The qualifying games for the Dota 2 G-1 league, a Chinese competition with a record-breaking prize pool, have been repeatedly disrupted by Distributed Denial of Service attacks, rendering players unable to connect to the game. The culprit is as of yet unknown, although a 4Chan post from the supposed attacker has boasted of directing the attacks to manipulate a bet of $20,000 on a match.
Multiple games have been affected, with admins forced to postpone games or declare winners before the games have been completed.
The attacks began on yesterday, during the match between Evil Geniuses and Absolute Legends. EG’s players disconnected from the game and were unable to reconnect. Dumbfounded by the situation at hand, the admins had no choice but to postpone the game after a painfully long pause. Absolute Legends were given a default win due to their current advantage at the time of the attack.
The second match of the day was between Mousesports and Virtus.Pro. VP took the first game with ease, but during the second game players NS and Airman came under attack. To allow the match continue, VP substituted two stand-ins.
Today, Kaipi played their second game against Team Empire shorthanded when Kaipi player “pieliedie” dropped from the game and wasn’t able to return. Even though Kaipi played on 4 vs 5, they managed to win the match, with Kaipi’s carry EternaLEnVy playing the game of his life as Ursa.
Team Dignitas and QPAD Red Pandas experienced the shortest game of the day due to more attacks. Team Dignitas player Sneyking disconnected, followed by captain Frogged. Streamer Ayesee, who was casting the game also came under fire, resulting in his stream temporarily being disabled. The admins decided to postpone the game until further notice.
It’s been speculated that the attacks are linked to a known vulnerability in Skype, that allows twats hackers to determine a user’s IP address, then target widely (and cheaply) available botnets at their victim.
Although unconfirmed, a user on 4Chan has claimed responsibility for the DDOS attacks, claiming they were attempting to alter match results to manipulate the betting market. Betting providers like DotaLounge and Pinnaclesports declare that if any foul play is detected, any bets will be forfeited. However, this doesn’t prevent gamblers attempting to nullify games if their team isn’t clearly winning.
We will have more on this as news unfolds, and will update the article appropriately.