind the attacks.

Assuming your infrastructure partners can protect you or that your business is too niche to be of interest is risky: many organizations experience a DDoS attack at least once a year. A quarter of DDoS targets are hit 10 times or more; Once an attacker decides to pursue a target, they are incredibly persistent.

In a world where cybercriminals routinely automate short, sharp DDoS attacks, an automated, always-on mitigation is your best defense in a game of cat-and-mouse where attackers cause maximum disruption before hybrid cloud and on-premises Because the solution takes longer to respond than the attack itself, criminals not only cause denial of service, but also prevent mitigation appliances from activating the cloud scrubbing platform.

Ransomware DDoS attacks are back and striking without warning. To learn more about how Imperva’s proactive DDoS prevention solutions ensure business continuity with guaranteed uptime and no performance degradation, visit the DDoS section of our website.

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1Based on 1BTC = $39,000

2Based on an average charge of $100 per day for a “quality” DDoS-as-a-Service attack

3https://www.invespcro.com/blog/the-average-website-conversion-rate-by-industry/

4Statista, United States Average Online Shopping Order Value 2020, by Device.

5https://blogs.gartner.com/andrew-lerner/2014/07/16/the-cost-of-downtime/

62021 DDoS Threat Landscape Report

Updated May 4, 2022

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are now part of everyday life. Whether it’s a small non-profit organization or a massive multinational conglomerate, the organization’s online services – email, websites, anything connected to the internet – can be slowed down or stopped entirely by a DDoS attack. For data center, colocation, hosting, and other service providers, DDoS attacks threaten the infrastructure that provides network and service availability to all tenants, subscribers, and customers, and can target the most valuable customers.

A successful DDoS attack can seriously damage a brand’s reputation and cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in revenue. Additionally, DDoS attacks are sometimes used to distract cybersecurity operations while other criminal activities such as data theft or network infiltration are ongoing.

Recent geopolitical events in Ukraine have demonstrated the efficiency of both state-sponsored and grassroots cybercriminals in conducting politically motivated DDoS attacks on critical infrastructure and government agencies. From the systems of our A10 security research team, we have observed significant and sustained attacks on Ukrainian government networks and related commercial internet assets, with a massive spike on the first day of the conflict. The details of what we observed can be found in a recent blog post.

DDoS Weapons Tracked by A10 Threat Research Team Detected Approximately 15.4 Million Weapons in 2021 – A10 Attack Mitigation Threat Report (2H2021).

DDoS attacks are getting bigger and more frequent

The online threat landscape is evolving at an accelerating rate, with hackers launching more distributed denial-of-service attacks than ever before, targeting new targets and creating new botnets. Demand for solutions to a variety of business needs and the arrival of 5G technologies has accelerated the spread of the Internet of Things (IoT) across the world, creating a vast pool of unsuspecting and protected new recruits for botnet armies used to launch Attacks are used on a massive scale.

The number and complexity of DDoS attacks is expected to continue to increase as botnets and low-cost DDoS-as-a-Service platforms proliferate.

During the pandemic, cybercriminals had a busy two years with a rapidly growing number of DDoS weapons, widespread botnet activity, and some of the largest DDoS attacks on record.

One of the biggest factors in DDoS attacks in 2020 was the COVID-19 lockdown, which has spurred a rapid shift to the internet for everything from education and healthcare to consumer shopping and office work, giving hackers more targets than ever before. Due to the urgency of this transition, many of these organizations and workers have found themselves significantly underprotected from attacks due to the difficulty of maintaining cybersecurity best practices in an emergency scenario.

In 2021, the scale of these attacks reached record highs. In November 2021, Microsoft mitigated a DDoS attack on an Azure customer with a throughput of 3.45 Tbps and a packet rate of 340 million PPS – believed to be the largest DDoS attack ever recorded. 2021 also saw increased use of DDoS to demand ransom payments to stop the attacks – or not start them in the first place.

In our ongoing tracking of DDoS attacks, attack vectors and malware activity, A10 Networks has observed a steady increase in the frequency, intensity and complexity of these threats, most recently in our A10 Attack Mitigation Threat Intelligence Report (2H2021). The good news is that DDoS protection best practices remain effective even as threat levels increase.

Mitigating Reflected Amplification Attacks Learn how to protect against reflected amplification attacks, one of the most common and disruptive types of DDoS attacks. Watch the webinar

A Brief History of DDoS Attacks

The first known distributed denial of service attack happened in 1996 when Panix, now one of the oldest Internet service providers, was taken offline for several days by a SYN flood, a technique that has become a classic DDoS attack. Over the next few years, DDoS attacks became common and Cisco predicts that the total number of DDoS attacks will double from 7.9 million in 2018 to just over 15 million by 2023.

Total number of DDoS attacks

Figure 1. Cisco’s analysis of overall DDoS attack history and predictions.

But not only the number of DDoS attacks is increasing. Threat actors are creating larger and larger botnets — the armies of hacked devices used to generate DDoS traffic. As botnets grow, so does the scope of DDoS attacks. A distributed denial of service attack at one gigabit per second is enough to force most organizations offline, but we are now seeing peak attack sizes in excess of a terabit per second generated by hundreds of thousands or even millions of downstream devices . For more background information on the technical aspects of a distributed denial of service attack, see our What is a DDoS attack? and in our video WHO, WHAT, WHY, WHERE of DDoS attacks.

The cost of DDoS attacks

With IT service downtime costing organizations anywhere from $300,000 to over $1,000,000 an hour, you can see that the financial impact of even a brief DDoS attack can seriously affect your bottom line. To understand the impact a distributed denial of service attack could have on your organization and cybersecurity planning, please read our whitepaper How to Analyze the Business Impact of DDoS Attacks.

The Five Most Famous DDoS Attacks (for now)

To provide some insight into what these attacks look like “in the wild,” let’s take a look at some of the most notable DDoS attacks to date. Our selection includes some DDoS attacks that are known for their sheer scale, while others are famous for their impact and consequences.

1. The Google Attack, 2020

On October 16, 2020, Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) published a blog update on how the threats and threat actors are changing their tactics due to the 2020 US election. At the end of the post, the company snuck into a note:

In 2020, our Security Reliability Engineering team measured a record-breaking UDP amplification attack originating from multiple Chinese ISPs (ASNs 4134, 4837, 58453, and 9394), which remains the largest bandwidth attack known to us.

The attack on thousands of Google IP addresses carried out by three Chinese ISPs lasted six months and peaked at a staggering 2.5 Tbps! Damian Menscher, Security Reliability Engineer at Google, wrote:

The attacker used multiple networks to forge 167 Mpps (millions of packets per second) to 180,000 exposed CLDAP, DNS, and SMTP servers, which then sent large responses to us. This shows the volumes a well-equipped attacker can achieve: four times larger than the record-breaking 623 Gbps attack from the Mirai botnet a year earlier.

2. The AWS DDoS attack in 2020

Amazon Web Services, the 800-pound cloud computing gorilla, was hit by a gigantic DDoS attack in February 2020. This was the most extreme DDoS attack ever and targeted an unidentified AWS customer using a technique called Connectionless Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (CLDAP) reflection. This technique relies on vulnerable third-party CLDAP servers and amplifies the amount of data sent to the victim’s IP address by 56 to 70 times. The attack lasted three days and peaked at a staggering 2.3 terabytes per second.

Why the AWS attack matters

While the disruption caused by the AWS DDoS attack was far less severe than it could have been, the sheer scale of the attack and the impact it has on AWS hosting customers, who may lose revenue and suffer brand damage, are significant.

3. The DDoS attacks by Mirai Krebs and OVH in 2016

On September 20, 2016, cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs’ blog was hit by a 620 Gbps DDoS attack. Krebs’ website had previously been attacked. Krebs had registered 269 DDoS attacks since July 2012, but this attack was nearly three times the size of anything its website or the internet had seen before.

The source of the attack was the Mirai botnet, which at its peak later this year consisted of more than 600,000 compromised IoT devices such as IP cameras, home routers and video players. The Mirai botnet was discovered in August of that year, but attacking Krebs’ blog was its first major foray.

The next Mirai botnet attack, on September 19, targeted one of Europe’s largest hosting providers, OVH, which hosts around 18 million applications for over a million customers. Targeting a single, undisclosed OVH customer, this attack was powered by an estimated 145,000 bots, generating up to 1.1 terabit traffic per second. It lasted about seven days. But OVH was not to be the last victim of the Mirai botnet in 2016.

Why Mirai Krebs and OVH attacks matter

The Mirai botnet was a significant step toward the clout of a DDoS attack. The size and sophistication of the Mirai network was unprecedented, as was the scale of the attacks and their focus.

Video: What is Mirai and how to protect yourself from it?

4. The Mirai Dyn DDoS attack in 2016

Before we discuss the third notable Mirai botnet DDoS attack of 2016, there is a related event worth mentioning. On September 30, someone claiming to be the author of the Mirai software released the source code to various hacker forums, and the Mirai DDoS platform has been replicated and modified countless times since then.

Figure 2. A map of internet outages in Europe and North America caused by the October 2, 2016 Dyn cyberattack / Source: DownDetector (CC BY-SA)

On October 21, 2016, Dyn, a major Domain Name Service (DNS) provider, was attacked by a terabit per second traffic surge, which then became the new record for a DDoS attack. There is some evidence that the DDoS attack may actually have reached a rate of 1.5 terabits per second. The traffic tsunami has taken Dyn’s services offline and rendered a number of high-profile websites inaccessible, including GitHub, HBO, Twitter, Reddit, PayPal, Netflix, and Airbnb. Kyle York, Dyn’s Chief Strategy Officer, reported: “We observed 10 million discrete IP addresses associated with the Mirai botnet that were part of the attack.”

Why the Mirai Dyn attack is important

Mirai supports complex, multi-vector attacks that make it harder to block. Although the Mirai botnet was responsible for the largest attacks up to this point, the most notable thing about the 2016 Mirai attacks was the release of the Mirai source code, which allowed anyone with modest IT skills to create a botnet and distribute one Set up denial of attack Service Attack without much effort.

5. The GitHub attack in 2018

On February 28, 2018, GitHub, a platform for software developers, was hit by a DDoS attack that reached 1.35 terabits per second and lasted about 20 minutes. According to GitHub, traffic was traced to “over a thousand different Autonomous Systems (ASNs) across tens of thousands of unique endpoints.”

The chart below shows how big the difference was between normal traffic levels and that of the DDoS attack.

Although GitHub was well prepared for a DDoS attack, their defenses were overwhelmed. They just couldn’t know that an attack of this magnitude would be launched. As GitHub explained in the company’s incident report, “Over the past year, we have deployed additional transit connections to our facilities. We have more than doubled our transit capacity in that time, which has allowed us to withstand certain volumetric attacks without impacting users… Nevertheless, attacks like these sometimes require the help of partners with larger transit networks to provide blocking and filtering.”

Why the GitHub attack matters

The GitHub DDoS attack was notable for its scale and the fact that the attack was engineered by exploiting a standard command from Memcached, a database caching system used to speed up websites and networks. The Memcached DDoS attack technique is particularly effective because it provides an amplification factor – the ratio of the attacker’s request size to the amount of DDoS attack traffic generated – of up to 51,200 times.

DDoS Mitigation Enters the AI ​​Era In another year of record-breaking attacks, service providers defended against multiple DDoS attacks that exceeded 2.3 Tbps and 2.5 Tbps. Read this IDC report to learn how AI/ML and automation are key to providing responsive DDoS attack protection that drives enterprise resilience. Learn more about AI/ML and automation in DDoS Threat Defense

Other notable distributed denial of service attacks

6. A European gambling company, 2021

In February, Akami announced that they had addressed “three of the six largest volumetric DDoS attacks” the company has ever recorded. The DDoS attacks were attempts at blackmail. The hackers launch a DDoS attack, which the target inevitably notices, and then demand payment in order not to do it again and on a larger scale. In this case, the threat attack weighed 800 Gbps.

Why the gambling company attack matters

This attack was notable not only for its scale, but also for its novelty. The attackers used a previously unknown DDoS attack vector based on a network protocol known as Protocol 33 or Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP). This attack was volumetric and by abusing Protocol 33, the exploit was designed to bypass defenses focused on traditional Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) traffic flows.

7. Occupy Central, Hong Kong DDoS attack in 2014

The multi-day PopVote DDoS attack was carried out in 2014 and targeted the Hong Kong-based grassroots movement Occupy Central, which advocated for a more democratic electoral system.

In response to their activities, the attackers sent large amounts of traffic to three of Occupy Central’s web hosting services, as well as two independent websites, PopVote, an online campaign site, and Apple Daily, a news site that neither Occupy Central owned but supported his business openly. Those responsible were probably reacting to Occupy Central’s pro-democracy message.

The attack bombarded the Occupy Central servers with packets disguised as legitimate traffic. It ran on five botnets instead of one, resulting in peak traffic rates of 500 gigabits per second.

Why the Occupy Central attack matters

Although it has been reported that the attackers were likely linked to the Chinese government, conclusive evidence has never been provided and, perversely, the attack may have been intended to make the Chinese government look bad. The attack may also have provided cover for hackers who managed to extract Occupy Central personnel details from a database and then launched an extensive phishing campaign.

8. The CloudFlare DDoS attack in 2014

In 2014, CloudFlare, a cybersecurity and content delivery network provider, was hit by a DDoS attack estimated at around 400 gigabits per second of traffic. The attack, which targeted a single CloudFlare customer and targeted servers in Europe, was launched using a vulnerability in the Network Time Protocol (NTP) protocol, used to ensure computer clocks are accurate. Although the attack only targeted one CloudFlare customer, it was so powerful that it significantly impacted CloudFlare’s own network.

Why the CloudFlare attack matters

This attack demonstrates a technique in which attackers use spoofed source addresses to send spoofed NTP server responses to attack target servers. This type of attack is known as a “reflection attack” because the attacker is able to “send back” spoofed requests from the NTP server while hiding their own address. Due to a vulnerability in the NTP protocol, the attack’s amplification factor can be as high as 206x, making NTP servers a very effective DDoS tool. Shortly after the attack, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team says NTP amplification attacks are “particularly difficult to block” because “responses are legitimate data coming from valid servers.”

9. The Spamhaus DDoS attack in 2013

In 2013, a massive DDoS attack was launched against Spamhaus, a non-profit threat intelligence provider. Although Spamhaus is regularly attacked as an anti-spam organization and already has DDoS protection services in place, this attack – a reflection attack estimated at 300 gigabits of traffic per second – was large enough to damage its website and part of its e- Corrupt mail services offline.

Why the Spamhaus attack matters

The cyberattack was traced to a member of a Dutch company called Cyberbunker, which appears to have targeted Spamhaus after blacklisting the company for spamming. This makes it clear that companies or malicious employees can carry out DDoS attacks with immense brand damage and serious legal consequences.

10. The Six Banks DDoS attack in 2012

On March 12, 2012, six US banks were targeted in a wave of DDoS attacks: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bank, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and PNC Bank. The attacks were carried out by hundreds of hijacked servers from a botnet called Brobot, with each attack generating over 60 gigabits of DDoS attack traffic per second.

At the time, these attacks were unique in their persistence. Instead of trying to launch an attack and then backing down, the perpetrators bombarded their targets with a variety of attack methods to find one that worked. So even if a bank was prepared for some types of DDoS attacks, it was helpless against other types of attacks.

Why the Six Banks attack matters

The most notable aspect of the bank attacks in 2012 was that the attacks were allegedly carried out by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Hamas organization. In addition, the attacks had a huge impact on affected banks in terms of revenue, mitigation costs, customer service issues, and banks’ branding and image.

DDoS attack protection with A10’s DDoS protection solutions

Although new types of distributed denial-of-service attacks are emerging frequently, the A10 Thunder® Threat Protection System (TPS) uses advanced defense strategies that protect against all types of cyberattacks, including new, novel DDoS attacks affecting your online and could bring internal services to a standstill. Visit the DDoS protection solutions page to learn more.

For more insights, including the top Reflector searches and DDoS research insights conducted by attackers, download the full A10 Networks report, The State of DDoS Weapons.

It’s no secret that the gambling industry has seen massive expansion over the past decade.

The Xbox Live community has grown 30% year over year for the past 36 months.

Additionally, you can now find esports live on ESPN, with winners winning millions (yes, millions) of dollars.

But in the ever-expanding landscape of online gaming, gamers are increasingly at risk for cyber attacks.

Throughout this article, we’re going to take an in-depth look at a common internet attack that Xbox Live users have been experiencing lately, a DDOS attack.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what’s covered:

The definition of a DDOS attack

How DDOS Attacks Work (The Process)

How to Fix and Prevent DDOS Attacks

What is a DDOS attack?

Let’s start with the simplest question we can ask.

What is a DDOS attack?

A distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack is a type of attack designed to temporarily disable your website, network, IP address, or service.

The majority of victims of DDOS attacks claim that hackers chose them as targets to either blackmail them into paying a cryptocurrency ransom or simply to divert their attention to the attack while hackers installed malicious software and/or stole data.

Regarding Xbox users, DDOS attacks can also be used by cyber criminals to disrupt your internet service for up to 24 hours.

Many Xbox players say that the DDOS attacks are carried out by other players in retaliation – simply as a threat.

Because of this, it is important for Xbox players to know how these attacks work and how to prevent angry gamers/cyber criminals from disrupting their service.

How DDOS Attacks Ruin Your Xbox Gaming Experience

What exactly happens to players when a DDOS attack occurs?

A DDOS attack effectively leaves you unable to connect to your server, making it impossible to access Xbox Live.

The most notorious of the DDOS attacks on Xbox was carried out by Lizard Squad.

The Lizard Squad was a blackhat group of cybercriminals threatening attacks on multiple gaming platforms, affecting multiple Xbox players in December 2014.

In 2016, two of the four members were arrested as participants in a “DDOS for Hire” program.

How DDOS attacks work

To understand how to prevent attacks and make your Xbox experience as seamless as possible, you must first understand how a DDOS attack works.

In most cases, DDOS attacks are carried out on multiple computers.

Hackers compromise these computers and use them to attack websites, servers or specific services.

A DDOS attack sends traffic congestion to your server, rendering it inoperable.

A few terms to know before proceeding:

Bot – An autonomous program that can interact with users and systems. For the purpose of this article, a bot is a device that has been infected with malware, which allows it to be controlled and used by cyber criminals to perform or threaten DDOS attacks.

– An autonomous program that can interact with users and systems. For the purpose of this article, a bot is a device that has been infected with malware, which allows it to be controlled and used by cyber criminals to perform or threaten DDOS attacks. Botnet – A botnet is a collection of bots that hackers use to cause traffic overload on your server.

– A botnet is a collection of bots that hackers use to cause traffic congestion on your server. Script Kiddie – A novice hacker who isn’t particularly good at coding

Once the cyber criminal has successfully set up a botnet, they can send requests to any bot to send a wealth of information to your IP address.

The scary part is that using botnets is becoming more and more popular.

Even script kiddies can access a botnet for rent.

Because of the easy access, an attacker with little or no hacking experience can efficiently perform DDOS attacks.

So what happens during a DoS attack?

Once the information is sent to the IP address under attack, your network is confused between normal traffic and malicious bot network traffic.

All because, technically, all internet traffic should come from legitimate devices.

This overwhelms your system and causes it to shut down temporarily.

However, it’s important to note that these attacks often become chaotic and don’t last long.

This deters many malicious hackers looking to make money from denial of service attacks.

But you should still make sure you have the right security practices in place.

What to do when your Xbox suffers a DDOS attack

If you lose online multiplayer access, you should not automatically assume that you will be attacked.

Evidence of a DDOS attack usually requires a bit of digging to find.

The first diagnostic method is one we’ve all heard at some point, even from the least tech-savvy person in your family: Turn off the router.

You should do this for at least 10 minutes.

Why?

Because when your router is disabled, a botnet can no longer send network traffic to your IP address, eliminating the threat.

The next method you can try is to communicate with your ISP (Internet Service Provider).

An ISP can make it easy for you to find the root of the attack through the use of blackholing, scrubbing, traffic engineering, and local filtering, but that’s a story for another day.

The last option to troubleshoot your gaming platform is to simply contact the Microsoft Xbox support team.

It’s even better if you know the gamertag of the person performing the DOS attack.

You can report a user by pressing the Xbox button to find recent players, clicking on their profile, selecting “Report” and then “Tampering”.

A comment box will appear for you to fill in the comment box and block the user.

How to prevent a DDOS attack on Xbox

Now it’s time to discuss why you came here.

Below we have outlined some ways to strengthen your network security to stop DDOS attacks on your Xbox gaming platform.

A denial of service attack is a very dangerous thing for businesses, but honestly when it comes to an Xbox DOS attack, hackers are most likely targeting many members of the gaming community or the server itself rather than a single one Player.

Their leverage increases when they are able to shut down a large part of the system versus a select few players.

There’s not much you can do if an attacker hacks into the Microsoft system itself.

A multi-vector attack is more complex to solve. Luckily, it’s nothing for the average player to worry about.

You just have to wait, which usually doesn’t take long to solve.

But here are some precautions you should take to protect your Xbox from DDOS attacks.

The first thing you should do to protect yourself from DDOS is make sure you’ve updated your Xbox privacy settings. In order to do this:

1) Go to your gamertag;

2) Select “More Options”;

3) Then go to “Xbox Settings”;

4) Click on “Privacy and online safety”.

From there you can browse the options you want to change.

You should always try to keep your user profile in private mode.

This way you can be sure that a minimal amount of your personal data is visible on the platform to the entire player community.

Also, basic things like making sure your password is safe should be implemented for a smooth gaming experience.

2) Start using antivirus and firewall software

As always, you need to make sure you have antivirus and firewall software installed to combat threats from attacks on your network and device.

Neutralizing network security threats is the most important element in protecting against DDOS attacks.

It sounds simple, but many people phase out their protective instruments and forget to replace them.

This makes the work of a hacker much easier.

Cloud-based solutions are a good way to customize your antivirus to include distributed denial-of-service attacks.

Most standard network protectors only offer limited capacity to deal with DDOS attacks.

But with a cloud solution, additional layers of security are added, which are helpful in detecting network changes caused by DDOS breaches.

3) Use a VPN

Another way to stop a DDOS attacker is to hide your location.

DDOS hackers need a target.

Many gaming nerds know that some games require a local VPN to play.

But you can also use a VPN to fend off a DDOS attacker by spoofing your IP location.

This makes it harder for hackers to find you.

Many VPN services like SwitchVPN offer thousands of IP addresses to eliminate the possibility of a DDOS attack.

All you have to do is get an IP address from another country and you can easily mitigate the potential for such a cyber attack.

pack things

We hope we have answered all your questions about how to prevent DDOS attacks on your Microsoft Xbox platform.

Now you can keep playing with peace of mind and don’t have to worry about a botnet ruining your gaming experience or hacking into your network or apps and stealing your valuable data.

Whether you’re using a PC or a gaming console, you shouldn’t have to worry about your IP address getting hacked or your PC getting contaminated.

That’s why we wrote this article to show you the best security practices for your network to prevent IP attacks.

In summary, here are the points to take away from this article:

A DDOS attack on your Xbox aims to overload your IP address and temporarily shut it down, preventing you from connecting to the Internet on Xbox Live

Cyber ​​criminals use a botnet to disrupt your network’s Internet services

Shutting down your internet router prevents botnets from sending information to your IP address

Communicating with your ISP is an important way to find the intruder

You can contact Microsoft support team to report hackers

It is better to keep your profile in private mode

You can fake your IP address with a VPN to hide your location from hackers and protect yourself from DoS attacks once and for all

Stay protected!

hacker group

Lizard Squad was a black hat hacking group best known for their claims of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks[1] primarily intended to disrupt gaming-related services.

On September 3, 2014, Lizard Squad apparently announced it had disbanded[2] only to return later, and claimed responsibility for a variety of attacks on prominent websites. The organization once participated in and co-hosted with the Darkode hacking forums.[3][4]

On April 30, 2016, Cloudflare published a blog post detailing how cybercriminals using the group’s name sent out random threats to perform DDoS attacks, although Cloudflare claims that despite these threats, they did not perform a single attack .[5][6] As a result, the City of London Police issued an alert warning companies not to comply with ransom demands that threatened DDoS attacks.[7][8]

Distributed denial of service attacks

A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack occurs when numerous systems overwhelm the bandwidth or resources of a target system, typically one or more web servers.[9] Such an attack is often the result of multiple systems (e.g. a botnet) flooding the target system with traffic. When a server is overloaded with connections, new connections can no longer be accepted.

Notable Actions

League of Legends DDoS

On August 18, 2014, servers of the League of Legends game were taken offline with a DDoS attack; This was claimed as the first Lizard Squad attack.

Destiny DDoS

On November 23, 2014, Lizard Squad claimed they had attacked Destiny servers with a DDoS attack.[11]

PlayStation Network DDoS

On August 24, 2014, the PlayStation Network was disrupted by a DDoS attack, and again on December 8, when Lizard Squad took charge.[12][13][14]

Xbox Live DDoS

On December 1, 2014, Xbox Live was apparently attacked by Lizard Squad: users attempting to connect to use the service received error code 80151909.[15]

The Machinima Hack

On December 2, 2014, Lizard Squad hacked Machinima.com and replaced their front page with ASCII art of their logo.[16]

North Korea DDoS

On December 22, 2014, the Internet in North Korea was taken offline by a DDoS attack.[17] Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the attack and connected to an IP address located in North Korea.[18] North Korean internet services were restored on December 23, 2014.[19]

Christmas Attacks

Lizard Squad had previously threatened to shut down gambling services at Christmas.[20]

On December 25, 2014 (Christmas Day), Lizard Squad claimed to have conducted a DDoS attack on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. On December 26, 2014 at 02:00 [when?], Lizard Squad appeared to end their attacks on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. Gizmodo reported that the attacks may have stopped after Kim offered dotcom Lizard Squad 3000 accounts on its upload service MEGA.[21]

Tor Sybil Attack

On December 26, 2014, a Sybil attack was attempted on the Tor network involving more than 3000 relays.[22] Nodes whose names began with “LizardNSA” emerged, Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for this attack.[23]

The relevance of the attack has been questioned. According to Thomas White, operator of the Tor relay node, the consensus system resulted in Lizard Squad only managing to control “0.2743% of the network, which equates to a tiny VPS.”[24]

Attack on Malaysia Airlines website

On January 26, 2015, Malaysia Airlines’ website was attacked, apparently by the Lizard Squad, who described themselves as the “cyber caliphate”. Users were redirected to another page which featured an image of a lizard in a tuxedo and read “Hacked by Cyber ​​Caliphate.” Below that was text that read “Follow the Cyber ​​Caliphate on Twitter,” followed by the Twitter accounts of UMG’s owner, “@UMGRobert,” and UMG’s CEO, “@UMG_Chris.” The page also carried the headline “404 – Plane not found,” an apparent reference to the airline’s loss of flight MH370 the previous year. Malaysia Airlines assured customers and customers that customer data had not been compromised.[25]

According to media reports around the world, versions of the takeover in some regions included the phrase “ISIS will prevail,” citing concerns about Lizard Squad’s connection to Islamic State.[25]

Daybreak Games DDoS

On July 9, 2015, game servers operated by Daybreak Game Company, including those of H1Z1 and PlanetSide 2, were disrupted by a DDoS attack for which Lizard Squad claimed responsibility.[26][27] The attack came in retaliation for legal threats made by the company’s CEO, John Smedley, after he was attacked by the hacking group.[28]

False Claims

bomb threats

On August 24, 2014, Lizard Squad alleged that a plane in which Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley was flying (American Airlines Flight 362) had explosives on board. The flight from Dallas to San Diego made an unscheduled landing in Phoenix, Arizona. Sony Online Entertainment announced that the FBI is investigating the incident.[30]

Attacks from Facebook, Instagram and Tinder

On January 26, 2015, several social media services including Facebook and Instagram were unavailable to users. Tinder and HipChat were also affected. Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the attacks via a post on a Twitter account previously used by the group.[31] The outage, initially speculated to be a distributed denial of service attack, lasted a little under an hour before services were restored.[32]

Facebook later released a statement saying its own engineers were to blame and that the disruption to its services was not the result of a third-party attack, but instead occurred after they made a change that affected their configuration systems have.[33]

Explicit celebrity photos

On January 27, 2015, Lizard Squad claimed to have compromised Taylor Swift’s Twitter and Instagram accounts. After claiming access, they threatened to release nude photos in exchange for bitcoins. However, Taylor Swift countered that “there were no nude photos” and urged the perpetrators to “have fun” in finding some.[34]

conspiracy theory

On Jan. 4, 2021, American attorney and conspiracy theorist Lin Wood tweeted unsubstantiated claims that a group of hackers called “The Lizard Squad” had evidence of a global sex ring involving several high-profile Americans, similar to the discredited Qanon conspiracy theory. [35] There appears to be no connection between the “Lizard Squad” mentioned by Wood and the black hat hacking group Lizard Squad, and Lizard Squad member Vinnie Omari denies any claim that his group has information about could have a worldwide sex affair. human trafficking organization. [36]

Known Members

Vinnie Omari

Vinnie Omari is a member of the Lizard Squad charged with the alleged offenses of trespassing/involvement in acquisition/retention/use or control of criminal property, fraud by misrepresentation – Fraud Act 2006, conspiracy to steal from others, unauthorized computer access with intent to commit other crimes”. He was used as a public face on television and as a news announcer to represent LizardSquad.

Julius Kivimäki

Julius Kivimäki (zeekill) is a Finnish member of the Lizard Squad convicted of over 50,000 computer crime counts as of July 2015.[39]

Zachary Buchta

19-year-old Zachary Buchta (fbiarelosers), from Maryland, has been charged with computer crimes related to a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, stolen credit cards and the sale of DDoS services. He was one of the members behind LizardSquad and also the co-group “PoodleCorp” which launched distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against several networks, YouTubers and gaming services. Buchta hid behind the Twitter aliases @fbiarelosers, @xotehpoodle and the online aliases “pein” and “lizard”.[40][41][42][43]

Bradley Jan Willem van Rooy

19-year-old Bradley Jan Willem van Rooy (UchihaLS), from the Netherlands, has been convicted of computer crimes related to a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, stolen credit cards, and selling DDoS-for-hire services accused . He was one of the members behind LizardSquad, which was primarily responsible for the DDoS attacks announced by the group. He was also one of the two managers behind the @LizardLands Twitter account, which has been the main LizardSquad Twitter account since January 2015. He usually hid behind his Twitter alias @UchihaLS (which stands for Uchiha LizardSquad) and online aliases “UchihaLS”. , “Uchiha” and “Dragon”.[40][41][42][43]