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Xbox Live was attacked?

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It was quite widely reported that the Xbox Live service suffered some lengthy downtime throughout the Christmas period.

This was put down to the huge influx of new users as well as the existing users going on leave and playing games instead of going to the beach.

However it is now rumoured that it may have been a denial of service attack. Basically a D.O.S is when a large number of computers suddenly and continuously start requesting information from a service. This is normally carried out by normal users machines who had had root kits Trojans installed unknowingly on their machine.

So was this the work of some script kiddie or possibly a competitor? Well personally I highly doubt a competitor would stoop that low but being attacked does make more sense to me than just not being prepared.

This is the biggest software company in the world, how could they not expect only 17 million hits?

Recent Xbox Live Issues May Be Result of Attack : Primotech

Last Updated: January 4, 2008

6 Comments

  1. Naudran

    January 4, 2008 at 08:31

    Seems like Microsoft is planning a free Arcade game due to either the increase of users or the fact that there was LIVE downtime:

    “Dear Xbox LIVE Members:

    During this past holiday season you helped us break a number of Xbox LIVE records. This included our largest sign-up of new members to Xbox LIVE in our 5 year history and just yesterday you broke the record for the single biggest day of concurrent members ever on the service.

    As a result of this massive increase in usage we know that some of you experienced intermittent Xbox LIVE issues over the holiday break. While the service was not completely offline at any given time, we are disappointed in our performance. I would like to take this moment to thank you each and every one of you for your patience and understanding as our team has worked around the clock to return the service to a stable state.

    At the same time we would like to offer a token of our appreciation to all of you in celebration of record success for the service. And as a thank you for your loyalty during this holiday period, we will be offering all of our Xbox LIVE members around the world access to a full Xbox LIVE Arcade game that will be available to download free of charge. In the coming weeks we will be sharing the specific details of this offer with you.

    Thank you again for helping make Xbox LIVE everything that it is today!

    Sincerely,

    Marc Whitten
    General Manager, Xbox LIVE
    Gamertag: Notwen”

    Reply

  2. Naudran

    January 4, 2008 at 08:34

    Lazy, is there a limited number of characters we can post here? Just posted a quote and didn’t show…

    Anyways:

    Seems like Microsoft is going to give away a free arcade game due to the downtime over the holidays/increase of users:

    http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/live/serviceissue.htm

    Reply

  3. Naudran

    January 4, 2008 at 08:35

    Double post… sorry… stupid-ass internet connection at work 🙁

    Reply

  4. LazySAGamer

    January 4, 2008 at 08:41

    Thanks for that tip off Naudran… now we just need to decide which Arcade game to get

    Reply

  5. J4NR1K

    January 4, 2008 at 08:52

    Will they not decide for us?

    Reply

  6. LazySAGamer

    January 4, 2008 at 09:14

    Triple post 😀

    There is no limit (apart from a max of 1 link) however somewhere in South Africa someone is spamming a blog and since most of us (worldwide) use the same anti-spam software, most of South African comments are being sent straight to the spam folder.

    I am trying to get it sorted it out with the spam guys but for now I am manually recovering the comments fromthe spam folder so apologies if your comments don’t show.

    Reply

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