Blizzard has been hit by a DDoS attack overnight by “hacker” group Lizard Squad which has seen servers for games such as World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 and Hearthstone go offline.
The DDoS attack was directed at a Blizzard datacenter which became swamped with requests from the attackers, knocking out all the games which require a Battle.net account to play in both the US and Europe. The attack has therefore led to gamers being unable to play any Blizzard titles for several hours and although Blizzard are reporting that the issues have been resolved, the Battle.net launcher still carries a warning message from the earlier attacks. It may be some time before service is fully restored for every user for all of Blizzard’s major games.
Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter by tweeting “Get ready” just before the servers were hit. They have promised there will be “more to come” although as of yet no further attacks have materialised.
Get ready!
— Lizard Squad (@LizardLands) 14 April 2016
US Blizzard #Offline – WoW #Offline, Diablo 3 #Offline, Starcraft 2 #Offline, Hearthstone #Offline @fbiarelosers @AppleJ4ckxoxo
— Lizard Squad (@LizardLands) 14 April 2016
EU Blizzard #Offline – WoW #Offline, Diablo 3 #Offline, Starcraft 2 #Offline, Hearthstone #Offline @fbiarelosers @AppleJ4ckxoxo
— Lizard Squad (@LizardLands) 14 April 2016
More to come.
— Lizard Squad (@LizardLands) 14 April 2016
Lizard Squad is a name that will be familiar to many gamers after the group became known for taking down both PlayStation Network and Xbox Live during Christmas 2014. Four members of the group were arrested following the attacks.
The group have yet to reveal a motive for targeting Blizzard’s servers.
