Update On Server Disruptions

[helring]

Update on Service Disruptions

 

Hi everyone,

 

Many of you may have noticed intermittent connectivity problems with our game servers, which have manifested as disconnections or prolonged lag. I wanted to personally make you aware of the current issues we are experiencing and what we are doing to resolve the situation.

 

For over a year now, we have been the target of numerous DDoS attacks against our game. For those of you who do not know, a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), is an attack directed at an online service such as RuneScape.com, designed to disrupt the website, forums or game by making it completely unavailable, or disrupting traffic from legitimate end users such as yourself. Techniques vary, but essentially a DDoS attack involves overwhelming the online service with malicious traffic. This is - unfortunately - a growing plague within the industry that many online services struggle with, and RuneScape appears to be one of the biggest targets.

 

Motives for launching these attacks vary, but the end result is the same. The sharp increase in attacks does tie closely with removal of bots and gold farming, and equally malicious websites like [BadSite] continue to target and take credit for RuneScape service outages.

 

I wanted to take this opportunity to assure you that we have, are and will continue to work tirelessly, preventing as many of these attacks from affecting your gameplay as we can. We have recently made a multi-million pound investment in our global IT infrastructure to deal with the continued attacks and are working with a number of service and security providers to eradicate the issue completely. We are also working closely with worldwide law enforcement agencies to bring the people responsible for these attacks to justice.

 

I also want to assure all our players that no personal information is at risk as a result of these DDoS attacks.

 

We will continue to fight this threat and are doing everything in our power to ensure RuneScape.com remains available for you to play 24/7.

 

Anyone with information to offer on DDoS attacks or their source is welcome to contact us at [email protected].

 

Thank you for your understanding and continued support.

 

Mark Gerhard

Jagex CEO

[helring]

Wasn't sure if there was already a topic going discussing the servers but if there is then mods feel free to merge this.

[Howlin0001]

 

 

Anyone with information to offer on DDoS attacks or their source is welcome to contact us at [email protected].

To me it sounds like they don't really know who is doing that.

[God Of Lego]

Something about this makes me feel that theres more to the story. Expecially with the regular maintenance they have been doing lately. But bots aint totally gone. So botters wouldnt want to ruin their own bots right?

[ilovecuttingyews]

 

Anyone with information to offer on DDoS attacks or their source is welcome to contact us at [email protected].

To me it sounds like they don't really know who is doing that.

To me it sounds just that more info can't hurt.

[Wkw]

Well, it took them a month to admit that there was a problem.. And they admitted that they weren't causing it, to boot!

[Aiel]

 

Motives for launching these attacks vary, but the end result is the same. The sharp increase in attacks does tie closely with removal of bots and gold farming, and equally malicious websites like [BadSite] continue to target and take credit for RuneScape service outages.

 

"MMG! MMG! Everyone kept buying gold from RWT because it's half as expensive as bonds! I know! Let's tell them RWTers are DDoSing runescape!"

 

:rolleyes:

[IridiumBunny]

Well, it took them a month to admit that there was a problem.. And they admitted that they weren't causing it, to boot!

 

Would have been nice if they had admitted a problem a lot earlier, but fair enough that they didn't disclose that DDOS attacks were behind it until now. Doing so before they had a handle on it would have given those responsible confirmation that the attacks were working, and only encouraged them to do it more.

[Arceus]

Good to know, thanks.  Luckily it seems my homeworld has been spared from lag recently..

[Omali]

 

 

Motives for launching these attacks vary, but the end result is the same. The sharp increase in attacks does tie closely with removal of bots and gold farming, and equally malicious websites like [BadSite] continue to target and take credit for RuneScape service outages.

 

"MMG! MMG! Everyone kept buying gold from RWT because it's half as expensive as bonds! I know! Let's tell them RWTers are DDoSing runescape!"

 

:rolleyes:

 

 

Many MMOs suffer DDOS attacks in retaliation from gold farmers and cheaters. The forum for Garry's Mod (Facepunch) gets DDoS'd every time they ban another cheat program, and so do many other games. Not saying that is guaranteed to be the case this time, but it isn't exactly uncommon.

[Quyneax]

Well, that's fair then. Sad to see people feel the need to DDoS, hope Jagex gets their systems proofed. You can't really be mad at Jagex for this, as basically every service gets hit by DDoS at some point (big banks and stuff as well, who don't exactly have small IT budgets).