People who are concerned with Rainbow Six: Siege DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks can breathe a sigh of relief, as Ubisoft has taken action. The company is now suing a website accused of selling DDoS attacks.
DDoS attacks have been a major issue in gaming ever since online games became prevalent. This applies to every game in existence. World of Warcraft Classic, for instance, famously was thrown into chaos shortly after launch because of a series of sustained DDoS attacks that prevented players from accomplishing anything in-game. DDoS attacks work by flooding a server with traffic, consuming bandwidth and disrupting services in the process. Often, this is accomplished through a botnet, or a series of computers infected with malicious software that, in concert, transmit data until a site or service goes offline or is impeded to the point of ineffectiveness. DDoS attacks are illegal and can land someone in prison for a long time. Austin Thompson, for example, became infamous for taking down numerous gaming websites and servers including League of Legends and Dota 2, Blizzard’s Battle.net service, and even the Sony PlayStation network. These attacks caused an estimated $95,000 in damages and landed Thompson behind bars for over 2 years.
Now, Ubisoft is suing alleged perpetrators of DDoS attacks targeting Rainbow Six Siege, Polygon reports. The website in question, SNG.ONE, sold subscriptions that cost users between $30 per month and almost $300 for lifetime access. From there, users could initiate DDoS attacks against Rainbow Six, Fortnite, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and other games. In the case of Rainbow Six, the attacks were intended to slow servers enough that the opposing team would quit early and the attackers would gain ranking points. Those who left would be penalized for quitting early. Ubisoft took many steps in September 2019 to combat the problem, including banning offenders they identified, reducing the number of matches per server, and even removing penalties for quitting early. The company says these measures resulted in an over 90 percent reduction in DDoS attacks. One measure they mentioned is legal action, which seems to be starting.
Ubisoft says that the website and its owners cost them “significant sums of money” to fix the problem. After becoming aware of the lawsuit, Ubisoft says, the operators of the website went so far as to claim that Microsoft and Ubisoft had seized their website. The lawsuit asks for damages, attorney fees, the shutdown of all websites related to the paid Rainbow Six DDoS attacks, and all proceeds the website generated.
DDoS attacks are serious business. While they seem like fun and games to those who want to cheat or have a laugh at others’ expense, actually engaging in them can have serious legal and financial consequences. Game companies do their best to combat such attacks, but so many methods exist that it’s nearly impossible to stop them all. Fortunately, while DDoS attacks present inconveniences ranging from minor to major for gamers, companies can take action to punish those who are involved.
More: Rainbow Six Siege: Best Operators For Competitive Play
Rainbow Six Siege is available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One
Source: Polygon
