UPDATED: League of Legends, DOTA 2 and Other Servers Shut Down By Cyber Attack
Twitch user PhantomLord has been communicating with the attackers all afternoon, and into the evening hours
****We are constantly updating the situation on our official Twitter account @Gamesideddotcom***
UPDATE 7: 1:05am: After a long ordeal, all servers in League of Legends have been fully restored. The group has now taken down World of Tanks, however. Battle.net is also still having issues from Monday’s event.
James “PhantomLord” Varga finally gave a full update on what happened throughout the night to him after his stream was cut off by Twitch, and the police were called to his home by the hacker group. According to Varga, there were three police cars and about seven officers to start with one of them leaning against a tree with a fully automatic rifle.
According to the police, Varga said, a report that he was holding five people hostage was called in which lead to a total amount of “13,14, 15 cops” to show up at his California home, put him in handcuffs, place him in the back of a car and search his home from top to bottom.
“I’m still quite shaken up, but I’m good. I’m Okay,” he said.
We will have more on this situation, and any other attacks by the group, throughout the day on Tuesday.
UPDATE 6: 10:00pm: The League of Legends servers are slowly being restored by Riot Games. The European and North American servers are back up, but with major issues still plaguing the game. Friends lists have been deleted, chatting is not being allowed and a long login queue.
Stay Tuned!
UPDATE 5: 9:20pm: A small update on the matter. PhantomLord has posted yet another update on his Facebook page:
"woah that last post was written like shit… sorry xD.. Was shaken up I guess. Handcuffs hurt like a bitch.. I’m good guys. More updates soon, promise. Love all of you."
The League of Legend servers have been back up though extremely long queue times are being reported World-wide.
Stay tuned!
UPDATE 4: 8:34pm: PhantomLord has now posted an update himself on his official Facebook page:
"just had an automatic pointed at me, put in hand cuffs and sat in the back of a cop car as I watched as 6 policemen go through my whole house.. will keep you all updated."
There are also reports circulating that the group has installed “Zombie Servers” on the League of Legends servers. With the Zombie Servers, any login and payment detail will be sent to the group. This isn’t confirmed, but definitely something to keep an eye on.
The official League of Legends status Twitter account is recommending a flush of the DNS in order to fix login issues, though staying away from the game all together would be a better bet right about now.
Stay tuned.
UPDATE 3: 8:15 pm: Reddit has begun to work intermittently, and some League of Legends servers have slowly started to be restored. The group has now begun threatening the state of World of Warcraft by tweeting out “Don’t mention DERP in WoW, you risk getting banned.”
On a personal note, it appears, according to the streamer’s brother Nick, that PhantomLord has been put into the back of a police car. We will keep you updated on the matter as more becomes available.
UPDATE 2 7:55pm: EA.com is back online, but now it appears as though the group has also taken Reddit offline after the post was updated with the latest information on PhantomLord being visited by the police.
Reddit has now been taken offline
The group is claiming, according to an earlier chat session with PL, that this attack is all part of a bigger plan. This has now gone from an innocent attack on a few games to something potentially much bigger.
Stay tuned.
UPDATE 1: Still no official word from any of the affected parties, but more developments have occurred as the hacker group has acquired PhantomLord’s address, and falsely notified police of a “hostage situation”. Twitch administrators have begun stepping in in an attempt to remedy the situation.
The user has been AFK (Away from Keyboard) since 7:15, with the group’s Twitter account saying “Whats the IP to your jail cell? WE’LL GET YOU OUT”. Stay tuned.
All League of Legends servers remain down at this time.
Original: A cyber group has caused extreme chaos among the online gaming community as it has been following around Twitch user PhantomLord, and subsequently taking down the servers of games that he is trying to play. This, according to the user himself and Reddit.
The group has attacked the servers of League of Legends, DOTA 2, Club Penguin, Battle.net and even EA.com. As of this posting, all servers remained down with the group threatening to take down more claiming “everything is EA’s fault”.
The group originally began performing DDOS attacks on servers when they threatened the Twitch user that if his team didn’t win his game in DOTA 2. As soon as the fate of the game was sealed, the server crashed with them tweeting to the user “No DOTA for you.”
The group has seemingly challenged PhantomLord to a match in order to restore servers based on the events on his channel.
Phantom Lord believes that he was targeted simply because he was the top Twitch streamer online at the time, and that it was not a preplanned attack against him, or what he was playing. Then again, maybe it was, and DERP is just looking to continue to cause stress for users looking to enjoy the games they play.
No official word from any of the affected groups has come yet, but when it does, we’ll be sure to update you on the matter.