Blizzard Recovers From Night Of DDOS Attacks

Last night, Blizzard services came under fire from a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack that brought down the company’s games. The attacks lasted for about two hours before Blizzard sounded the all-clear.

The company first alerted users via social media at 9:37 p.m. Eastern, indicating it was investigating “an issue affecting our authentication servers.” At 11:47 p.m., the company issued another statement confirming that a DDOS attack was at the center of the problems.

[#Bnet] Tonight's DDoS impact appears to be resolved, and our team continues to monitor all services. Thanks for your patience, everyone!

— BlizzardCS (@BlizzardCS) April 14, 2016

A group that has previously taken credit for bringing down Xbox Live and PlayStation Network claimed responsibility. No reason was given.

The timing comes suspiciously close to the closure of an unauthorized World of Warcraft server. Blizzard issued a cease and desist to internet service providers on which the Nostalrius server was hosted for approximately a year.

[Source: Blizzard on Twitter (1), (2)]

Our Take
DDOSing servers isn’t just a criminal cyberattack, it exposes its instigators as petty children. And if this was retaliation for Blizzard exercising its legal right to protect its brand by taking down Nostalrius, it also shows a disgusting sense of entitlement.