Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest

DoS attack while hosting an Xbox live game?

  • 07-02-2012 9:35am
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 45


    Hi,

    I had a strange experience on XBox live over the weekend and was wondering if it something similar happened to anyone else.
    I was playing CoD MW3 with a few mates in my house. There were 4 of us connecting to multiplayer matches from my connection.
    As expected when 4 players in the match are coming from the one connection, you tend to be the host a lot.

    Anyway, we were in a game and this american kid says in the middle of the game, 'who here is connecting from Galway on an Eircom connection ? '
    None of us answered but we thought it was very dodgy.

    Anyway a few minutes later, everything got laggy, the game bombed out and my router went down. Took 15 mins to get the router back up.

    I thought it was just a coincidence but after talking to some of the guys in work, they were saying that if I was hosting he could look at the outbound connection on his side, get the IP address, do a lookup to get some info on that IP and that he could then run something to spam the xbox live port on my connection and essentially launch a mini Denial of service attack.

    Sounds like a lot of work just to be an a-hole?
    Has this happened to anyone else or am I being super paranoid? Apparently it happens in Fifa 12 sometimes if the guy is loosing 2 nil or something, he can bomb out the connection to avoid the loss.


Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,157 ✭✭✭srsly78


    This is one of the main cheats used on consoles. It's even worse if the cheater is hosting, they can use a proxy to selectively lag opponents out (like the guy did to you). If you were hosting and he did it, the whole game would lag out for everyone.

    Only way to combat this is to assign each player a "trustworthy host rating", with hosts that display inconsistent pings given a bad rating. Then the matchmaker can avoid using these people. Halo and some other games use a system like this.

    Main problem is this type of cheating doesn't tamper with the console, but rather relies on a "man in the middle" interfering with the network. Thus it's not so easy to detect as other cheats.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 45 rashers10


    Ok thanks. So it's not that unusual and there is nothing really can be done about it.
    I don't expect Infinity Ward/Sledgehammer to do much about it anyway seeing as there patches so far have been sketchy at best and they still allow consequence free rage quitting (which is slowly starting to destroy the game).

    I'm sure they could detect this 'spikes' of activity and ban those accounts?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 55,572 ✭✭✭✭Mr E


    Moved from Games to Xbox.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,157 ✭✭✭srsly78


    In theory they can. But often it's hard to tell difference between a legitimate disconnect and one forced by DoS. This is why some games use a "host rating". This works if they are a cheating host not client tho is problem. They do ban people they catch doing this.

    If they DoS your router, there is no xbox involved at all. They use a linux box most likely to send the rubbish data to your router. Xbox live has no way of seeing this.

    Having centralised servers is another way. If someone tries to DoS the official server they can be detected. The problem with many games is they are peer-to-peer, one player hosts and a few others connect.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 45 rashers10


    Ok I guess so but I'm pretty sure the same thing happens on PS3?


  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,157 ✭✭✭srsly78


    Any game using peer to peer over the internet can be affected by people messing around with the connection. Doesn't matter whether it's xbox/ps3 or PC.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 45 rashers10


    Mr E wrote: »
    Moved from Games to Xbox.

    Yeah, I figured, I was just grumbling about the thread move ;)


Advertisement