Attack on Square-Enix, Direction for Online Terrorism

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Are games going to be easy targets for cyber-terrorists? Recent news has spread that Final Fantasy XI’s servers are being crippled by hackers, making it the newest target of DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks. Even for those of us who don’t care about online games in the least, increases in this kind of crime could affect us in considerable ways.

While investigations are underway, we can only speculate why somebody has coordinated this. Square-Enix, the game’s manufacturer, tried to keep news of the DDoS attacks under wraps as long as possible to allow an investigation to run smoothly. As the attacks continued and worsened, the MMOG was increasingly inaccessible to paying subscribers. The company felt obligated to give their loyal user base an explanation on April 15^th:

“It has come to our attention that recent technical difficulties with our PlayOnline server are due to a DDoS from anonymous third parties. We have determined that this activity was undertaken with malicious intent and specifically targeted our network….We deeply apologize for the inconvenience these attacks have caused in recent days. Attacks continue at this hour in intervals and we regret that our investigation cannot allow for estimates as to when we expect service to return to optimal levels.”

The announcement (http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/polnews/news4410.shtml) also states that as the investigation has not found the source, the company is requesting help from government agencies internationally throughout Japan, the United States, and Europe in tracking down the culprit. Square-Enix technicians meanwhile have been working to reduce the disturbances for the game’s players, but report that they are having trouble since the “attack methods have varied.” What exactly they mean by “varied” is not entirely clear, but we can understand what they mean DDoS.

Distributed denial of service, for those still unfamiliar, is what happens when absurd numbers of computers try to access a website or service all at the same time. When it is more than the website or service can handle, the web server crashes and becomes inaccessible to everyone. If you think of the internet as a racetrack (I admit, it’s weird analogy), all these computers trying to access one webpage simultaneously would look something like all the racecars trying to get into the center lane at the same time. There just isn’t enough space there for all the cars, so they crash and pile up; then nobody can use the center lane temporarily. This sort of incident isn’t accidental. The amounts of traffic sites get when hit by a DDoS is more than would ever be reasonable, and it continues pounding the victimized site so that it stays down. In Final Fantasy XI’s case, it’s been bombarded in surges for days, though they didn’t publish the duration of the attacks.

Next: How Hard Is It to Launch a DDoS Attack? >>
 

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