Battlefield 4 Claims DDOS Attack Is Killing Its Servers

Karloff

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Battlefield 4 Claims DDOS Attack Is Killing Its Servers



Or is it Sony's 1.5 firmware update? Um, perhaps not, says EA.

The PS4 is out, and Battlefield 4 [https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/401417164311105536]'s happy warriors are less than happy, as the game's servers are crashing constantly. At first EA attempted to blame Sony's 1.5 firmware update, claiming that it "results in stability issues while playing games on the system," but it soon retracted this statement as it became clear that the problem was more significant, affecting services elsewhere, particularly PC. DICE has since said that a denial of service attack on the servers is to blame.

"Hi guys, we are being targeted by a DDOS, but working on fixing it asap," said DICE's Ali Hassoon on the Battlenet forums [http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/forum/threadview/2955065219228979766/3/]. "I'm sorry somebody is ruining your and my day. Rest assured we are doing our best to mitigate the situation though." Hassoon also said that a new server would be issued for PS4, to help solve a severe crash issue.

DICE has since said that, in addition to the PS4 server issues, an Xbox 360 game update and PC game update are coming soon. There's no way to know when, but DICE says it ought to be able to give a rough timing estimate "at a later date." It hopes the Xbox 360 update will get through final testing and be released before long. DICE asks that anyone affected by this issue follow its support thread [http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/forum/threadview/2955065217944685108/], where updates will be posted.

Source: Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-18-dice-struggles-against-ddos-attacks-and-severe-crashes-in-battlefield-4]


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Saltyk

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Interesting. I was playing Battlefield 4 yesterday, taking turns with a friend, and we did get kicked from servers a few times. It wasn't that big a deal, but it did happen a few times. Might explain why there were times when the game didn't seem to want to load a new match.

Though, it wasn't game breaking. We only got kicked a few times over a course of several hours.

I figured it was the fault of PSN, being a bit overwhelmed. Though, I didn't have any issues downloading the update or downloading Resogun or Contrast. So, I don't know what to tell you. EA's explanation seems as likely as any other.
 

Kargathia

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While a DDoS is more than plausible (as anyone with a credit card can call them down), cynical me does wonder where "server overload" ends, and "DDoS" begins.
 

AstaresPanda

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DDos attacks are the thing to blame these days it seems. They did not prepare very well and the servers are getting abit overloaded simple. You really cant sit there and expect us to believe with MILLIONS behind you and seeing as this is what you do for a living, your forsee an overload and make sure to compensate. Nope just take everyones money then start to blame game. yaaaaaay
 

Dr.Awkward

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It's bad enough when publishers decide that they can't trust consumers to run their own private servers. I have a feeling that this is part of the intent behind the DDoS attack - No option to run your own server.

...Seriously, this is something that needs to be re-integrated into modern games - There's no doubt in my mind that there are people who want to play a game of BF4 with friends and only friends, either through LAN or on their own server, and additionally things like DDoS attacks against the official servers would become less common in favor of less secure (and more popular) personal servers.
 

Kungfu_Teddybear

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So, you've been actively targeted by DDoS attacks since the game launched, then? Because the servers were fucked before the PS4 launched.
 

Xariat

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AstaresPanda said:
DDos attacks are the thing to blame these days it seems. They did not prepare very well and the servers are getting abit overloaded simple. You really cant sit there and expect us to believe with MILLIONS behind you and seeing as this is what you do for a living, your forsee an overload and make sure to compensate. Nope just take everyones money then start to blame game. yaaaaaay
This would make sense if the problem was there from the beginning, however these server issues started this weekend, quite a while after the game released. There's little reason for the servers to start failing now as the initial influx of players is for the most part over and stabilized.
 

Glaice

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And this is why you should have dedicated server capability in your MP games for the PC version.
 

lacktheknack

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AstaresPanda said:
You really cant sit there and expect us to believe with MILLIONS behind you and seeing as this is what you do for a living, your forsee an overload and make sure to compensate.
...that's EXACTLY why a DDoS attack is believable. -___-

And if it's the case (and really, why not? They're easy to detect), then DICE gets all my sympathy.
 

weirdee

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lacktheknack said:
AstaresPanda said:
You really cant sit there and expect us to believe with MILLIONS behind you and seeing as this is what you do for a living, your forsee an overload and make sure to compensate.
...that's EXACTLY why a DDoS attack is believable. -___-

And if it's the case (and really, why not? They're easy to detect), then DICE gets all my sympathy.
if it was easy to detect, why did they lead with the first explanation?

secondly, isn't protection from this kind of thing standard with any project large enough to warrant advertising in all major public media outlets?
 

lacktheknack

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weirdguy said:
lacktheknack said:
AstaresPanda said:
You really cant sit there and expect us to believe with MILLIONS behind you and seeing as this is what you do for a living, your forsee an overload and make sure to compensate.
...that's EXACTLY why a DDoS attack is believable. -___-

And if it's the case (and really, why not? They're easy to detect), then DICE gets all my sympathy.
if it was easy to detect, why did they lead with the first explanation?

secondly, isn't protection from this kind of thing standard with any project large enough to warrant advertising in all major public media outlets?
Either they didn't scan for it, or it happened a bit later. DDoS is where a massive number of connections are made that do nothing beyond take up space.

Also, if you get enough people attempting a DDoS attack, there's no protection beyond going offline.
 

weirdee

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lacktheknack said:
weirdguy said:
lacktheknack said:
AstaresPanda said:
You really cant sit there and expect us to believe with MILLIONS behind you and seeing as this is what you do for a living, your forsee an overload and make sure to compensate.
...that's EXACTLY why a DDoS attack is believable. -___-

And if it's the case (and really, why not? They're easy to detect), then DICE gets all my sympathy.
if it was easy to detect, why did they lead with the first explanation?

secondly, isn't protection from this kind of thing standard with any project large enough to warrant advertising in all major public media outlets?
Either they didn't scan for it, or it happened a bit later. DDoS is where a massive number of connections are made that do nothing beyond take up space.

Also, if you get enough people attempting a DDoS attack, there's no protection beyond going offline.
so, is the current launch day strain impressive enough that a small number of people can take it the rest of the way down, or is there somehow a group of people with large enough resources to dwarf what is conceivably the majority of the console market attempting to play a popular game in its fourth iteration that grew up in the age of FPSes?
 

lacktheknack

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weirdguy said:
lacktheknack said:
weirdguy said:
lacktheknack said:
AstaresPanda said:
You really cant sit there and expect us to believe with MILLIONS behind you and seeing as this is what you do for a living, your forsee an overload and make sure to compensate.
...that's EXACTLY why a DDoS attack is believable. -___-

And if it's the case (and really, why not? They're easy to detect), then DICE gets all my sympathy.
if it was easy to detect, why did they lead with the first explanation?

secondly, isn't protection from this kind of thing standard with any project large enough to warrant advertising in all major public media outlets?
Either they didn't scan for it, or it happened a bit later. DDoS is where a massive number of connections are made that do nothing beyond take up space.

Also, if you get enough people attempting a DDoS attack, there's no protection beyond going offline.
so, is the current launch day strain impressive enough that a small number of people can take it the rest of the way down, or is there somehow a group of people with large enough resources to dwarf what is conceivably the majority of the console market attempting to play a popular game in its fourth iteration that grew up in the age of FPSes?
There are (illegal) services dedicated entirely to firing DDoS attacks.

Back in the days of LulzSec, they'd fortify the DDoSing by tricking people into clicking pothole links, which took the people who clicked to a page that caused their computer to start firing pings at the target at insane speeds, and the page was difficult to exit.

Think about it. One game makes one connection to the server. One computer firing at full speeds makes hundreds before the first connections even have time to close. A few dozen computers could very easily lag a server to hell, if not take it down completely by firing hundreds of thousands/millions of connection requests at it.
 

fix-the-spade

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weirdguy said:
so, is the current launch day strain impressive enough that a small number of people can take it the rest of the way down, or is there somehow a group of people with large enough resources to dwarf what is conceivably the majority of the console market attempting to play a popular game in its fourth iteration that grew up in the age of FPSes?
Set up some good bots and you have a hundred million computers doing it for you automatically, all you need is for idiots to click the right links and downloads. The world is never short of idiots.

Also, it's another case of EA/DICE releasing a game, then getting round to finishing it after the fact. They've done this with every single Battlefield Game ever released, right now BF4 is fragile at best and outright broken all the rest of the time, the netode doesn't seem to be able to cope at all with 64 players on a server, which is great as now servers have up to 70 slots (even though BF2/BC2/BF3 can all handle up to 256 players without much trouble, just not officially). BF4 having a raft of things wrong with it should only be a surprise to the naive and the dumb.

Speaking of which, I'm so glad I didn't buy this game, although it is making me depressed that most of my favourite BF3 servers are closing down and the various communities of players fragmenting. I've decided to wait and see what Titanfall is like, although with EA's presence in the room I'm never overly hopeful.
 

weirdee

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so what you're saying is that they treat everybody else they deal with like ass in order to treat their primary customers like ass, and people still pay them for it?
 

The Enquirer

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MinionJoe said:
AstaresPanda said:
DDos attacks are the thing to blame these days it seems.
Back in my day, we'd blame sunspots. Yup! Solar-electromagnetic flux causing instability in the microchips and causing bit-flip. Answer to any problem.

Couldn't print? Sunspots. Lost your Word document? Sunspots. Random BSoD? Sunspots!

Though, before DDoS and sunspots, such problems were blamed on devils bewitching the circuits.
I needed a good laugh today as its been a fairly rough couple days of fighting with the girlfriend and you very much provided that. Thank you good sir.

OT: Its a darned shame you can't host your own servers anymore. That's part of what I like about Rainbow Six Vegas and Vegas 2. It applied to many others You host your own games. You can see who the host is so you know if they will have certain weapon restrictions. You get to know the people who play on that server, its not just a name. People play against me and know to stay the heck away from me and my close quarters weapons. I play against someone else and I know to try to place c4 in a certain spot they always head for first. And there wasn't much server lag. You eventually figured out how many people your sever could support before it started to lag (8-10 in my case which is actually a fairly large population for that game in a single team death match). And there wouldn't be large scale issues such as this nearly as often or at all.

Captcha- talk turkey

Gobble Gobble?
 

ChanTheNoob

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Glaice said:
And this is why you should have dedicated server capability in your MP games for the PC version.
There ARE dedicated servers for Battlefield, on all platforms too, in fact. The problem is, play statistics and data are stored on EA and DICE servers, which require access to be able to play.