We've been no strangers to bog-standard DoS attacks and thousands-strong botnet DDoS attacks over the past 12 years. Any given week we'll be DoS'd, just most of the time you won't notice it because systems are in place to prevent such attacks. Every once in a while, though, someone with a rather large botnet or someone using more sophisticated techniques comes along that either requires us to adapt or just to weather it out. All I know is, it's been 12 years, we've survived countless DDoS attacks, and the sites aren't going anywhere.

Going hand-in-hand with that is the fact school holidays have begun which means kids have more time to waste. I used to enjoy playing football, cricket, skating and trampolining in my summer holidays but I guess some kids like to run bot nets instead. The why isn't really important (and I have no idea as to the why). All I know is that it's happening right now on the servers and we're doing what we can to alleviate the problem as best we can.

There's not much you can do on your end to fix this exact problem. There is, however, something you can do to help the general DDoS plague and that's to not be one of the millions of dolts out there browsing the internet without an anti-virus and firewall running as a bare minimum. Botnets form because "hackers" have gained access to insecure systems. The more insecure systems they control, the more powerful their botnet becomes. Typically gamers are more clued in than most in this regard, but still, I know some of you will be reading this without any anti-virus installed on your PC and to you I'll simply say this; you are a part of the problem. You're not the problem, but you're a part of it in the same way you're a part of the problem during an epidemic if you sneeze without covering your mouth with your hand or don't wash your hands after going to the toilet. You're in that group of people. You aren't the virus but you help to spread it through your lack of action. So get on to fixing it if you haven't already, or at least please don't complain to me about the sites being down if you're in that group.

A blunt news post, I know, but in all truth I treat DDoS attacks with utter emotional disregard. Not that we're not trying our hardest to solve the issue, but frankly, there's no point getting upset about it. Some idiot is DDoS'ing us and cowering behind the internet's anonymity, we've had no contact from said individual(s), it'll end when it ends or when we find a way to block it and there's no point getting upset about it.