If you were perturbed all weekend due to Pokemon Go server downtime, then you should know that Niantic Labs and its expansion plan isn’t to blame. The hacker group — OneMine — which has recently gained immense notoriety due to the insistent social media account hacks of celebrities and tech founders, has struck again!
This time, however, OneMine has come down hard on the latest and greatest obsession of the entire populous — Pokemon Go. The hacker group has claimed credit for the Go server exploit and says that it has spent several hours hitting the login servers with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, making it impossible for everyone to login into the game.
For those unaware — to add to your knowledge — lets talk about what a DDoS attack means and how does it affect the servers. A DDoS attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming(or flooding) it with traffic from multiple sources, making it a challenge for real users to login and access important information.
Pokémon Go is having issues since 6:21 PM EDT. https://t.co/5PiJAeTEAD RT if it’s down for you as well #pokemongodown
— DownDetector (@downdetector) July 16, 2016
In a rush to test out the security of another application(previously, users), the company had put forth their intentions 4-5 hours before starting the attack. They also said that they will only stop the attack once a Pokemon Go representative contacts them for the same. The hacker group in a recent blogpost said that,
no one will be able to play this game till Pokemon Go contact us on our website to teach them how to protect it!
But, OneMine group isn’t the only one trying to gain access to the servers of the popular game. A group called ‘Poodle Corp‘ has also claimed to have attacked Pokemon Go servers and caused downtime for a large part of the populous. It also adds that it was currently testing the security and has set sight on a bigger attack on the game’s servers on ‘1st August‘.
can anyone verify for us if pokemongo is online or offline, it looks offline to us pic.twitter.com/KxcuzZNbqx
— XO (@xotehpoodle) July 16, 2016
OneMine group has recently been trying to act as the mesiah of security, taking over any and all important online accounts of celebrities and then offering its services as a security firm for a hefty sum of money. It has also mentioned that OneMine is a three person operation, who are now trying to pivot their work into that of a cyber-security firm.
In the past one month, the hacker group has gained access mostly twitter accounts of high-profile celebrities including Katy Perry, Drake and tech execs including, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Travis Kalanick, and more.
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