Servers down?

SentineI · May 19, 2015

Edward Lewis said:
The outages were caused by an automated attack on our game server which affected a small number of our servers ... We have also managed to track down the source and the player responsible who has now been banned from the game.

I hope that in this case "banned" means he's lost all access to the game (account), rather than just having been "shadow banned".

GibMeister · May 19, 2015

znôrt said:
just to remind you alll that dos != ddos. the extra d stands for "distributed", meaning there is no single source for the attack, rather zillions of them (most likely a botnet) flooding the target. so i dunno what this kid did, but it definitely wasn't a ddos.

if this kid managed to take the servers down from home that would be evidence of a blatant security hole, either in software or in network setup. let's hope it was fixed.

also, as some pointed out, it is entirely possible that the kid's computer and account were compromised and the attack performed by someone else. but then again it most likely would have been another kid causing trouble, a serious attacker wouldn't expose a compromised machine so openly either.

and, i find the official explanation a bit cheesy, some more detail would be appreciated.

Agree! If one user at home can cause this sort of chaos then there is something amiss!!

Stoo · May 19, 2015

GibMeister said:
Agree! If one user at home can cause this sort of chaos then there is something amiss!!

It's very easy to do if you have the right tools... which are easy to find on the interwebz (LOIC for one)

EDIT: Regarding a single DoS attack, not a DDoS.

Ancipital · May 19, 2015

Jenner said:
^

Mods don't have a 'red phone' with a direct connection to David Braben's desk that we can dial whenever the forum demands answers.

...but how do we find out if he has removed the jumper for summer? Crisis!

SteveLaw · May 19, 2015

Ancipital said:
...but how do we find out if he has removed the jumper for summer? Crisis!

I think it's safest to assume a lighter tog sweater for the warmer months until we know otherwise.

Asp Explorer · May 19, 2015

Ancipital said:
...but how do we find out if he has removed the jumper for summer? Crisis!

Summer is jumpered? I always thought it was a DIP switch!

SteveLaw · May 19, 2015

babelfisch said:
http://eft.recoil.org

What sorcery is this?! Nice link. Thanks.

Whiterose · May 19, 2015

ChrisH said:
I hope that in this case "banned" means he's lost all access to the game (account), rather than just having been "shadow banned".

banned? banned? I think a public birching would be more appropriate, and forced to wear a mankini for the rest of his life. (Hoping it wasnt a her).

markdiss · May 25, 2015

Asp Explorer said:
One of the best bits about the forum! I once had to reboot a server using a toad. I kid you not.

I well remember a matchstick holding in a CAT5 cable to our college's IBM RS6000 email server for many years, as well as the panic that ensued when a new techie came wandering in with it in his hand saying he'd found it sticking out the back of the server as the phones went into meltdown because email was down!

M