Feldon 
A handful of bored teenagers decided their celebrity status on Twitter is more important than us being able to play on DBG servers or participate in the forums this morning. I guess the job title of selling car insurance was already filled, so these reptiles are just wasting everyone’s time instead.
UPDATE — Noonish PST
DBG servers, games, and forums seem to be accepting connections reliably again, so we’re going to mark this one resolved!
UPDATE – 9:41am PST
This is an update just to say that the DDoS being perpetrated against Daybreak Games (DBG) for the last 6-7 hours had abated for a while, but now the “I have no girlfriend” squad have found new avenues of attack and are once again keeping DBG’s login, game, and forum servers very busy and thus unable to handle normal forum logins or gameplay. If we get word that the issue has been resolved, we’ll report back here.
Educate Yourself on DDoS!
By the way, if you think that this is a “hack” or that this is somehow DBG’s fault, or some sign of things to come for DBG games, well then you might want to educate yourself.
DDoS attacks are made possible by all the luddites out there whose computers are infected with malware or viruses. A group is then able to remotely install software on those computers and trigger the flooding of specific targets. If you imagine tens of thousands of infected computers all on broadband internet connections sending gigabytes of garbage requests to DBG servers, it’s very difficult to stop because it’s coming from all over the world, not just one or two originating points you can easily block.
Before you blame DBG, remember that DDoS attacks have been successful against Facebook, Google, Microsoft, the US Government, etc.
If your client is up-to-date you can launch everquest2.exe manually (bypassing the launcher) – it might take a while to respond (presumably needs to time out or takes a while to get a response) but you should be able to get in game.
Has worked for me and a few others.
Agreed. Before I read about the DOS I just tried launching the application and it worked seamlessly.
I tried it as well and also found success
Actually I take that back – I was able to get into game but nothing was available for interaction to include NPCs, mail, broker etc.
Spoke too soon. I’m in, but Guk feels like Storms :-/
Got in thru .exe file but huge lag. High pings and packet loss. Nearly impossible to play.
The SOE forums were back for a while but they seem to be having issues again. When I do a tracert from my PC to the forums it looks like Level3 in Las Vegas is also having problems – I guess a lot of the DDOS traffic is going through there also.
Got the same thing using Visual Route, tracing straight to Antonia Bayle. I’ve been saying it for years, there’s a very easy and quick solution to the hackers, and it’s a hollow point..
well, education can do wonders but it can’t fix stupid. common sense and respect come from upbringing, something children have an under abundance of these days
Sad but true.
Common sense, that’s soooo 90’s.
Can anyone explain why, after years of companies up to and including major multinationals being repeatedly knocked offline by this sort of thing, there isn’t a technological solution to prevent it happening? Is it literally impossible to stop?
It’s hard to defend against tens of thousands of computers in a botnet hammering your servers with packets from all over the world, when your business involves in essence being connected to tens of thousands computers all over the world on the public internet. Only thing that helps is trying to find out how to distinguish good from bad packages and then having a good upstream provider who can block the bad ones for you so the good ones can come through again. Firewalls and all – they do nothing once the bad traffic jams up your connection to the internet.
BCP 38
I chose to educate myself, as suggested, on DDoS attacks. This is what I found….
“The depth of the problem is illustrated by the fact that the basic principles for stopping such attacks have been widely recognized since at least 2000. That was the year that the Network Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force, a voluntary group of Internet and telecommunications engineers, laid out a set of “best current practices” that Internet companies and organizations were encouraged to follow to defeat a threat known as “I.P. address spoofing,” which is the ability for an attacker to hide behind a faked address that is crucial for denial-of-service attacks.
But these basic Internet engineering “rules of the road,” laid out in a document known as BCP 38, are followed by a relatively small number of companies. “They have just not been willing to invest the effort it would take to make things so much better,” said Mark Seiden, a member of the Security and Stability Advisory Committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the domain name system.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/technology/attacks-on-spamhaus-used-internet-against-itself.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
Does SoE follow BCP38? Or rather…. will Daybreak be following BCP38?
@bhagpuss, basically, yes it’s impossible to stop the initial attack. Once it’s under way there are things you can do but it requires that not only the company under attack but their ISP and many of the other providers along the route get involved which takes time.
Easy. It’s a moving target, which is why ethical hacking is now a (honestly) specialty in universities. IP security.
Have a read of https://www.cloudflare.com/ddos – there are many different types of attack with new vectors/methods being discovered all the time.
Doesn’t help that so many of SoE/Daybreaks services are tied together.. the game servers may be fine but the login servers are hit which then affects forums etc.. if they’re all sat on the same network then all services could be affected due to the sheer amount of traffic from the DDoS etc.
There are ways to protect things but I don’t think any of them are 100% guaranteed and implementing them somewhere like Daybreak could be difficult and costly.
not working for me. eq2.exe goes to launcher when i open it and launcher seems to want to work then it goes black. after a few minutes of waiting, i have to shut it down. tried the everquest2.exe and got that everquest 2 has issues and must be shut down.
any news on when this will be fixed?
forums are back up and daybreak is working on problems
kk forums going in and out. one minute i can get the page loaded and then when i click next to go to the next page, it says problem loading page. guess they are trying to fix everything but it is a temporary fix right now and doesn’t stick.
Heh…my last refresh page here took a couple of minutes. Is eq2wire now under the DDOS umbrella?
mine only took seconds. maybe your computer is slowing down? if i don’t restart my computer every day it slows down. and if i get too many browser windows open, that slows down too.
This refresh was instant. It’s not my computer.
Not to my knowledge.
I’m guessing you are seeing some slowdown due to the link to census.soe.com – but that should not affect most things on here.
I’d be pretty embarrassed if I ran a company that could be knocked out by a bunch of nerds. Cutting the staff by a third plus probably doesn’t help either, and the real problem of channeling ALL of your games through ONE log in system is just dumb. All you are doing is making it more vulnerable, they attack one thing and wind up hitting them all.
I’d be pretty embarrassed to be so ignorant of DDoS attacks.
Facebook, Twitter, the US Government, all kinds of sites get taken down by these kinds of attacks.
It isn’t my field, sorry, 40 yrs in banking took up all my time. I’m pretty solid on investing advice, though =))
Oh! So *you’re the one who told them to buy SoE from Sony. Good to know. =)
It would be really nice if the owners of hacked computers… computers participating in botnets, got financial penalties for their participation in such things.
Might start making people serious about looking after their computers and improving their surfing habits.
So if you’re sitting in your car stopped at an intersection and someone rear-ends you, pushing your car into and killing several pedestrians in the crosswalk in front of you, you think you should be charged with manslaughter even though you were stopped and had your foot on the brake?
Might start making you serious about never driving…
finally in the game. about a 1 to 2 minute lag on each move
DDoS is the most childish of attacks. It’s the computer equivalent of the monkey flinging poo at the zoo.
Unlike the monkey, it is difficult to defend against because every place with an internet connection has a limited number of access points and those points can all be known. Whereas the attackers can be anywhere and there can be any number of them.
DDoS services can literally be bought with a (stolen) credit card from the purveyors of botnets, or you can drum up the sycophant masses from 4chan.
Eventually they get bored and move on (or their botnet purchase runs out, as the case may be).
Wow…yet another hack…How many months will pass this time before the new administrators get things back up again?
It’s an attack, not a hack. It’s overwhelmingly difficult to defend against this type of attack. Imagine if millions of people were outside of your house with megaphones screaming at the top of your lungs while you were trying to sleep. You can’t call the police, there is no internet police. You just have to take it until they get bored and go away.
game seems to be down now. even bypassing the launchpad didn’t help. however, i accidentally clicked on launchpad and it is installing updates. so maybe they took the game down to fix it? also forums are timing out again
the forums are still having trouble. beginning to think i should just go play lotro today. there were several things i wanted to finish. guess it will take more time
Well it doesnt appear that this is going to end any time soon.
It’s been going on for over 8 hours now 🙁
I was in game for a while but then lost my connection – trying again.
Well this brings back memories of the last house cleaning and the attack that brought down SOE for a couple of weeks. Not saying it’s the same, not saying that’s what happened last time, just saying it sure is a coincidence. Hope not. Like a lot of others, I was looking forward to this long weekend and getting some things done in game.
Now I’m getting “Page can’t be displayed” messages trying to access the forums.
Its not very good timing foir sure with, all the other things going on with the new company take over this is one thin EQ could have done without
Looks like I picked a good time to back up my computer and get all my updates done, seeing as I can’t play anyways.
I hope they extend Erollisi celebration by a few days because of this:D
After about, oh, 10 minutes or so, the game launcher popped up on my screen…and then went completely black…No AoM image, no clickable links…just black…
It’s great too see the restructuring improvements hard at work here, I’m betting their console games aren’t affected which should show us exactly where we stand on the ladder.
I don’t have a console but I’d bet that anything requiring logging in is affected. Hopefully someday they diversify their games to where one attack doesn’t hit them all, but I doubt that will ever happen.
you know, on their facebook page they claim they are attacking Sony today. If Daybreak had enough time before this to distance themselves from sony and change all of their sites and labels, they might not have gotten caught up in this.
hasn’t anyone noticed that Sony has been the brunt of a lot of attacks and vendettas lately? Not Daybreak, Not CN, Sony.
My guess would be the people that bought SoE have roughly the same amount of computer knowledge that someone like me has…..on a good day, I can find the power switch. So, they probably never thought about changing all the appropriate labels and such, at least not with any real alacrity.
Clearly you’ve never done graphic design. A new logo and brand strategy is not created overnight.
Guess you missed all the attacks on Blizzard, Steam, etc. that went alongside the attacks on SOE. Also Lizard Squad specifically said they were attacking Planetside 2. So myth busted about this having anything to do with Sony.
was only reading what was on their facebook page. however, i guess all of our reporting to facebook helped this morning because i just tried to go to their facebook page and got a page not found error. i am on my own site on facebook so that isn’t down. their tweets are counting each site as they shut them down though
Lizard Squad @LizardPhoenix
H1Z1 #offline
lol wrong site. the one i found was down but they simply had made a newer site. i guess facebook can’t shut them down either.
You’re better than me, facebook twatters and the like I find invasive, and downright scary. As for attacks happening on things that I don’t use, well, I’d never be aware of things like that, unless one of my friends told me.
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/01/another-lizard-arrested-lizard-lair-hacked/
I wonder if the arrest early in the UK this morning prompted the latest attack. Frankly I don’t care why. Just want to see them get the core criminals soon.
Oops that arrest was last month. Lol I’m behind.
An error occurred during a connection to forums.station.sony.com. The server rejected the handshake because the client downgraded to a lower TLS version than the server supports. (Error code: ssl_error_inappropriate_fallback_alert)
that is what i am getting on the forum pages
I second that, Merriel! I haven’t had a chance to start on Erollisi Day stuff yet. Been busy decorating a basement. And now that I have time…ugh! I sure wish people had the level of respect and consideration they had when I was a kid. If I had hacked into something like this, my parents would have let me sit in jail…no bail…no sympathy….do the crime, do the time! Seems that catching them, though, is as much of a challenge as finding a Tier’Dal in a Qeynosian temple. Just so sad that some people have nothing better to do than to screw up other peoples’ lives.
lol back in game. watching in slow motion as the mobs try to kill me but inflict no damage, my spells not working, and then zoning into a zone i had clicked on at least 5 minutes ago. everything is in slow motion
I get not being able to log in, but whats with an update (launchpad shell), and then the launcher going full black and giving me “Error:
Unknown Error Occured” ?
happened to me too. right click on the eq2 program on your desktop, choose properties, then choose open file location. in that file look for everquest2.exe. double click it and give it plenty of time. it will open, prompt you for a password and name of toon, and will very slowly load.
As a grandmother I resent this comment. I am okay with Luddites, but your attitude about Grandmothers is sexist and obsolete.
Hi Feldon
I have great respect and thank you for all you do – but please could you remove the reference to grandmothers somehow being partly responsible. I am female and old enough to be a grandmother and rather resent the comment. It is both sexist and ageist.
I’ve removed the line and apologize for any offense caused.
Thanks Feldon!
Thank you 🙂
Someone obviously has no sense of humor.
Besides, it’s made possible by people who don’t think they need to set up and maintain firewalls and anti-malware software, by people who think their computer and the internet are simple tools like wrenches and toasters, and by just plain idiots who think they are invincible.
It’s actually relatively simple to keep the kind of botware that is used for DDoS off your computer, but it takes a bit of learning, a bit of attention and fair amount of good sense… three properties lacking to a great degree in most computer users worldwide.
Well a question to the more knowledgeable. I do have up to date anti-virus and also scan routinely for malware. I also am careful about email and links to websites.
Is there a program that can analyze your network, everything attached to it, and find anything that is a problem?
These days with smartphones, cars, tablets, desktops, laptops etc all using wifi and bluetooth…its hard to know what to do to prevent issues.
You may be able to look at logs from the firewall in your network. Yes, you should have one – as a minimum, a properly configured router from your ISP that connects you to the internet… that should have its firewall features turned on. Looking at the logs is usually a hassle though.
If your firewalls have been turned on, and you’ve got good passwords on the admin accounts, and you have taken the steps you say, you’re probably in good shape. Oh, and you absolutely, positively must keep Adobe products like Flash, Air and Reader right up to date, as well as Java. Like, really up to date.
But… if you use weak passwords and rarely change them, run jailbroken/rooted smart phones, download software from dodgy torrent sites and let all traffic out through your firewall, then yeah, you could have issues and they could be hard to clean up. Well built malware can take steps to avoid detection.
A rooted android device is a great vector for malware, for example, as are torrents.
I’d have no idea myself….I paid the person that set up my computer to also set up virus protection and he put in place 2 firewalls I believe, one at the router one at the computer. Does it actually work? Heck if I know!
Yeah, I have the firewall up, the wifi is password protected and I don’t go to or download questionable things. And I do update things routinely.
Just get nervous with all the people out there constantly trying to put malware, ransomeware, keyloggers, and all that crap on computers.
it has nothing to do with your firewalls. most of the “kids” are actually over 20. it is aimed not at your personal computers but at companies that provide service. please not the meaning of the anagram – distributed denial of service attack
no company’s firewalls and antiviruses would protect against this. it is a group of over 50 to 1000 computers all jamming the service company at one time from all over the world. no firewall or anything else can defend against that. maybe you should take the advice given earlier and read up on it.
and yeah, as a grandmother i too don’t like the flaming remarks against us. stop flaming and start educating yourself before making remarks that make you look foolish.
Probably should read what I said. I know what DDOS is and did not flame anyone. Just asked a question.
your post is not the one we were referring to- rather someone who said the attacks were made by grandmothers
and oops.. you weren’t talking to me. Sorry about that. Anyhow, forums and server are up now.
Aha! So a DDoS attack. I tried to log in at around 1 AM PST and couldn’t get on, so these azzhats started quite early, or late, depending on their timezone.
launcher is fixed- game is back up and so are forums
Your personal computer security is a factor in this – you need it to prevent you becoming a part of a botnet unwillingly. Malware is what allows these people to co-opt other people’s computers into doing their dirty work.
Katz simply asked if he/she was doing enough to prevent this – and it seems that he/she is. Being aware of the problem is half the battle.
At one point a few years ago I noticed some unexplained traffic on my home computer network. I didn’t try to trace what was really going on, but I suspect that I was part of a botnet. I tightened my security – new router, new av, full scans etc and the problem was resolved.
Maybe I should have refreshed before posting 🙂
i went to their site and reported the threats and the posts that showed they had carried them out to facebook. i got a reply from facebook that they in no way violated their community standards. what does that say about facebook?
found some interesting links when i googled how to prevent being part of a botnet
http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/12446/how-do-i-know-if-my-computer-is-being-used-for-a-botnet-based-ddos-attack
http://www.zonealarm.com/blog/2014/05/8-signs-your-pc-might-be-a-zombie/
https://www.staysafeonline.org/ncsam/resources/botnet-fact-sheet
there were more but i thought these might be a good start
To be the pot calling the kettle black…wouldn’t all us eq2 people trying to login to a video game on Valentine’s Day be members of the “I have no girl friend squad…”?? Just saying…
Lol. Interesting point. But in my case my husband is at work 700 miles away.
A bunch of us are ‘girls’.. and a bunch more play with their significant others 😉
Exactly. She sucked me into this game in the first place. 🙂
She did what? Oh nm, I finished your sentence.
I’m a chick and I have been an addict to Norrath since 2004, thank you very much! I actually met my husband on Crushbone server. Married 6 years, but it seems like maybe 2. XD
I, the grandmother, was the one who pulled my husband, the grandfather, into EQ2 and he is the computer geek of the family!