A former playerWorld of Warcraft player has been sentenced to a one-year-long stay in U.S. federal prison after staging denial of service (DDoS) attacks against one of the game’s servers.
A former playerWorld of Warcraft player has been sentenced to a one-year-long stay in U.S. federal prison after staging denial of service (DDoS) attacks against one of the game’s servers.
Calin Mateias, a Romanian citizen who was 30 years old at the time of the attacks, was described as a dedicated raider within his guild. He began DDoS’ing the World of Warcraft server after being dissatisfied with how his guild members chose to distribute loot from raids, and wanted to prevent those he disliked within the guild from playing the game.
“Mateias became involved in disputes with other players for a variety of reasons, including the division of loot and membership in raid teams,” wrote the Department of Justice in a press release on May 7.
Mateias was extradited to Los Angeles in November, 2017, and proceeded to plead guilty to one instance of “intentional damage to a protected computer” in February 2018. Mateias will also be forced to pay roughly $30,000 to compensate Activision Blizzard for the cost of the attacks.
DDoS attacks are not as prominent as they used to be, and game companies are taking more and more steps to limit their effect. But there was a period in time where these attacks occurred frequently within the gaming and esports spaces. In 2013, a single hacker group was able to down the online services of Riot Games’ League of Legends, as well Activision Blizzard’s Battle.net service.
