Posted on August 7, 2019 at 4:08 PM
A Hacker Performing DDoS Attacks Is Threatening Mortal Kombat’s Online League
Mortal Kombat 11 is part of a breathtaking saga of fighting games that a specific gaming community has grown to love over the years. However, the title currently has some potentially dangerous vulnerabilities that may hinder the gameplay experience.
Netplay gamers have suffered several kinds of attacks when using the online modes, most notably of the DDoS variety. A Distributed Denial of Service situation has the potential to considerably affect the flow of the game for the players, as they are collapsed with superfluous requests that may overload their respective systems and prevent the game from functioning correctly.
Unwanted Exposure
The situation has caused unwanted IP address exposure that several players have complained about since it is a dangerous scenario, as some gamers have reported that they have received threats by fellow players that have learned where they live.
Mortal Kombat 11, developed by NetherRealm Studios and published by Warner Bros Interactive, was released on April 23, 2019, for the Stadia, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch platforms.
The digital platform and the gaming industry have paired to provide endless hours of entertainment, especially for those that love fighting games like Mortal Kombat. The title has been especially successful in the online mode thanks to the presence of the Kombat League feature.
The Kombat League
The Kombat League is a playing mode that lets gamers collect rewards by successfully finishing specific challenges on the web platform. However, and as it usually happens in these kinds of games, shady people often try to take advantage of their resources to cheat and trick the system.
Cybercriminals, which are sadly no strangers in the gaming community, are performing DDoS attacks by using third-party resources to overflow the victim’s system and make them surrender and abandon the match because of the constant traffic requests that make gameplay impossible to bear.
The ranking points that are under dispute in the online match, therefore, would go to the cybercriminal, all because of improper use of resources.
Because of a DDoS attack, a competitor may lose Internet access altogether, which is a severe issue in the case of a tournament or even in the Kombat League. Additionally, it is considered illegal and a coward act, because it implies the hacker or the attacker doesn’t have what it takes to win cleanly.
The legal implications of performing a DDoS attack are dead serious: not so long ago, a person accused of performing such an offense to Sony Online Entertainment was ordered to spend two years and three months in prison, in addition to the payment of a fine worth $95,000 as restitution for damages.
The DDoS attack was launched between late 2013 and early 2014. People can be imprisoned up to ten years and receive a fine worth up to $250,000 for such a crime: steep punishment for a grave act.
The Case, Explained
The DDoS attack performed in Mortal Kombat 11 is the one showcased by Youtuber sikander555, in which he shows video of a gamer, named pa3com, starting a DDoS attack in which the former had to leave the match because of unbearable gaming conditions. He didn’t even get to throw any punches or initiate any offensive movements.
That player used nicknames such as pa3com, pa4com, and Son-Goku-DZ to trick the system in his way to Elder God status, which is the highest ranking in the title’s competitive league.
By changing his name, pa3com began to soar up the leaderboards, but it appears that some of his triumphs have been removed from his accolades and he is not an Elder God anymore, which is a positive development for the sake of fairness. The development company is aware of the incident. The firm, by using its official Twitter account @NetherRealm, acknowledged that there were indeed several DDOS attacks perpetrated by a certain player in the Kombat League, and stated that they were going to use all options available to remedy the situation.
