Community Server Under Attack by DDOS from China

[DavlosREE]

Hi EA Community Team,

With people riding the Battlefield 2042 hype train and Amazon Prime giving BF4 away, I opened a 64-slot server in Singapore out of my pocket and within a few days, am under constant DDOS attacks.

My server provider, Fragnet, has indicated your chosen backend Blaze is vulnerable to DDOS attacks and as a result, their capability of mitigating DDOS attacks is limited.

What's happening now is there are malicious parties in China who rent servers in regions they do not live in, DDOS neighboring servers and lure players into their own server which is left standing. 

For example, this is the server they operate now: https://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/servers/show/pc/fcc8c257-bf87-4772-9223-634395f9904a/KFC-ALL-W...

If you join their QQ group 785055467, the group admins will pressure members into paying substantial amounts of money in order to enter their server whitelist. This is no different from gangsters who set competitors' venues on fire and making money out of their illegal actions.

Please do something about this. Kicking the can down the road down to the server providers hasn't worked since 2014, and will not work again.

[ElliotLH]

@DavlosREE Sorry to hear about this, it must be incredibly unpleasant for you, and spoils your enjoyment.

However, you would need to raise this issue with the company you have rented the server from, as it's not provided by EA.

[DavlosREE]

Hi Elliot,

That isn't true at all. The core issue pinpointed by the server provider was on the Blaze backend which EA uses to connect to Battlelog, and it's the weak link which makes it easy for DDOSers to get their way.

Please escalate this to management because it's enabling criminals to swindle new BF4 players of their money.

[ElliotLH]

@DavlosREE I checked with a Community Manager before replying, and that was the response given. Sorry that I can do nothing further to help you.

[CyberDyme]

Many of our BF4 servers are right now under a DDOS attack!

Result is that servers are either fully crashing, stuck like in a frozen state or instantly just dumping a large segment of all players active on the server, so going instant from like a full 64 player game and then bang, only 5-8 players remain in the active game round.

And in worst case, the server just remains in a chronic frozen state and then no longer reachable, neither by owner/admins or players.

We absolutely need EA/DICE professionals to look into getting this stopped ASAP!

The online EA Support group are not competent to handle our tickets that we raise regarding this, as the root cause is not getting fixed and that support staff do not have the technical insights required or the access to get to the server end of things fixed for us here.

Relevant EA folks can contact me for my own server name/details (or look it up in your own internal registry for CyberDyme rented BF servers on the PlayStation platform), but here is a list just of the most recent BF4 Server Crash events on one of our servers:

Server Crashes on Friday 10 February 2023:

Crash 20:28 CET

Crash 20:50 CET

Crash 21:10 CET

Crash 21:33 CET

Crash 21:57 CET 

Crash 22:32 CET

I trust you understand that this is not an acceptable state or customer experience.

[CyberDyme]

Players active on the server when this sudden DDOS Attack/Crash happens will typically experience that all gameplay on the screen gets into a frozen state and nothing moves.  If they go to the Options screen to check for the performance metrics, then this is what they typically see:

So the network connection is perfectly fine for them and working as supposed to locally and to their internet ISP.   But the BF4 server itself has stopped responding to any of the connected BF4 players/the connected clients.   As illustarted by the screenshot here above.    Suddenly showing a latency to the server of 50+ seconds!   And this is the case for ALL the connected players.

Typically the server then ends up fully crashing and everybody are kicked off the server and server is empty and all can join a few seconds later again.   Or near all players are dumped by the server, but maybe 4-7 players are left still on it, and they then can suddenly start moving again and all a-pear back to ‘normal’.

And this then goes fine until again next DDOS attack is being placed onto the server hosting party here for EA/DICE.

And the BF4 game servers on that IP segment is then again all coming crashing down or going into the permanent frozen state.

EA really needs to step up and do something seriously about this!

Its not something new.   And most of us renting servers have all experienced this from time to time.

But it has become more and more frequent and to the state now absolutely not acceptable anymore in any way or form.

[CyberDyme]

Are Electronic Arts serious about rectifying servers being attacked by hackers, and pursuing them to the extend of what the law permits?

So far, it appears as nothing is being done from EA's side.

Servers still being DDOS attacked 24/7.

Crashes confirmed so far:

Server Crashes Confirmed on Friday 10 February 2023:

Crash 20:28 CET

Crash 20:50 CET

Crash 21:10 CET

Crash 21:33 CET

Crash 21:57 CET 

Crash 22:32 CET

Crash 22:57 CET 

Server Crashes Confirmed on Saturday 11 February 2023:

Crash 02:07 CET

Crash 10:33 CET

Crash 13:30 CET

Server Crashes Confirmed on Sunday 12 February 2023:

Crash 22:12 CET

Crash 22:55 CET

And yes, these are confirmed to be crashes caused by deliberate DDOS attacks onto the server.

Physical and factual threats have been forwarded to the server admin team.

Even with an empty server, the server performance tacos are permanent showing in red, top right.

Waiting for EA to respond and take action please...!

[YUMSKIS_27]

@CyberDyme this thing just happen to me on a infantry server. Everyone on the server left, almost nobody was spawning. Then suddenly my own internet went down. Had to even reset my router. When i checked, the server was empty. I dont even care to play anymore if my whole internet crashes from this bs.

[kontract705880]

maybe EA wants us all to move to 2042

[CyberDyme]

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@YUMSKIS_27 wrote:
@CyberDymethis thing just happen to me on a infantry server. Everyone on the server left, almost nobody was spawning. Then suddenly my own internet went down. Had to even reset my router. When i checked, the server was empty. I dont even care to play anymore if my whole internet crashes from this bs.

---

Indeed @YUMSKIS_27 ,

It is very disturbing and very frequent for the time being!

Though I can tell you that it does not take down your own local internet.  It doesnt.

Though the message that we get from the EA game itself appear to maybe hint at that, it is matter of fact not correct! 

It is all happening on the EA BF game server itself.  (confirmed by EA's partner in Europe, who hosts their BF4 servers).  It is getting overwhelmed by the DDOS attack load and then at a certain point breaks down in the sense it suddenly starts to drop the connection to all connected players, as it cannot keep up with maintaining the synch required within given time limits on the network.

Unfortunately the now old BF4 client application does not know well how to handle that error situation, so typically it will also leave your own client software in an error state, for which there is no 'run time error handling exit controls'. 

So while you may actually get back to the main menu in the game application, if you ask it to join the server again, then it will simply state "Joining server...".  But it will matter of fact never do so, as its still stuck in your old error state in your network to the server end.

Only way out of that for all the affected players is for them all to close down the app and restart the BF4 app again.

The real root cause and where this has to be fixed is of course on EA's side!

And then work together with their BF4 server hosting partners.

EA should get serious about chasing down these DDOS attackers and then also perma-ban the EA player accounts associated with that activity!