Steam servers DDoSed and taken down by Phantom Squad hacker group, gamers left in lurch during busy Christmas weekend
If you are a gamer, we told you earlier to watch out for this group of hackers who have promised havoc during the oncoming Christmas holidays. Right now they are showing a trailer of what they can achieve. Yes, we are talking about Phantom Squad who have promised to bring down Steam, Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox down during the week starting today.
And they seemed to have started with Steam today.
https://twitter.com/mikko/status/812347791414595584
The DDoS attack mounted by PhantomNations on Steam servers is so severe that almost all regional gaming servers are down and the report now shows as 0.00 % online. It is worthwhile to remember that Steam operates about 17 regional servers including  3 for US, 4 for Europe and Australia, India, Brazil, Japan etc.  All Steam activities including the Steam community and the Steam Store are down so you cannot buy Steam games as Christmas gifts for your near and dear ones.
Phantom Squad seems to be playing with thousands of Steam gamers as of now as is explained with this tweet:
https://twitter.com/PhantomNations/status/812339904357289986
The blame for the Steam outage lies solely on Steam developers as the Phantom Squad had warned of such attacks during the busy Christmas season. Even now, Microsoft and Sony should fix their DDoS countermeasures as their Xbox Network and PlayStation Network are likely to be the next targets for Phantom Squad.
DDoSing the gaming servers during the busy Christmas holidays is not new. Lizard Squad did it in 2014 and virtually brought Xbox Network and PlayStation Network to a standstill for a whole week. Last year, PSN and Xbox escaped the ire of hackers but Steam was down for nearly 3 days. This year, Phantom Squad had given an early warning about their intent and even now they are taunting the Steam developers.
https://twitter.com/PhantomNations/status/812350839977295873
Right now most tech websites are linking the Steam outage to the rush due to Steam’s Winter Sale which went live yesterday but we can confirm that this is a mega-DDoS attack on Steam servers.
This is a developing story and we will get you full info about the Phantom Squad’s DDoS attack on Steam servers as it is happening. Sadly for Steam gamers, the attacks on the Steam servers seems to be increasing with passing time and it doesn’t look like they will be having a good Christmas!
Update: Most of the Steam services are back up now
“we can confirm that this is a mega-DDoS”
Proof please.
Your journalistic integrity is at stake here.
“blame for the Steam outage lies solely on Steam developers”? Are you dense? Do you know how a DDOS attack works? Blame lies solely on those doing the DDOS.
Ooh DDoS so L33t!!!
Do something more constructive like HACK ISIS websites or bank account.
Stopping John and Jane Doe from playing Overwatch is bush league.
But hey what do I know, you are all to edgy for me.
Hackers broke into the DNC, Hillary’s boring emails, and damaged our election but not one of them bothered to expose Donald Trump, or ANY of the Wallstreet thugs who hold this country hostage. I say hackers can seriously f off. I will help to put them in jail as long as I live- they are worthless.
It’s working fine for me. No outages at all.
“The blame for the Steam outage lies solely on Steam developers as the Phantom Squad had warned of such attacks during the busy Christmas season. ”
You lost me right there. Victim blaming? Stay classy random internet blog.
Keep it up, I would like to say about this burglary was awesome I liked hope Gabin dies from this fat bastard. And as for you, you group Phantom Squad you for DDoS all servers in general you are the best of the best
Isn’t this a post-fact era? #expostfacto
International crisis averted.
What the media can’t seem to get their head around, including Woodruff, is that Trump won because he is giving voice to what middle Americans have known for a long time.
What you can’t seem to get your head around is that Trump actually lost the popular vote, therefore MORE people wanted him for president by over 2.8 MILLION! So, no he did not give middle Americans a voice, he is a higher American and doesn’t care about you at all.
Do any of you know hiw a ddos attack is done. You think its easy for a server cluster to just flick on a ddos begone switch. Fucking mooks. Blocking random ip connections blocks its users…
I just give up on reading null comments for 2017 & prey people learn a little more than nothing.
And you tech reporters, they are right, stop giving script kiddies bragging rights