Steam servers suffer DDoS attack

Steam has suffered repeated DDoS attacks that have knocked its storefront down throughout Thursday evening, with a pair of troublemakers claiming responsibility on Twitter.

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Steam's servers have been hit with intermittent outages throughout Thursday evening, leaving users unable to access Valve's storefront. A pair of Twitter users called chF and Larceny have claimed responsibility for the outages, hitting Steam with repeated DDoS attacks.

Valve has not responded to the attacks through either its Facebook or Twitter feeds.

The attacks coincide with the final day of Steam's Winter Sale. Shacknews has contacted Valve for further information on the attacks and whether the downtime will affect the end of the sale.

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Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    January 3, 2014 12:35 AM

    Ozzie Mejia posted a new article, Steam servers suffer DDoS attack.

    Steam has suffered repeated DDoS attacks that have knocked its storefront down throughout Thursday evening, with a pair of troublemakers claiming responsibility on Twitter.

    • reply
      January 3, 2014 1:36 AM

      Back up and running like a champ @ 3am CST.

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      January 3, 2014 2:53 AM

      Apparently Origin was hit too. Do these groups ever state their motivation for DDoS attacks? I mean, what did Valve do to them?

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        January 3, 2014 3:09 AM

        And by group you mean a 13 year old bored kid? :)

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        January 3, 2014 3:18 AM

        Not enough free hats

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        January 3, 2014 3:33 AM

        I guess one of the games on their wishlist never went on sale.

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        January 3, 2014 3:56 AM

        their motivation is that they're mad about the idea of nerds having fun with video games. it's literally nothing more mature than kicking over sandcastles.

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        January 3, 2014 4:09 AM

        Their motivation is, "Because we can." Since that's all that matters to some people.

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        January 3, 2014 4:22 AM

        [deleted]

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        January 3, 2014 4:26 AM

        cis het scum

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        January 3, 2014 4:59 AM

        Because either A) they just learned how to create a DDoS or B) one of their friends game them access to a program which can create a DDoS. Everybody wants to be rockstar at somepoint.

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          January 3, 2014 5:07 AM

          Anyone can do something that big? I mean Origin and Steam are big. Don't they need an army of zombie computers?

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            January 3, 2014 5:41 AM

            [deleted]

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            January 3, 2014 7:14 AM

            Origin and Steam are not big. DDos have taken out amazon, ebay, visa, mastercard, etc. Those are big

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            January 3, 2014 11:32 AM

            the anatomy of a DDoS is actually pretty simple. when you send a ping, you send a small, 8 byte file across the internet to your destination and wait get a response in which it send a packet back. For a DDoS, it's this on a much larger scale. You can increase packet sizes, and thanks to malware, there are tons of zombies on the internet that can be used for such purposes. It doesn't always require a check book, and lots of places disable ICMP to prevent this sort of thing from being done, but there are ways around that. All it takes is knowing a DNS and having access to a number of servers through various means and having all those servers send a request at the same time to cause a DDoS.

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              January 3, 2014 1:30 PM

              Disabling ICMP does absolutely nothing to prevent DDoS attacks, just FYI.

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              January 3, 2014 4:27 PM

              I wonder, what do they do to stop it from just being a daily occurrence? Why couldn't a group keep a service locked down indefinitely?

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        January 3, 2014 5:07 AM

        ...for the lulz

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        January 3, 2014 6:04 AM

        If it was an extortion attempt, would we ever find out?

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          January 3, 2014 6:20 AM

          Over twitter with much circle jerking and fedora tipping?

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        January 3, 2014 11:20 AM

        It was done by attention whores.

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        January 3, 2014 4:40 PM

        It's mostly a cry for attention.

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      January 3, 2014 4:12 AM

      shit like this pisses me off so much. Same with people who create viri.

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      January 3, 2014 5:59 AM

      What a couple of asshats. They would have to do this at the end of the sale when everyone is trying to get their badges.

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      January 3, 2014 6:02 AM

      Not sure if it's the same people / group but SOE were DDoS'd on New Years Day too.. they were supposed to be aiming to take down PS2 but ended up taking most SOE online games with it (EQ, EQ2 etc)

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      January 3, 2014 6:13 AM

      So this is why I can't access the community/market?

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        January 3, 2014 6:14 AM

        I wanted to trade away my extra cards too

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      January 3, 2014 6:47 AM

      guild wars 2 was having problems about 45 mins ago.. wonder if it's the same morons

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      January 3, 2014 7:02 AM

      Time for a "We're sorry for the down time" sale!!

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      January 3, 2014 7:39 AM

      Im trying to buy something before the sale is over :(

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      January 3, 2014 10:10 AM

      Hmmm... Steam offering amazing Christmas sales, and then a couple days into the New Years someone decides they're ripe for an attack.

      It didn't work, they were up before I woke up this morning.

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      January 3, 2014 3:58 PM

      half life 3 confirmed?

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      January 6, 2014 8:25 AM

      Good thing I prefer buying boxed copies. No worries about it going offline

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