Current State of Steam

[CSN NewsBot]

Since about 8 pm PST Steam, Valve and anything else hosted on their connection have been experiencing a distributed denial of service attack. Erik Johnson posted this to the HLDS mailing list.

We're currently dealing with a denial of service attack against the Steam network. Sorry for the inconvenient (sic), we'll have it back up and running as soon as possible.

Waldo, one of the Steampowered.com Administrators, posted that Friends will stay down for the entire night until the attack is controlled. Some people are connecting to steam just file while others aren't getting past a "checking for updates" screen. Please just be patient until Steam is fully functional once again.

[FLeK0]

evil.

poor cxg organizers :/

[[+Duracell-]]

Gay that stupid people have to ruin it for everyone

[XTRMNTR]

I tried updating Steam around 9 PM Eastern... at first I was wondering what happened, next thing you know, rumor has it it was a DoS attack. Thanks for being late with this one guys. :\

[Lento]

Sorry if this is offtopic:

Where do I sign up for the hlds mailinglist?



Nevermind, found it in the hlds readme^^

http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo

[Zips]

It's finally back up for me... This after nearly 15 hours of downtime.



I just know people are going to blame Valve for this, but if they couldn't help it because of someone thinking a dDoS attack is funny, they're not to blame.



Hell, vbulletin.com has been going through enough of those very attacks of late as well.



What's with some people?

[^.j()$h.^]

Some people are connecting to steam just file while others aren't getting past a "checking for updates" screen.

Should maybe be:



Some people are connecting to steam just fine while others aren't getting past a "checking for updates" screen.

[x7-Superman!]

if you dont like steam just dont use it.

no need to launch a DoS attack on it



stupid assholes..........

[skytq]

[Spoonman]

Please no "Steam sux" comments. We've heard it already, and those kinds of comments are flames anyway.

[Gameshot911]

COuld someone explain exactly WHAT a DOS attack is, very BASICALLY how it works (im no hacker people =D), and how it is solved by the victim

[oReiLLZ]

Basically, the attacker overloads the network with requests, slowing it down for everyone else.

[Cmoney]

[FAF]

Gameshot911 wrote..

COuld someone explain exactly WHAT a DOS attack is, very BASICALLY how it works (im no hacker people =D), and how it is solved by the victim

Lets say that the Steam verification server has an IP address of 123.456.789.10



This address has one or more PC's at the end of it, and a limited amount of bandwidth in. A hacker sends masses of data, from as many machines as possible (infected by a virus most likely), enough to block the bandwidth and give the PC at that address a serious headache :/



Anyway, the kind of people who initiate this kind of attack are inevitably people who feel that they have very little effect on the world around them; no friends, lame family, a pizza and burgers habit that Elvis would be proud of etc. So with such little self esteem and such a big persecution complex, they take it out on anyone they can. So by doing something that causes several thousand Steam users to notice their actions, they feel that they have had an effect on the world, and can be happy for five minutes. Til they realise that they don't actually have anyone to tell about it, and go back to being miserable again, looking for another target.

[Electronic Punk]

should also add that they do it using other peoples machines!