Denied of Service or Virtual Problem Nomore... Hmmm?

~or "You Gonna DO Something About This, or what?"

CCP and EVE Online was attacked on Monday Jan 27th with a massive DDoS, a Distributed Denial of Service attack. This swamped the servers and blocked a huge number of players from accessing the EVE Server named "Tranquility", in actuality a server farm that our amazing Single Shard MMORPG runs on.

It caused a shit storm and it has most likely also caused some players to stop playing, and possibly to even un-sub. There was quite a bit of chatter about that in the forums and whatnot.

This is, most likely, exactly what the attackers wanted.

Think about that as you vent and shitpost and create your Fifth Support Ticket to CCP to return your stuff and give us ALL free Omega Days to pay US back for our lost time... what about their potential lost income? You see whether you like it or agree or not, this is a partnership, without CCP we wouldn't even have EVE Online... without us, the paying customers, we also wouldn't have EVE Online as CCP would not continue to exist. In the end if enough of us walk out inna huff, rage quit or leave for any reason, if we pull a Seinfeld on CCP, "we" lose EVE.

As as much as sometimes there is reason to yell, "CPP Godsdammit This!" or CCP Fukkin That!" I really love this game and I don't wanna lose it, and yes, I mean that even in a world where DDoS's happen. Yes, even if I must wait a while, even a long while, so they can fight off an attack on their livelihood... Yes, even then.

You see the thing for me is CCP is not to blame for the DDoS. I don't work there but I do, as so many in EVE do, work in IT... I have for over 25 years and any attack, viral, DoS or a DDoS attack is not the fault of the entity being attacked. As a matter of simple fact... CCP was being virtually mugged. Beaten and kicked to the ground by a faceless gang (the people who initiated/ran the attack) and that bothers me... but what got me really pissed was the number of the EVE players trolling, shiposting and blaming CCP in the DDoS Megathread and forums and elsewhere for not "doing" something about it.

Really? Ever been mugged? bullied? beat up in a school yard? Ever had your business, your livelihood and the livelihood of many other people threatened and attacked? I wonder how you'd act then... 

The attitude above is one of, "If it/they are not doing what WE want, let's set fire to it/them, that'll fix it!" IE "Massive wave of unsubs" = "CCP files bankruptcy and shuts down". How incredibly juvenile... 

Here is what a DDoS looks like, brought to you by Chribba's EVE Offline, The Very Finest in Graphporn. This shows us from DT (DownTime) Tuesday the 21st through DT Sun the 26th... a very "Normal" in all respects rolling PCU graph...

Then... Monday the 27th and you can SEE when the DDoS started... those ragged sudden drops in PCU... and it is clear how it progressed over the next 8 days until late on Feb 3rd. Friday the 31st was the worst... and I, like so many, couldn't get in at all that day, until I installed VPN that is. (click th' pic to embiggen!)

So, for me personally, how did it go? Well, on Fri 31st I read a comment in the Megathread about a guy who installed a free VPN client, connected to a server in Europe, and he was back up and playing OK. So of course, I tried it. 

I didn't winge and moan about CCP, I was reading, browsing, blogging following the metagame and I had heard a suggestion that might actually DO something about it? Oh, hell yea! And yup, it worked. He had said he had decided to use ProtonVPN, so I researched it and it was solid looking and solid sounding to me. Reviews were acceptable and seemed real world and it was created by a company I knew of even if I had not used their service. It offered an actually "free" single logon with a limited but acceptable list of servers to connect to.

I installed, connected to one of the Swedish servers and logged into EVE like nothing was going on. No credit card was ever asked for, you need to create an account of course, but then, clickety, done, thank you. 

In the 9 days since I started using VPN, I have had 2 disconnects and 4 laggy periods, one of those was quite bad and happened as the drawn out start of a disconnect... But as bad as that sounds that's all the trouble I've had since the 31st. as I understand it on the 4th CCP finally was able to mitigate the incoming dataflood or it ended or a bit of both or whatever and CCP has things patched or bounced or restored... whatever was needed.

About that I don't really know... my son and I were in Amarr and parts near and farish getting our hole fleets pulled outta mothballs, dusted off, refurbed or  bought, built & fitted, painted and ~"The Naming"~, important that... the Naming of Names. To me at least. I take some small pride in what I think are interesting names for my ships... but that's just me.

Fly safe my friends...

=/|)=