Dear Zenimax,

I am a very anxious to begin playing your game, but in light of recent events with other games I play, such as League of Legends, have continuously been victims DDoS attacks thus denying service to all the users at random moments in time. Now, I am not the most educated person on this subject (DDoS Attacks) but I do know that over the past few months, DDoS'ing has been increasingly more common. I just want to be assured that you will be doing everything in your power to prevent these kind of attacks from disrupting service. Because though I can sympathize for the games/companies being victimized by these attacks, it is also very frustrating as a player to constantly be denied access to a game server because of immature hackers who can't seem to find anything else better to do.

Concerned,

SolidTyler

I know this is more of a letter than a forum post but feel free to comment i guess...

Add that we do not want you to give our info to nsa and all those spying organisations... oO

Those attacks are more towards f2p games like LoL

Just my theory but the hackers bombing Riot are probably pissed off people. I think the tension can run high here aswell but the communitie wil be much more mature in this game, on top of that in LOL people often get into fights with their own team over nothing but their own incompatability for teamplay.

They could, hoever also be people hired by other game developers, we wil probably never know and both are equaly possible to me.

Just thinking out loud here.

Yep f2p games lack good security because they lack the funds to support it. That is what subscriptions are for as they enable larger staff for faster updates and better security. It is not hard to secure against ddos attacks it just takes a lil bit of money and people who know what their doing.

Anyone can tell me what DDoS stands for?

Distributed Denial of Service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

Ok, tyvm

F2P tends to attract more trouble, but its certainly not a prerequisite. All game servers, paid or not, are succeptable to DDoS attacks. Blizzard was recently attacked too.

There is very little that can be done tbh. If they set their eyes on a target and have enough resources, they are going to be able to bring a game server down.

What a paranoid, ridiculous post. Are you in the tinfoil business?

Name 3 websites//services that YOU use that were subject to a denial of service attack last year. Last five years. I'd love to see a graph with ddos amounts over time on the interwebs.

The downtime of services because of DDOS attacks for MMOs probably is 0,00000000001% , or lower. It's not like taking a single website down. Usually the login server(s) are targetted, and even then the traffic can be routed or blocked within hours usually.

I have never been hacked in my entire MMO career since playing from 2001 and onward. Strange isn't it? Not it is not. And I do not use any "additional" security software other than a regular windows product and keep my hands of third-party sites.

I will never get hacked. Just have a little common sense on what you do and this will also apply to you.

He's not talking about *you* getting attacked

He's talking about the ESO's servers being attacked, thus preventing players to play

This happened a few time to EA and Steam

This happens lot lately, the game i play alot called wurm online, has been hit hard last week for the 2nd time in a few months.

Ddos is not against f2p only and i can understand the OP his post.

I hope it wont happen here!

When it comes to mmo their never just simply hacked, they either give their information out to friends then claim their hacked or install malware which is their own doing. And tbh you should use more than just windows defender or what ever is packed with windows now days as they wont protect you very good. It is very easy to get into someones "secure" wireless network and then hijack their browser or do tons of fun stuff.

As far as ddos companies with money to invest in their network infrastructure they can easily protect against ddos.

Lol. Oh poor you.

WoW was attacked too, or so I heard.


GW2 is having problems with the attacks, too. I don't mind waiting for them to end before playing GW2 because it doesn't have a sub, but if it happens to ESO it will be terribly frustrating.

Replace never with very rarely and I'll agree. But Rift at launch certainly proved that you shouldn't use the word never

I would honestly be more concerned about whether ESO's authentication servers will be ready to handle the number of players trying to log in during launch week without massive queues... but if they can handle that, there isnt going to be much to worry about from DDOS attacks, since they are essentially the same problem.

Don't worry, I won't let this happens to ESO. I already sent a message to my hacker's army saying to let ESO out of this. So don't worry fellas.

Never say never, but indeed if someone opens only well known companies web pages, uses some firewall, does not spread e-mail in every registration form, and etc.etc. then chances are really small to get hacked/virused.

Every attack has some way to protect - I would just leave it to IT people at Zenimax because there are also other hacking attacks and we do not need to think/worry about all of them - the most important for us is to use unique login and unique password for the game so our account is not hacked.

A DDoS attack is simply flooding a server with enough traffic to overwhelm the target’s bandwidth to prevent further service to otherwise legitimate customers. No amount of infrastructure can prevent it, only mitigate the damage and duration the server is affected.

This, yes you can hit the service but if you have an good firewall system and active administrators its pretty easy to handle.

F2P games tend to have more risk as they run on a far lower budget and is not able to react so fast.

Small private multiplayer servers and users is very vulnerable because they lack both resources and manpower.

Its not just flooding a server with enough traffic to overwhelm bandwidth, And it can be protected or mitigated depending on the type of attack.

True, most common is to send so many request the servers are unable to handle it. They also tend to send either time consuming or buggy requests who demand more from the system.

However hardware helps a lot, fat lines, good firewalls who can reduce the flood even communicate with main system to block illegal requests before they reach the servers.

Add administrators who updates the rules in it.

yes you can still take it down but it require magnitudes more bandwidth as in a major botnet.

A typical denial of service attack is exactly what is in the name, do so many requests for data//information that the server just cannot send back enough replies and croaks under the request load. Zombie PCs take up so many requests that legitimate requests are denied service. There is generally enough bandwidth to go around, imagine how much data traffic the game generates under normal user load, plus you cannot just start sending files or something to an IP address, there needs to be a receiving end for that as well.

The amount of zombies/requests needed to overwhelm a system with requests greatly depends on the type of system, design and what it is used for. A website is designed to handle much less simultaneous requests than a MMO login server for example.

A good support staff on the server and data center side should be able to take care of an attack relatively quick, if the hardware and infrastructure are in place.