Were you unable to catch pocket monsters in Pokemon GO over the weekend? That wasn’t a local issue as Niantic Labs’ servers have experienced another crash yesterday. And while the American developer has recently claimed it has identified the issues with the servers,it seems like the public has done so, as well. Namely, not one but two hacking groups have claimed responsibility for this weekend’s issues with Pokemon GO. The more prominent and credible of the two is OurMine which revealed it had performed several hours long distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the game’s servers, rendering them unusable for millions of people all around the globe. In a short statement on its website, OurMine stated it will not stop attacking Pokemon GO’s servers until developers contact the hacking collective so that its members can “teach them how to protect it.”
Sources report that OurMine is a three-person collective which claims it’s promoting online security by hacking social network profiles of popular individuals from the tech and showbiz industry. While that may sound like a noble cause, OurMine isn’t promoting security for free as it allegedly charges up to $5,000 for its consulting services. As for the attack itself, the DDoS that OurMine claims it has performed over the weekend is basically a flooding attack which bombards servers with fake client requests, i.e. traffic in order to render them unresponsive to actual users. Other than the security-promoting hacking collective, another group called PoodleCorp has also claimed responsibility for Pokemon Go’s latest server troubles.
Hackers or no, it’s no secret that Niantic Labs has trouble keeping its servers operational even when no one’s attacking them. Given how Pokemon GO quickly became the most popular game ever in the US and considering the fact that it’s quickly rolling out worldwide, it’s no wonder its servers are under a heavy load and are constantly experiencing issues. More specifically, after launching in the US, Australia, and New Zealand earlier this month, Pokemon GO was released in 26 more countries just in the last few days. Regardless of that, it hopefully won’t be long before things are smoothed out and everyone can start enjoying the experience of catching Pokemon wherever and whenever.