Bounty Offered To Aid Search For DDoS Attackers

MMORPG “Wurm” was hit by a DDoS attack this week, for those of you who don’t know what that is, a DDoS attack effectively forces a website or server offline by overloading the site’s servers with huge amounts of junk traffic, giving it more data than it can process and effectively making it shut down in self defence.

The games operators have decided to take a minor strike back at their attackers by offering up a bounty of 10,000 Euros, which is roughly £8200 / $13750.  The bounty is being offered for any “tips leading to a conviction”, and while we’re sure they’ll get plenty of tips, I highly doubt that they’ll actually locate the people behind the attack as there is a good chance it was random or unprovoked.

Posting on the games official website, one of the games creators said; “We were the target of a DDoS attack and our hosting provider had to pull us off the grid for now. We will be back as soon as possible, but things are out of our hands since their other customers are affected. We can offer 10,000 euros for any tips or evidence leading to a conviction of the person responsible for this attack.”

DDoS attacks are fairly common place, and it could even be that the attack was on their provider, rather than the game its self, we may never know. Wurm was due to move to better servers in the near future, but the developers have said that this recent attack has motivated them to do is much sooner rather than later in a bid to avoid further attacks.

Players were reassured that any progress they had made before the attack would not be lost.

Thank you BBC for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of BBC.