DDoS attack is NOT near impossible to stop. MS has successfully defended it many times against Lizzard Squad.

The key to defending DDoS is detecting it early, have great network traffic analysis, migration and an awesome firewall.

Is it a difficult problem? Sure, but so is securing your network. Point being, don't give companies a free pass and don't hype it up to be some unsurmountable problem!

There is a reason why one network, PSN, goes down far longer than another, XBL:

http://static1.gamespot.com...

@Spartacus10:

Since a DDoS doesn't care about the the data, only the traffic it generates it is easy to spoof the MAC. The IP you can, but it is important to have the tools and expertise ready to analyze the traffic to determine which are targets and which are legitimate traffic.

A lot of times, during a DDoS the attacker is using infected zombie computers so it makes it harder to mitigate it.

@spartacus

Most ppl don't have a static IP, we have dynamically set ips which the lease gets revoked after a while.

It's extremely difficult to stop a DDOS, but it is possible.

XBL working better and being less time down is great , granted ... but ultimately both cant handle a real attack such like the XMAS one , on top of traffic .

Most DDoS either hit a port, the index.php (or similar file), or the web URL itself. But that's also exactly what every single legitimate internet user is also doing, so it's kinda hard to determine "this guy is looking at our main web page and he's legit, but THIS guy is looking at our main web page and is not legit".

The traffic itself is (usually) pretty innocent-looking. Even if you employ some sort of DDoS mitigation service, it can't filter out all the bad traffic.

Of course there are nuances and a few solutions , but not all of them are practical or easy to deploy on a large scale ... and few are DDoS fullproof

It's not use playing the "mine is better" game , both need to up the ante in all possible areas of security

What I blame Sony for is not having a way to play a digital game offline. It's a joke. I have Need For Speed, BF4, and Driveclub digital copies and have been locked out since early afternoon Tuesday. I can't even watch Netflix that I pay for. Everything has a lock on it. Message of, Can't connect to the server to verify the license. If this is how its gonna be I'll never buy a digital game again!

@bigbri642000

If you activate your account on your PS4/PS3 you wouldn't have that problem. I could play all my friend's games but not my own since he has my account and I have his (game share). As for Netflix, idk how the apps work, I use my consoles for gaming.

@donthate: MS has done a great job of stop Lizard Squad this time haven't they?

@bigbri642000

Except there is a way . i've got digital version of the some of games you listed . And i'm played them fine .

It was just a matter of having licenses activated via making a console your primary . And to play offline you log out or unplug , otherwise the console will as expected try to check and connect to servers .

@mega24

I'm in the same boat. Unfortunately I'd played all my friends games to death and had just bought Dragon Age digitally to play while home for the holidays.

@bigbri642000

I'm confused by your statement. You CAN play your digitally purchased games without an internet connection. As long as your ps4 is set to be your primary one.

And netflix? I don't even need to sign in to use netflix or the web browser or youtube.

So why was xbox live only down for a few hours and PSN hasn't been worth shit since this crap began during the late hours December 24th?

Been trying to play Destiny for going on two days now and can't do a damn thing.

Blizzard stops them, Microsoft clearly understands how to minimize the impact of these lizard scrubs - but Sony? No. We sit and suffer through excessive downtime whenever people decide to be online pricks and attack the service.

@bigbri642000

I find it hard to believe you even own a PS4. I have Lords of the Fallen, Dragon Age, Diablo, The Last of Us and Destiny as digital games. I can play all of them except Destiny. I've watched Netflix several times as well.

DDOS is a catch 22 problem. It's not a matter of just upgrading your security software, or upgrading your servers.

Okay here is my simple explanation of an DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service).

Say you want to signon to a game service so does thousands of other people. 99.99% are legit attempts, even if the password is wrong a few times.

What happens if there are billions of signon attempts? No gateway can keep up with that. Now only one out of a million attempts to sign on are legit!

What if I block everybody? Guess what now your 100% down to everyone (including legit gaming signons) and you could be in the same boat once you unblock everyone.

So you must research all these addresses. Some IP addresses you know are legit if machines have not been assigned a new IP since the gameing service was last working well.
Some internet companies are constantly changing home ip's. Turning off your Router for 15 minutes will do it too. But during a big release,
what is Sony and Microsoft to do? Block every IP that is new? Many people buy systems for games for big release games like Second Son, or Halo. And Christmas demand MANY more legit NEW requests.

Here is another catch 22, because many internet companies reassign IP's some of the ones that was legit, are now assigned to a machine with the DDOS).

But eventually this is a good thing you can research and find out where most of the requests are coming from. Here is the other part of the catch 22. 99.999999999% of the request's are coming from innocent people that don't even know that they're machine is infected with an ddos! (hence the word DISTRIBUTED). So you must block many people from making a request (which also is slowing you down).

More bandwidth, and hardware does help some. But it is not the trump card.

I'm not a network Admin, but I'm a software developer. But I have this information from some good ones on that side of the fence.

I just want to help people that think, it is a simple problem and that these two companies are not trying to protect themselves. And thinking that chest pumping is going to scare people. History has shown that It will just attract MORE attackers, and scare none away, causing us to have more headaches with our off time. Microsoft, and Sony are not as stupid as some of us judge them as.

DDoS attacks are not impossible to stop like the uninformed would have you believe. There are companies that are more than capable of handling DDoS attacks, but Sony and Microsoft didn't want to spend the cash to protect the PSN and XBL from the attacks so their customers had to suffer, plain and simple.

Anyone making excuses for Sony and Microsoft is a fool, especially since LizardSquad even made it perfectly clear in advance that they planned to do this. The fact that PSN/XBL went down just goes to show how horribly incompetent these companies are. If Sony or Microsoft had any sense they would have planned ahead and hired a company such as Cloudflare to protect their networks, and nobody would have seen any downtime at all. For reference, Cloudflare successfully protected against the largest recorded DDoS attack earlier this year.

You people need to stop making excuses for such crappy service because Sony and Microsoft are laughing while raking in subscriptions fees that are pure profit.

And where are we now on Dec 26th? Xbox Live seems to be back up for people while PSN remains down without a peep from Sony. Great job guys, well done. This entire DDoS attack could have easily been prevented but nope, can't go spending the cash to ensure the service is stable...

Anyone defending Sony or Microsoft is a mug, plain and simple.

Well, if these events keep happening, I can't see how either Sony or Microsoft will be able to continue to charge people for online gameplay, since they can't guarantee when player will be able to play online.

Of course it's not impossible , but it's not as easy as you guys claim .

DDoS is a global, fundamental issue with the very structure of the Internet. It's a real problem that can't always be solved just by throwing money or servers at it.

And mitigation doesnt necessarily work the way people believe or imply . Let's say the average size of a DDoS attack for the year is 10Gbps. Sony or MS then pays their mitigation partner up front for services that will be rendered during a 10Gbps attack. Their mitigation partner uses the funds to set up the eventual routing that will be required when the attack happens, have the manpower ready to respond, all the systems and programs, filters, etc - then a attack happens and it's 100Gbps. Now what?

Systems go down, the mitigation partner does their best, possibly handling at least a quarter of the attack well, but the end user is still affected.

Next year, Sony or Microsoft invests the money for 100Gbps protection. It's costing a lot, draining money from the companies . But hey, at least we're protected right?

a) An attack never happens, the money was wasted (but of course not the customer's problem)

b) An attack happens, it's 400Gbps now instead of 10. Dangit.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Of course you guys will argue about companies that resists ... but forget how big of spectrum they cover right now for the internet , and their scope .

Paypal , visa , mastercard have all been strained or crashed too .

Google was not totally safe , it has been the actual launching pad for DDoS attacks in the past , and has of course been developing since forever they own mitigation or anti DDoS tools .

Some of those tools are not efficient for gaming FIY and could induce lag in some cases btw .

And Amazon has spent years creating and refining an "elastic"infrastruct ure, called EC2, designed to automatically scale to handle giant traffic spikes. The company has so much spare server capacity, in fact, that it runs a sideline business hosting other websites.

Like it or not , the "tiny' gaming operation from MS or Sony can't compare .

Of course you can request a better service for the money paid , that's fair imo . But you'll always find people to argue that they do offer you better servers , services and chatting functions , if not complete security .

PS : i'd love to get rid of mp mandatory subs personally for all of those consoles

@theKhurg

Just checked there, My friend still can't get on to xbl, keeps getting timed out. I'll keep you guys posted on his status though if that changes :)

@ donthate

WRONG. You need to update your info. PSN is currently more secure than XBL apparently.

""The easier game network to take down was Microsoft’s Xbox Live. Sony had apparently upgraded its security recently, which took “a bit of time to work around,” but Microsoft had “almost nothing” in terms of security.""

http://www.businessinsider....

My friend just got on to me there, he's finally connected to XBL, still no PSN love on my end :(

And what would anonymous do? Fucking threaten keyboard warrior them. Most hackers even them are complete pussies when it's time to go off there computer