Activision Blizzard hit by yet another DDoS attack

Activision Blizzard was hit with a major DDoS attack early in the morning today, preventing players from connecting to the servers in several of the company’s major games.

As reported by IGN, Blizzard’s support Twitter account first tweeted on Sept. 14 at 2:45am CT that it was investigating a problem with its authentication servers that was preventing players from logging in to several of its games. An hour later, the account confirmed that a DDoS attack was in progress and that players would likely encounter issues with server connections or high latency. In the midst of the attack, players were unable to play a multitude of Activision Blizzard games, including Overwatch, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and Diablo: Immortal.

The DDoS finally ended at 5:56am CT, when Blizzard confirmed that it was over and shared a link to a troubleshooting page for players who were still having login issues. The servers were down for almost three hours and 15 minutes. Little else has been shared about the attack, including any speculation as to who caused it or why.

Activision Blizzard, like many other developers of live service games, has struggled with a variety of hacks and DDoS attempts over the last several years. Late last year, the company was hit with a major attack that took Overwatch and Hearthstone offline for several hours. Blizzard’s Battle.net launcher has also been a DDoS target, preventing players from reaching their friends list or connecting to any of its games.

DDoS attacks involve flooding a server with false traffic requests to prevent users’ real requests from getting through. In the midst of a DDoS, players can’t log in or join games with other players due to the overwhelming amount of traffic a game’s server is experiencing.