Tech

Who Froze The 'Pokemon Go' Servers, Hackers Or Users?

Jahra
First Posted: Jul 18, 2016 05:21 AM EDT

Just as Pokemon Go was released in 26 countries on Friday, users suddenly found themselves unable to play the game. The game's servers were reportedly taken down due to flooding servers that hackers claimed to have caused.

The hackers, called PoodleCorp, claimed responsibility for the server crash using a distributed denial of service attack. The attack is done by flooding the servers with requests until it is too overwhelmed to function.

The self-proclaimed leader of the hacker group also targeted high profile YouTube sensations like Pewdiepie as reported by Gearnuke. This time, when they attacked Pokemon Go, users across the U.S. and Europe were unable to play, causing netizens to tweet their outrage.

As of the moment, the claim has not yet been verified. It must be noted, however that the game has a history of failing.

it is worth noting that the game has been known to crash since its official launch early in July. The high volume of users suddenly getting into the game was the primary reason for the crash.

As Pokemon Go's servers open in new countries, it is possible that the volume of users who downloaded the game into their phones could have also weighed heavily on the servers causing them to fail, even without the group's DDOS attack.

Slowly, servers are getting back on track as some players have been reporting that they are able to log in to their accounts, but it still has a way to go as other players still experience a lag in the system. Others are experiencing fluctuations as more servers slowly recover.

As Niantic struggles to bring the servers back up, the company, and its partner, the Pokemon Company, have yet to make a final claim on what caused the crash in their servers. Users are being asked to be patient as they fix the servers so trainers can "catch 'em all."

See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone

More on SCIENCEwr