It’s a sad fact of the world today that we are sometimes held hostage to the whims of the internet.  Go without it for more than a day and some of us will get sweaty palms and start freaking out about those missed emails and such.  It’s not so bad if you can access the web elsewhere, like at work or a library, but you’re still left with that gut feeling of disconnection when you’re sat at home.

Of course, it’s not so bad for me.  Most of the people I know that would want to get a hold of me can call or text me.  Plus, I have a back-catalogue of about a billion games that need no internet connection to while away the hours or days until my internet problems are resolved.  But there’s a different sort of hostage-taking that’s been rearing its ugly head again over the past few days.  One that denies you access, but on a very specific level.  I speak of the spectre that is the DDoS.

For those of you who may not be aware, a DDoS stands for “Distributed Denial of Service” and is usually categorised as an “attack” on a website, service or server.  On a very basic level, it’s when a group of people on the internet take it upon themselves to have multiple thousands of computers all try to communicate with a target.  Normally, the attackers hire the use of what’s called a “botnet” – a collection of computers that have either been compromised with malware or are otherwise devoted to following the commands of those in control of them.

Using one or more of a series of methods, these computers will use this communication to slow down the target by exhausting its resources in some manner, typically resulting in legitimate connections being slow, laggy or outright rejected.  You can read a more detailed example on Wikipedia if you’re interested, but the practical upshot of this is that whatever the target is, you’re going to have trouble getting to it while a DDoS attack is under way.  For businesses, this can result in significant lost income, depending on how long the DDoS keeps up.

But there are another breed of attackers; those who do it for public attention.  Most of us will remember “LulzSec”, the activists who went on a hacking rampage back in 2011, breaching insecure websites and publishing user details.  In the last few weeks, another group has come to the fore with a similarly anonymous identity and little regard for large companies: Lizard Squad.

These guys have been around for a bit, but I’ve only started noticing them in the last few days.  They’ve claimed responsibility for attacks on Twitch, Blizzard, League of Legends, Destiny and EA.  Most obviously for me, they may have also been behind a recent spate of attacks on Final Fantasy XIV’s servers.  When I was disconnected from the game a couple of nights ago and decided to try and play some Dragon Age: Origins, only to find that I couldn’t log in to Origin, I was rightly pissed off.  Not at Square-Enix or EA, but at these attackers.

I don’t mind a little activism here and there.  While the vast majority of the activities perpetrated by LulzSec were deplorable, one or two were commendable: for example, they advised the NHS here in the UK of a security flaw in their systems so that they could patch it up.  Hell, their sole reason for existing was apparently in a response to Sony’s harsh treatment of the man who broke the PS3’s encryption.  But they took it too far.  No matter what their justification on the matter, when attacks become damaging to the people who use the services, a line has been crossed.

Luckily, Lizard Squad seem to be less malicious, at least this time around.  Their Twitter is full of boasts about the services they have DDoSed and the media being incorrect regarding their arrests.  Despite claiming to have “given up” in September, they don’t appear to be stopping any time soon.  But I have to ask… why?  What’s the point?  Is this just because they can?  Do they have some sort of message to send?

Right now, these attacks are just annoying.  They don’t serve to make anyone better off.  Everything they do is a net negative for everyone involved, including themselves.  They open themselves up to counter-attacks by other hackers who may not share their views on what constitutes “fun”.  They also risk detection by the authorities, who have apparently already tracked down two of their number previously.  So much risk for so little reward.  Do the 140-character responses of a handful of immature fans justify continued action, when it could mean a criminal record and incarceration?  With no underlying cause to fight for, they’ll have almost zero support for their actions, all while pissing off some of the biggest names in the industry, not to mention the police.

I have to imagine that the people doing this are in their late teens, doing things that teenagers do, secure in the knowledge that they are invincible.  This is just the sort of petty crime that we have to deal with in this internet age; the shoplifting or graffiti of the 21st century.  Right now, there’s very little that can be done to stop it.  They’ll either get tired of it or they’ll get caught.  In the mean time, we just have to put up with it, which sucks for everyone involved.

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