Hacker Who DDoSed Sony, EA and Steam Gaming Servers Pleads Guilty

Nov 9, 2018

A 23-year-old hacker from Utah pleaded guilty this week to
launching a series of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks against
multiple online services, websites, and online gaming companies
between 2013 and 2014.

According to a Justice Department (DoJ) press release, Austin
Thompson, a.k.a. “DerpTroll,” took down servers of several
major gaming platforms including Electronic Arts’ Origin service,
the Sony PlayStation
network, and Valve Software’s Steam, between December 2013 and
January 2014, by flooding them with enough internet traffic.
^[1]

Thompson then typically used the Twitter account the @DerpTrolling
handle to announce his attacks, subsequently posting screenshots or
other photos of the server being unavailable after launching DDoS
attacks.

The attacks usually took down game servers and related computers
of the victim companies for at least a few hours at a time, causing
at least $95,000 in damages to the gaming companies around the
world.

“Denial-of-service attacks cost businesses millions of dollars
annually,” said U.S. Attorney Adam Braverman while announcing ^[2]
the plea. “We are committed to finding and prosecuting those who
disrupt businesses, often for nothing more than ego.”

Thompson pleaded guilty in federal court in San Diego on Thursday
and was charged with causing damages to a protected computer, which
carries a maximum penalty of 10 years prison, a fine of $250,000,
as well as three years supervised release.
Active since 2011, the DerpTrolling hacking group is believed to be
operated by Thompson, who write malware used to launch the DDoS
attacks against online services around the world.

However, the hacking group made headlines in late 2013 and early
2014 after disrupting online gaming servers owned by Sony, Riot
Games, Microsoft, Nintendo, Valve, and Electronic Arts.

Thompson’s sentencing is scheduled for March 1, 2019, before
United States District Judge Jeffrey Miller.

It wasn’t just DerpTrolling that created chaos in 2014. The
infamous Lizard Squad hacking group also made headlines in 2014 by
launching DDoS attacks against Microsoft Xbox
Live ^[3] and Sony PlayStation
Network ^[4] and knocking them
offline during the Christmas holidays.

Several teenagers last year from around the world were charged with
participating ^[5]
in the Lizard Squad 2014 DDoS attacks.

References

^{^}
PlayStation network
(thehackernews.com)
^{^}
announcing
(www.justice.gov)
^{^}
Microsoft Xbox Live
(thehackernews.com)
^{^}
PlayStation Network
(thehackernews.com)
^{^}
charged with participating
(thehackernews.com)

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OWASP TOP !0

Injection. Injection flaws, such as SQL, NoSQL, OS, and LDAP injection, occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command or query. The attacker’s hostile data can trick the interpreter into executing unintended commands or accessing data without proper authorization. Broken Authentication. Application functions related to authentication and session management are often implemented incorrectly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users’ identities temporarily or permanently. Sensitive Data Exposure. Many web applications and APIs do not properly protect sensitive data, such as financial, healthcare, and PII. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data may be compromised without extra protection, such as encryption at rest or in transit, and requires special precautions when exchanged with the browser. XML External Entities (XXE). Many older or poorly configured XML processors evaluate external entity references within XML documents. External entities can be used to disclose internal files using the file URI handler, internal file shares, internal port scanning, remote code execution, and denial of service attacks. Broken Access Control. Restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do are often not properly enforced. Attackers can exploit these flaws to access unauthorized functionality and/or data, such as access other users’ accounts, view sensitive files, modify other users’ data, change access rights, etc. Security Misconfiguration. Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a result of insecure default configurations, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information. Not only must all operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications be securely configured, but they must be patched/upgraded in a timely fashion. Cross-Site Scripting XSS. XSS flaws occur whenever an application includes untrusted data in a new web page without proper validation or escaping, or updates an existing web page with user-supplied data using a browser API that can create HTML or JavaScript. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the victim’s browser which can hijack user sessions, deface web sites, or redirect the user to malicious sites. Insecure Deserialization. Insecure deserialization often leads to remote code execution. Even if deserialization flaws do not result in remote code execution, they can be used to perform attacks, including replay attacks, injection attacks, and privilege escalation attacks. Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities. Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules, run with the same privileges as the application. If a vulnerable component is exploited, such an attack can facilitate serious data loss or server takeover. Applications and APIs using components with known vulnerabilities may undermine application defenses and enable various attacks and impacts. Insufficient Logging & Monitoring. Insufficient logging and monitoring, coupled with missing or ineffective integration with incident response, allows attackers to further attack systems, maintain persistence, pivot to more systems, and tamper, extract, or destroy data. Most breach studies show time to detect a breach is over 200 days, typically detected by external parties rather than internal processes or monitoring.

Hacker Who DDoSed Sony, EA and Steam Gaming Servers Pleads Guilty

References

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