Steam Platform Suffers Severe DDoS Attack, Impact on Games
TapTechNews August 26 news, on the evening of August 24, a large number of netizens reported on social platforms that the Steam platform could not be logged in, and the related topic "steam crashed" also topped the Weibo hot search. According to the announcement of the Perfect World e-sports platform, the Steam crash this time was caused by a DDoS attack.
On August 25, the Qi'anxin XLab laboratory pointed out that on the evening of August 24, the Steam platform suffered a DDoS attack, resulting in many users being unable to log in or enter the game. Nearly 60 botnet masters initiated this attack, and the attack instructions increased by more than 20,000 times overnight.
DDoS attack refers to Distributed Denial of Service, which is a type of network attack where an attacker uses one or more computers in different locations to launch an attack on one or more targets simultaneously, consuming the performance of the target server or network bandwidth, resulting in the server running slowly or crashing, thus causing the server to be unable to provide services properly.
"Whether it is the large number of attack instructions, the large number of botnet masters, or the intensity of the attack, and the meticulousness of the attack organization, this DDoS attack is extremely rare in our view in recent years." The Qi'anxin XLab laboratory disclosed the behind-the-scenes details of this DDoS attack event: Nearly 60 botnet masters initiated this attack, and the attack instructions increased by more than 20,000 times overnight,轮番 attacking the Steam global website, involving 107 Steam server IPs in 13 countries and regions.
1. The attack instructions are extremely large, a significant increase of 20,000 times compared to usual, and the change compared to daily is extremely obvious
In this attack event, the Xlab laboratory observed a total of 280,000 attack instructions against the Steam platform. According to long-term historical observation, there were often attacks against Steam in the past, but often the attack instructions were in the double digits. "Last night, it directly increased by more than 20,000 times. Such a high number of attack instructions is almost extremely rare in our careers."
2. The scale of using botnets is extremely large, reaching nearly 60
Nearly 60 botnet masters initiated this attack. Its scale is 15 times that of the DDoS attack event (4 botnets) when Trump and Musk had a live interview last time. In addition, other attack groups also used methods such as NTP and CLDAP reflection amplification attacks to participate in this attack event. Such a large-scale use of botnets is really rare in many years.
3. The attack intensity is extremely fierce, the attacker goes all out, involving 107 Steam server IPs in 13 countries and regions
It is introduced that starting from 6 PM on August 24, the attacker concentrated its firepower to fiercely attack the Singapore node computer room in Asia and the Perfect World computer room, the agent of the Steam China region, and then switched to the US computer room in the morning of the 25th.
In terms of the choice of time, it almost coincided basically with the local game peak period (local evening and night) . The key attack targets include 107 Steam server IPs in 13 regions such as China, the United States, Singapore, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Spain, the United Kingdom, Japan, Korea, Australia, Chile, and the Netherlands.
TapTechNews noticed that the peak online number of the Steam platform of "Black Myth: Wukong" just exceeded 2.4 million on August 22 last week. With the sudden crash of the Steam platform, the real-time online number of this game once dropped below one million. As of the time TapTechNews posted, the current number of players of "Black Myth: Wukong" on Steam is 390,000, and the peak today reached 2.13 million.
