UPDATE

Our LFS server status is as follows (updated 19:42 UTC+1 25/07/17):

All servers are locked

[TC] CityDriving One: Legitimate - Locked
[TC] CityDriving Two: Legitimate - Locked
[TC] CityDriving Three: Legitimate - Locked
[TC] CityDriving Four: Legitimate - Locked
[TC] CityDriving Training: Legitimate - Locked
[TC] Events: Legitimate - Locked
[TC] Racing: Legitimate - Locked
[TC] Racing 2: Legitimate - Locked

The physical status of the servers can be found here

The attack is still ongoing so read on for further details.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,

Please do not connect to any [TC] branded servers for the time being as we cannot guarantee that they are ours.

All [TC] Gaming services, including our forum, websites and LFS servers are currently experiencing a severe Denial of Service attack and have been for several days. As a result, our LFS servers keep losing connection to the master server which is letting a certain group of individuals start up fake servers under our name. This group are also masquerading as [TC] members around LFS. Please note that any InSim that may be running on these servers is not ours.

The origin of this attack was blackmail for an unban by certain members of the Arabic LFS community. We will not submit to blackmail and we will not negotiate with the attackers. Evidence, including screenshots, server logs and text dumps are available on request.

Until such a time that we can end the disruption, please do not connect to any LFS server with [TC] branding as we cannot guarantee that it is one of ours. Rest assured, we have not been hacked, all of our data is intact and we are working extremely hard to resolve these issues.

The people responsible for this attack are de facto criminals and should be treated as such.

You can keep up to date with our status in this thread, on our Facebook page, via our Twitter accounts, or on our Discord server.

We're sorry for any inconvenience caused and hope to resume normal service as soon as possible.

The [TC] Team

Taking the servers down just because they do not get what you wanted is quite sad, and poor. It says much about how brainless this kind of people can be. Thinking they can make their own rules for every thing.

Once again, sad to see this (still) happening in Live For Speed, with such a low amount of online activity, all they're trying is to destroy it even more. However, we're not going to let this happen are we?

See it the positive way, once [TC] is back, it will be even stronger than before, I'm sure Keep the good job like you've been doing all this years.

Incredibly frustrating for everyone, ruining everyone else’s fun – not cool

Great to see the [TC] community pulling together though to try to find a solution. I just want [TC] back, we’ve got Gumball soon so I need to make monies!!

Woah that's bad.

Just for any new players or non tech savvy people, take his advice and DO NOT JOIN, even if you are AT ALL CURIOUS.

They can and will get your IP address.

This is probably the most downgrading thing a person can do just because they got a ban. I think a route that can stop this issue is to just avoid joining their servers because they might be taking a laugh at how the blackmail is going. I think they are getting a motivation boost every time a player from TC joins.

What this situation really shows, besides character traits of certain individuals, is vulnerabilities.

I understand that this is not the first time this kind of thing has happened and that [TC] Admins had placed precautionary measures prior to the latest incident to counter future Denial of Service attacks.

Let's all try to take away as much as we can from this situation instead of placing blame, I trust things will unfold as they ought to.

Quote from Chriship :

See it the positive way, once [TC] is back, it will be even stronger than before, I'm sure

+1

My biggest respect to [TC] and everyone involved for the great work over the years.

Chin up!

It's quite sad to see this happening (again)... specially to the cruise community in general, to which I belong.

It doesn't matter if you cruise at server A or server B, this kind of acts are something we shouldn't tolerate at all.

Unfortunately [we/the server I usually play at] have suffered similar acts in the past, and I can tell it's no fun!

Hope things get sorted out soon for the good of the community

That is truly pathetic, good luck in sorting this out.

Maybe we could have a system where a given prefix for a server name could be assigned to a certain IP address? Anyone starting a server with that prefix from another IP address would just get a message telling them why it's not working, and the real server could still be started at any time by the rightful owners of that prefix.

I've never talked to this person, but I bet every other server admin is certainly looking forward having this one as guest.

Didn't see any TC servers in server browser, luckily I've played other games today. Whoever did this is a pathetic muppet who seemingly just wants attention. Hopefully you get this mess sorted out soon.

Name & shame those "certain members of the Arabic LFS community", so they can have disrespect from us, and global ban from Devs

If you read the contents of the image Chuck posted, the person says who they are anyway 5loody-G27 / P R O

Well, these people from Saudi Arabia thinks that they a very very big and can threating TC. Well then they are from a very very long way, the problem is that there is currently no option protect servers of these kind of attack. I hope that there will coming soon for game server a protection to prevent this problem.

Thanks for the update Chuck, I was wondering what was happening.
Truely pathetic what is happening, thank you TC team for trying to sort everything out. Is there something the LFS devs can do on their behalf, I am wondering?

Quote from Averro :

Thanks for the update Chuck, I was wondering what was happening.
Truely pathetic what is happening, thank you TC team for trying to sort everything out. Is there something the LFS devs can do on their behalf, I am wondering?

Victor is helping us with a few things, but sadly he cannot help us to mitigate the attack itself, that's up to us.

Sadly to see there is people who thinks that doing the things in bad way will get better results.

As player of [TC] and member of one of their afiliate teams, I'm sure that everything will be back ASAP as you guys solve it, and for sure, you guys are working very hard for it.

Best of luck, and dont let's to bad ppl win!

Quote from mbutcher :

Victor is helping us with a few things, but sadly he cannot help us to mitigate the attack itself, that's up to us.

Ahh ok, I see. Thank you for the information Pete.

Well if this happened a year earlier, me and my friends* would have been able to attempt a traceback and deviate the ddos back to the origin source (attacker's host)... and basically fry him badly

But hey, back to the point, this is extremely immature and completely uncalled for from whoever who instigated the attack. Arab community or not, everyone here in LFS belongs to the racing community. We race and drive because we love to. If your purpose is to destroy people's day then you've got a loose wire up there.

Hope this gets resolved as soon as possible, summon the gods, Vic!

Quote from THE WIZARD DK :

hi just wanted to know if the tc server in list now really is TC ?
i hope you get it all fixed . regards

(Also a small thank you to Victor for helping out in LFS even outside his normal areas)
That is nice of you !

They're all up and running but you'll probably experience some lag from time to time.

Yeah, sorry about that, I've heard similar reports recently. I'll try and sort that out today. AdSense is a pain sometimes.

Sad to see what happened, happy to see that the team is keeping together and staying strong! Good luck with sorting this out!

I noticed that all the TC-servers are offline ATM.

Good luck to Chuck and the whole TC-team with solving these issues!

There is now a server with a whole black name and a password (it's a private server). It's '[TC] CityDriving two' but it's obviously not one of the real servers.

TC Two is up and running, at least now.

I can say that TC is a BRCruise rival, but we cannot agree with this behavior of banned players. I will be there for any support TC needs.

By the way, if TC guys are renting a dedicated host, why not blocking a range of IPs on firewall? It should work on most cases.

Quote from Skinzinho :

By the way, if TC guys are renting a dedicated host, why not blocking a range of IPs on firewall? It should work on most cases.

We tried all of this, with little success so far. Thanks.

With a loonngg history of [WKD] training, there is a lot more to be done then just blocking some range of IP numbers. The internet doesn't work like that. Heads up, glad that I am not involved in that kind of sh* anymore, it's not worth the time.

Better off anyway if the US drops finally -the bomb- .. Cleansweeping that sandpit.. Would be good.