Online gamers such as these ones often stream their play in real time. Twitch Recent denial-of-service attacks taking down League of Legends and other popular gaming services are doing more than just wielding a never-before-seen technique to vastly amplify the amount of junk traffic directed at targets. In at least some cases, their devastating effects can deprive celebrity game players of huge amounts of money. As Ars reported last week, the attacks are abusing the Internet’s Network Time Protocol (NTP), which is used to synchronize computers to within a few milliseconds of Coordinated Universal Time . A command of just 234 bytes is enough to cause some NTP servers to return a list of up to 600 machines that have previously used its time-syncing service. The dynamic creates an ideal condition for DoS attacks. Attackers send a modest-sized request to NTP servers and manipulate the commands to make them appear as if they came from one of the targeted gaming services. The NTP servers, which may be located in dozens or even hundreds of locations all over the world, in turn send the targets responses that could be tens or hundreds of times bigger than the spoofed request. The technique floods gaming servers with as much as 100Gbps, all but guaranteeing that they’ll be taken down unless operators take specific precautions ahead of time. Among the targets of this new type of attack are game servers used by celebrity players who broadcast live video streams of their gaming prowess that are viewed as many as 50,000 times. In some cases, the massive audiences translate into tens of thousands of dollars per month, as ads are displayed beside video feeds of the players blowing away opponents in Dota 2 and other games. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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New DoS attacks taking down game sites deliver crippling 100Gbps floods
Today, the US Department of Energy announced an agreement with a diverse group of NGOs that would see significant improvements to a poorly recognized energy sink: the set-top box that receives and controls TV programming. The agreement, while voluntary, commits service providers to using more efficient hardware through to 2017. Although the individual savings will be small, the cumulative impact is massive: a billion dollars in electricity saved by consumers and five million fewer metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. The agreement, brokered by the EPA, brings together a diverse coalition of groups. On the environmental side, we have the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Appliance Standards Awareness Project. Representing industry are the Consumer Electronics Association and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, which gets its funding from a variety of sources (including utilities), was also at the party. The standards they’ve developed will cover all existing delivery methods: telecom, cable, and satellite. It won’t be written into legislation, but an independent third party will verify that hardware meets the agreement’s specifications each year between now and 2017. The exact details of the energy-saving changes aren’t specified in the announcement , but the electronics in the devices can get quite hot, and statements made by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) suggest that they often remain active even when the television is off. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments 
