Pokemon Go Servers Under Fire?

The popular augmented reality game Pokemon Go that has become an overnight sensation, experienced slowed performance over the weekend. Resulting from a possible hack on its login servers.

This all happening shortly after Pokemon Go rolled out in 26 additional countries. The developers tweeted out this message to angry fans:

Trainers! We have been working to fix the #PokemonGO server issues. Thank you for your patience. We'll post an update soon.

— Pokémon GO (@PokemonGoApp) July 16, 2016

The issues were resolved by the following day with the Pokemon Go team announcing that players can continue their attempt to catch them all.

In the meantime, however, two different hacker groups are claiming responsibility for crippling the servers. OurMine and PoodleCorp are two relatively unknown groups, making this type of attack most likely a bid for name recognition.

Names Have Power

Hacker groups frequently attack high profile targets to build credibility and more importantly infamy. These attacks rarely have any actual monetary benefit, demonstrated by OurMine’s recent hack into twitter’s servers. Attacking high profile users like Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Organizations that provide this type of online gaming experience must be prepared for these types of attacks, realizing that they would be in the crosshairs of a DDoS attacker eventually.

In the world of gaming the motivations for DDoS attacks come in several flavors, notoriety is always at the top of the list but ransom can be a close second.

Bread and Butter

Availability is the foundation of any mobile gaming platform, when that convenience is taken away users get quickly frustrated. Take away the convenience and so much of the experience is suddenly gone, and a game like Pokemon Go that utilizes augmented reality is especially susceptible to server issues.

The tendency for users to leave the platform or complain Loudly when met with unexpected latency and outages occur. While Pokemon Go is now the largest social/gaming platform currently used (surpassing twitter users within the first few days) they cannot afford the loss of any users.