Just as one group is claiming to have brought down many of EA’s servers, another is boasting of having taken down much of Valve’s mighty Steam network.
A pair of Twitter users are claiming to be behind a series of DDoS attacks that, if they’re the actual cause of disruption, have rendered Steam’s marketplace and community services patchy (or indeed inaccessible) for much of the day.
so we’re launching more ddos dildo attacks at steam, me n @LARCENY_
— chF (@chFtheCat) January 3, 2014
I know, it sounds a little much, but the fact is that Steam’s store and community features have been crippled for much of the evening (though there have been brief windows of availability).
@LARCENY_ posted an image earlier of Low Orbit Ion Cannon, a DDoS tool, writing “What we are hitting with”.
There’s no mention of planned maintenance from Steam’s Twitter page.
With a dash or irony, even the normally-useful “Is Steam Down” page was down for a while.
We’ve contacted Valve for comment, and will update if we hear back.
Comments
26 responses to “Pair Claim To Have Attacked Steam’s Servers”
I don’t like those people or the cause (if any) they support.
Getting really sick of these hacker lately and worse yet people support them
Calling them hackers would be an overstatement. They’re just script kiddies. Little kids who learn the basics of a few things here and there and just use a script (made by someone else, as you can see above ^^^) and people call them hackers. Real hackers get into a server to retrieve information or sabotage etc… These guys just shut it down, but the server is back up :/ So, suck it n00bs! 😀
+1 to the above
A huge majority of these are really just script kiddies. Out to make a name for themselves thinking they’ve done the awesome sauce w/ a DDOS using tools done by other people.
If they were actually using LOIC, then yes, only Fox News could call them hackers.
lol, sad but true. Dem skillz (with a zee)
I tried pretty steadily to access Steam most of yesterday to no avail, so thanks(!) chFtheCat and LARCENY_ for that. Not sure what the point was, don’t really care, but hope Valve re-list some of yesterday’s specials that I missed out on. 😐
Look at this EA freaking EA
https://twitter.com/AskEASupport/status/418957286543867904
Can you believe EA has come out and reassured it’s “fans” and where’s Valve? Do they think their services can be fluctuating and down for 15-20 hours for me (community and market) and not make a statement anywhere.
Jesus I was planning to level my Snow Badge to 2000, well Valve you just lost many cents of transaction money! Take that.
It was working fine for me up until 3am last night when I went to bed, and is working fine this morning since I got up. Two of my friends in the US are also saying they had no problems. It could be that the problem affects only certain servers or a percentage of people.
That said, do you really need Valve to say ‘hey service is patchy soz’? I mean, you already know that and that they’re more than likely working on fixing it without them saying anything.
– Yes it was working for a percentage, I posted on my activity feed and got some responses from different people at different locations. Some I game with said their profile pages load but slowly.
– Yes, I need any business to make statements during some issues, I don’t care if it’s obvious, it’s just good business practice and i’d respect a business more due to the open nature.
Thank you for buying my crappy trading cards, it’s people like you that fund my Steam Sale purchases!
Glad to see i’m not the only one who thinks Valve kind of operate their business like major douchebags who think they’re better than everyone else.
These people aren’t even real hackers using the LOIC tool, just some idiot app kiddies.
I attacked the Steam servers recently… with my wallet! I lost 🙁
Could two people really DDoS a site like that? I’m no expert, but wouldn’t they either A, have to know what they’re doing and have a whole heap of slave systems they’ve hijacked or B, have a few thousand Facebook friends willing to help out?
On another note, that LOIC screen makes me miss 2006/2007 and now I feel old.
::::Awaiting moderation, edit to fast track!::::
No not really even a 12 year old could send out a DDoS to a site. All they are really doing is opening up a program and clicking a few buttons which is created by a real hacker (AKA script kiddies). Also for question B why would they need facebook friends lol ?
A side note if they were real hackers they would steal users money and keep steam and EA down for days even weeks like what happened to PlayStation a few years back.
I know that a 12 year old could run LOIC, but from my understanding it’s pretty ineffective if only one or two people are doing it. I thought you needed a lot (either hijacked systems or a large group of people, like /i/ used to do back in the day) for it do any damage (i.e., take down a site).
Maybe things have changed in the last seven years though.
Yeah it’s a sheer numbers game – if they have access to enough bandwidth then it’s entirely possible – especially since they don’t appear to be taking the network off like, just select services – and in this case, ones which are especially public facing (so the IP is directly accessible without any real work).
It seems like they’re more than likely just a dumbass couple of people – or perhaps live in a region with no extradition treaty with Valves home country (USA I assume), meaning it’s quite unlikely anything will ever happen anyway.
(nice edit)
Typo in the heading. It says “pair” when I think you meant “arseholes”.
The annoying thing is, Valve will most likely ignore this attack and end their sales as normal even though you couldn’t access them for most of yesterday.
If two morons with a tool from last decade could take down steam (they stated in their twitter they don’t have a bot net) it would ALWAYS be down…. They didn’t take it down, Steam is just shit at what they do…. Their services couldn’t handle the demand and hence they are ignoring the problem hoping it will go away… All the cards expired and I stayed up still 4am trying to get into my inventory…. Tried all day, sold a single card when the system wasn’t dead… Just pathetic support from Valve…. I would say they are the new EA but even EA post a status update….
Total losers.
I with there was a real life kick button for dick wannabe haxors like these.
I just managed to buy the last 3 sale card to craft level 4 badge 🙂 but yeah this skids are stupid they dont even have a reason to ddos steam, because wa all love steam.
I assumed it was down just because everyone was getting in last minute on the sale badges. But I thought it was strange that the steam stats page was in a trough when I was online, like less than 4 mil users. I really hope that it wasn’t a DDoS.
Maybe these $cr1p7 K1dd13$ Didn’t Hax0rz Steam (or DDos) them… Maybe steam summer/winter Sales did it… steam ddos’ed its self? And these attention seeking K1dd13$ wanted attention?
I was effected very little… (just a refresh and it was working again).