There are a lot of posts complaining of servers being shut down by these clowns.
I'm pretty sure it happens in almost all online games.
What I'm wondering is does it happen more often in simulation games or FPS games? Is it games that are more difficult to play than others that get hit the most? If a person fails consistently at playing a game are they more inclined to DDos the servers hosting it? Like some sort of sore loser? Or is it just hormones stirring around in a tween?
Could there be a possibility of competitors doing this to rivals' servers as a way to promote their game? I wouldn't think that would be a reason to consider with LFS as there really isn't an overly saturated market for racing games, much less simulations. But with the rise of indy developers, one group of devs for one title might decide messing up the online of their competition as a way to generate more sales for them.
I dunno... maybe I just watched too many crime shows and am trying to find a profile to base these people on.
To all you server hosts getting hit by these idiots...
Could be worse. They could decide to SWAT you. Trust me. That sucks.

it even happened at the extra live charity live stream. that site went down for 2 hours while live streaming. it happens just as much everywhere else

I get the impression that a lot of DOS attacks are the product of young people getting involved in a self-perpetuating culture of being ****s on the internet.

This culture is largely associated with Anonymous and a handful of image boards, but I think that you can find it anywhere you can post anonymously.

There are also a lot of sociopaths out there that "troll" people for the "lulz". In other words, they make people miserable because they enjoy the suffering of others.

Around here, these DOS attacks seem to be the result of immature people getting butt-hurt about stuff that happens in-game.

I really wish people would stop dragging their retarded internet drama onto the forums. They could at least post it in the appropriate section.

This human psychology is very interesting topic and it's kind of a sad that it's not very well known, or people don't care about it. Even for me it was complete mystery more than 30 years untill I was pushed into a corner with myself and was forced to start thinkin why I feel so bad while there was basically no need for it. That was the key for me where I started to learn these things. I wanted to know how I could be more happy in general.
I've learnt that people have always a reason to behave like they do and almost all of the behavior models are quite simple. People are very similar even though most of us believe that we are so different.
The behavior model for these kids that do DDos for example is mostly the same. It's a lack of adult guidance basically. Kids are a lone in the Internet and they interact with other kids and even adults who behave like kids. They get bullied through the net and they are alone in there, because parents usually won't know about this and can't help them or guide them and explain what's happening. When a child get bullied and no adult is defending him, he thinks it's OK to bully others and you are allowed to enjoy it as long as you don't get caught. And who is there to catch them from doing this? Nobody. This causes the never ending bullying cycle, untill someone gets caught to some authority (like police or parrents) and they get to face they actions. Untill then they won't understand the consept of responsibility from this particular harmfull thing they are doing. After the consept of responsibility start grow in them, they stop doing it.
This similar thing works almost for everything when kids or even adults who behave like kids are doing something wrong. They are doing it because they haven't been cathed from it and they haven't had to bear responsibility from their doings.
After being caught, if they still keep doing it, then we are talking about much more serious issues than just little bullying.
Anyway. We only need to act like adults and try to get these kids to understand that what they are doing is wrong and harmfull. There's no need to judge them from beeing kids, but the cause and effect needs to be explained to them.

I like DOS.
I use it every day.

Quote from DANIEL-CRO :

I like DOS.
I use it every day.

^ thats going in my signature hahaha

I enjoy much more of these newer operating systems.

I prefer XP. It's the best OS there is.

Quote from Bose321 :

I prefer XP. It's the best OS there is.

Windows ME and Vista for the win!

like it or not, they have power over us.

of course this is only possible due to negligence and/or incompetence on the part of the engineers responsible for the internet's design. (to be gentle it could be said as lack of foresight.)

regardless, in a world where as young children we are made masters of some world - even imaginary - through computer games, we become addicted to this control and this idea of being king.

the logical conclusion is that the engineering problems will be fixed and we will talk about this like the strange dark ages of child-king internet ****s.

I could approach this from a number of angles but what I think I will do is tell you about me with the confession that many years ago I used to be a cracker.

This isn't new news as I've mentioned it here and elsewhere before. Those I knew in "the scene" who didn't get out were all subjected to police raids and whatnot so it was an interesting time but I am able to talk freely about it these days because although I never got caught there is this wonderful thing called the statute of limitations - and I am referring back to a time when the internet was in it's infancy and us nerds where using BBS' - direct dialing modems over telephones to servers with usually 1 to 4 phone lines.

Because the number of lines on servers was limited they would restrict downloading so people could not "leach" endlessly for hours. For a novice user every byte you uploaded you could download 3, or 4 bytes, depending upon the BBS - you could grow your membership level by becoming known in the scene or buying memberships and this would give you a better ratio. At the top level were the elites, people who no longer needed to worry about download ratios. This was how software was distributed in "the scene".

I used to take security protection off of games, and friends I knew would distribute those games to the BBS scene. In return for which I was given "elite" status and able to download at my leisure from almost any BBS I went to because of my reputation and the fact I would be vouched for by other elites, and my overall status within "the scene" as someone high up in the worlds largest piracy group at that point in time.

The reason I did it wasn't for status.

I didn't even do it for the download ratios because I actually bought the majority of my games in local shops and was happy to do so, although the cost of games sometimes bothered me. The option to pirate games I wasn't overly excited about but "wouldn't mind trying" was nice, but I rarely did it and usually only for games I missed or simply didn't have the money to buy at the time.

I didn't do it for the reputation or my status in "the scene".

I didn't do it for the ego boost.

Simply put: I did it because I could.

Why do people climb Mount Everest or walk to The North Pole?

Why did America send people to the moon?

Why do governments tax the poor to feed the rich?

Because they can.

And that is all there is to it.

---

What happens to "the victim" or the disruption it causes isn't part of the equation. It's not considered. The target of a DDOS attack is completely irrelevant, in the same way the authors of games where irrelevant to me back in the day. (Although in the case of piracy it's proven time and time again to help marketing and spread word of mouth and has an overall positive impact on the industry.)

You could argue that this lack of consideration for the victims is sociopathic, and you would likely be right. But at a young age - especially for a nerd with few friends and a near-savant skill at computing as I had - these things are still developing.

I was socially difficult throughout my teens and into early adulthood - and sure I was the victim of some pretty extreme abuse in my school years and you could argue that was a cause, but I rather think bullying is a by-product of underdeveloped social graces.

I was always a very kind soul and naturally very empathic, but my social skills were behind average - I went to public school but was brought up a toff so the other kids and I didn't relate. I still have difficulty now and whilst I can be a huge extrovert when comfortable if I find myself in an uncomfortable situation then you won't get a peep out of me.

To teenage me games where made by "companies", something I had no connection with or relationship to at all. I didn't relate. I didn't spare them a second thought. It wasn't about them at all, heck their emotions or financial well being where not even remotely important to me and I had no concept of them. After all games companies where all rich anyway.

Nowadays I write software for a living. Even my OS is [begrudgingly] legal. I buy legit software ... because I can. I can afford it, and I want to support my fellow developers.

When it comes time to release my next game. I'll release the pirate version myself.

Thanks for that Becky, that's the reason that many people have done what they've done in the past. I'm a bit more careful of 'statute of limitations' but I clearly understand what your saying.

It's the same issue today, you get 'kiddies' ( from my now advanced years ) who 'can' and so they do. There's no concept of what their doing, there's no regard to others wants, needs, or rights, there's only 'me' and what 'I' want, cus it's all about 'me'.

That's as much a critisim about my past as anyone else's so please don't take this personally.

I just think, again from the position of age, if not from anarchistic tendency !, that there's far more 'F you' attitude today with regards to this than there used to be.
Mind you, today I'm spending more time today telling businesses how to keep their information private, which is on a number of levels, equally anarchistic. But far better paid !

I still think that this is a small enough community that by, say, hiding server IP addresses, keeping the master server protected from this type of behaviour, etc, we can make it hard enough for the kiddies to go back to BF4, GTA, COD, servers and allow them to piss them off rather than us.

Interesting points you are all making. I think nowadays being a good parrent, requires different skills than couple of decades a go due to Internet. Widely spread internet and online sosial activities are taking much time from the real world face-to-face social "practise". The online sosial events are not transmitting peoples emotions from who you are dealing with like what happens in face-to-face situation. Internet makes it possible to do stuff where you don't need to face the consequence same way, because you won't see the other person to whom you might be doing some harm. This doesn't make anyone a bad person, but more like keeps them ignorant. This might be prevented by parrents if they would explaining what the other person might be feeling in such situation. But usually parrents aren't aware of the childs activities in the internet which is one of the many problems.
But the world is what it is, and us the adults need to just bear with this situation and try to do everything we can to make the world better place for everyone. Help other adults to take good care of their kids and make sure they guide the kids to learn these much needed sosial skills.

I too was quite a geek during my childhood (and of course I'm still). I too was using BBSs before the Internet age, but I newer realy learned to hack very well. I did some programming and made music and graphics, but that was then. After some point I started to be more sosially active, and found pretty good balanse with these matters. Sure I shared all illegal games, software and so on. But I mostly was just a user. Nowadays I am a software developer and try to pay the stuff I'm using. But still I haven't given up all the illegal data sharing and still every now and then I try games before I decide to by them. Still I know that I'm doing something wrong by using illegal software, video and music, but It's hard to know what is good enough and worth paying for. I can't buy everything that I see and what looks interesting in the pictures. Marketting material is usually so badly misleading, and IMO it's very often unusable for decision making.

(I wonder where this topic migt lead to )

Wow... I didn't think that this could get THAT deep. But as it is....
I really don't think these kids will grow up to be the ones with the dead hookers in the closet or the neighbors telling the news crews that "they were such a nice quiet person".
I can see this behavior leading to more serious problems if left unchecked in some cases and most likely internet based.
My son pissed off some little hacker kid in an online game. He figured out the IP numbers of every computer, actually router my son used and SWATed them. We had the cops come here THREE TIMES because of some half baked phone call from a foreign country claiming all sorts of things. The last one, we were supposedly terrorists in the middle of making bombs or anthrax or something. But since they were already called out two other times, I think they only thought they needed to send out Half the swat team. One of the calls was a black hummer with black guys in black hoodies were home invading us in broad daylight and shots were fired... I think this was supposed to be some sort of cyber bullying. If it was, it didn't work.
Cyber bullying is something I'll never understand. And that's from both sides. Is the cyber bully ignorant enough to think that there won't be consequences for their actions? And why doesn't the victim realize the ease with which turning the tables on the bully can be accomplished?

This may be a little off topic, but If some goofy kid from another country can get the cops to come out here in force with some stupid call straight out of a hollywood movie, how come they put me on hold when I call 911 and report someone committing a real crime in the neighborhood?

I think bullying and these kids that attack servers should be looked at in a different light and be considered as behavior problems that possibly replace the fire making and the animal cruelty of traditional social defects. Again, just cause these kids are doing this, I doubt they all will devolve into the serial killers or sociopathic criminals that we all know and love. I just think that these could be signs that one might be heading that way though. And as Askoff suggests, I agree that more parental involvement is the key to keeping it down.
I think the lack of parental involvement now is due to the parent's lack of internet knowledge too. Sure they know about filters and settings, but they wouldn't know what to do if the kid is shutting down someone's server and if they were born before 1970, I doubt they'd know to even be aware of those types of problems, much less a kid calling out of country police departments on people that shot him in Call of Duty.
I think that maybe when the millenials themselves start having kids, you'll see things change. But aside from that we and our servers are apparently at the mercy of some mildly maladjusted teeny bopper and their frustrated hormones.

it makes you wonder what we could actually achieve with all our knowledge and available effort, if only we had something worthwhile to work toward.

this has all been going downhill since getting food every day has gotten effortless for us lucky ones. now our main goal is entertainment.

Quote from CarlLefrancois :

it makes you wonder what we could actually achieve with all our knowledge and available effort, if only we had something worthwhile to work toward.

First of all we can't do too much. We can onyl affect the people around us and help them mostly. But this issue is global and world is in different development stages in different places. So the people who haven't got this far are still going to learn these things in future.

Quote :

this has all been going downhill since getting food every day has gotten effortless for us lucky ones. now our main goal is entertainment.

It's not that simple IMO. Sure getting the food is quite easy for most of us with the first world "problems". We can still evolve and try to pursue towards the happiness. That's the point in life nowadays because most of the mandatory needs are mostly secured for many of us (not all of course). One part of the happiness is the possibility to enjoy entertainment, but mostly it comes inside of us. If you are not threatened by anyone, mostly what keeps you unhappy is yourself. If you are unhappy or suffer from something, you might think it's the fault of somebody (yourself or someone else) and wan't to revenge it.
When you learn to be happy, the happines will spread around you. And your kids might not see a need to do harm for others either.

Quote from askoff :

First of all we can't do too much. We can onyl affect the people around us and help them mostly. But this issue is global and world is in different development stages in different places. So the people who haven't got this far are still going to learn these things in future.

It's not that simple IMO. Sure getting the food is quite easy for most of us with the first world "problems". We can still evolve and try to pursue towards the happiness. That's the point in life nowadays because most of the mandatory needs are mostly secured for many of us (not all of course). One part of the happiness is the possibility to enjoy entertainment, but mostly it comes inside of us. If you are not threatened by anyone, mostly what keeps you unhappy is yourself. If you are unhappy or suffer from something, you might think it's the fault of somebody (yourself or someone else) and wan't to revenge it.
When you learn to be happy, the happines will spread around you. And your kids might not see a need to do harm for others either.

You make valid points. As the planet shrinks with better connectivity, we're going to have a whole new set of problems and will hopefully get rid of some old ones as well.

But this part:
" We can still evolve and try to pursue towards the happiness. That's the point in life nowadays because most of the mandatory needs are mostly secured for many of us (not all of course)."

A very big problem in the "first world" is people seem to take what they have for granted. They fail to realize how easily all those secured mandatory needs
can become unsecured.
Our little global village has a very dark cloud looming on the horizon. It is the result of current global development. And it's made up of everything from changing ideologies and shifting socio-economic progress and failure patterns to these little script kiddies attacking game servers and Monsanto's Frankenfood. Whether or not this cloud turns into a beneficial rain or a severe storm remains to be seen, but it is out there.
And the habit we seem to have of making things like food and resource gathering a casual afterthought might not be such a good habit to have.