DDoS Attacks: What Can The League Do?

Hello everyone, earlier this week in Game 5 of the Manitoba and Iowa series a player had an issue connecting and staying online during the game; after playing and not having issues for the majority of the day. This raised a question for me about DDoS Attacks and what we can do. Obviously in this players case, he has terrible internet so it is highly unlikely a DDoS occurred. So before I continue note that I am not accusing anyone of a DDoS or unfair play. I'm only accusing CJ for having terrible internet. Love you CJ

What Is A DDoS?
DDoS simply stands for a denial of service. To keep it simple for everyone who doesn't know, your internet/wifi is constantly receiving and sending data. What happens with a DDoS attack is an outside source finds the wifi/internet source they want to attack and floods it with a tremendous amount of data freezing and making the internet/wifi source unusable. Some attacks send up to 1TB of data per second during an attack. These attacks can last for any duration of time.
Example
Mx Simulator is an online PC game that hosts a competitive racing league. Last week the points leader was DDoS'd and prevented from participating in the race because his ping response time was over 1000 ms. As soon as he'd try to connect, he would immediately be booted back off. Luckily for him, the race was delayed once it was confirmed that he had been attacked, and his rival (3rd in points) was discovered to be the source of the attack. That rider was banned and a federal case was submitted to the FBI.

My Question to Everyone
What can we do as a community to prevent this from happening? What can us as players do to help protect each other? And what can LeagueGaming do to prevent these attacks or find an attacker once it is reported? These are very hard to catch and prevent fully but if the racing league figured it out with the help of some of the competitors, what can we do to be on the same level or higher in terms of protecting the league.

 

This is bold, Mass. I'd like to believe that no one in LG would stoop to those levels for a video game trophy

 

No I dont think so either and neither did the racing league and then it happened. I just think it's a good idea to have a plan in place for a what if. We have people running 2 accounts on here and people trying to exploit the system all the time so I think it's something that should be talked about because it could drastically ruin a team. Especially in playoffs.

 

There is already stuff in place if somebody is caught Ddosing or any sort of cheating. Read the rules especially punishments... As it stands now it is a capital offence to Ddos and costs you a capital punishment (3 seasons). I think this is more than enough to deter somebody from cheating however if this isn't enough I'm sure that the staff will come up with a reasonable punishment.

 

Yeah, I saw that. I was curious as to if they have some sort of programming or system to tracking and possibly identifying those attacks. I understand that's a very steep challenge but this site has done an excellent job with other issues and I wanted to bring it up so they can give us their input or revise what they have so far.

 

I'm sure we all know a guy named Wired-Crazy. We've been in his lobbies and he can cause the game loop and lobby crash at will. Perhaps start with his LG friends list and followers. js

 

You'd be surprised what the league has at their disposal for catching people.

 

That's what I wanted to know about. I couldn't find it posted. And I want to see if the league has anything or any advice for us to help them improve or strengthen what they have so we can be a stronger community.

 

My thought was, as the league continues to grow and gain popularity it's going to expand also, meaning there could be potential prize money to winning teams, etc. The more at stake l, the more people will risk which is why I thought it was a good topic now.

 

This is just so odd.

It's like arresting someone and then telling them "We don't think you did anything, but just arresting you in case you may have."


In terms of personal protection from a DDoS attack, have you ever heard of a VPN?


Also, most of the kids that would try to knock someone off-line via any sort of a request flood is most likely using some child's play plug and chug "booter".