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DOSarrest restores Virgin Gaming's international gaming community
Technology Category
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Network Security
Applicable Industries
- Telecommunications
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Cybersecurity
Services
- Cybersecurity Services
The Challenge
On June 11, 2012, Virgin Gaming's servers were targeted by a sophisticated distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. This attack was unlike any they had seen before as it was aimed directly at TCP port 80 and involved over a million unique IP addresses. The attack was so large that it overwhelmed Virgin Gaming's ISP's network, knocking virgingaming.com offline almost immediately. Seven hours into the attack, the traffic reached a volume of 3 Gbps on the ISP's network, and the ISP took the drastic and costly measure of completely blocking the HTTP and HTTPS ports (ports 80 and 443), shutting out end users completely.
About The Customer
Virgin Gaming is a platform where console game enthusiasts can set up tournaments and leagues, challenge each other in ladders, and play for cash, points and prizes. Introduced through a partnership with WorldGaming.com, Virgin Gaming provides the secure backend required to facilitate payment and automatically validate results while nourishing a community of gamers of all skill levels from around the world. The platform is used by a large number of users globally, making it a target for cyber attacks.
The Solution
Ten hours into the attack, Virgin Gaming decided to find a DDoS protection or proxying service. After a couple of hours of research, speaking to colleagues, and soliciting quotes from several providers, the group decided to work with DOSarrest. DOSarrest promised that within minutes of payment, the proxying service would be engaged. By 11:35am, the Virgin Gaming DNS was updated to point all traffic to DOSarrest's proxying servers, instantly relieving the ISP of the massive traffic of the attack and allowing them to unblock the ports that took the website offline. From that moment onward, Virgin Gaming's traffic doesn't touch the Virgin Gaming servers until it first passes through DOSarrest's scrubbing nodes. DOSarrest analyzes every bit of traffic and discards what is not legitimate, sending only the clean and legitimate traffic through to Virgin Gaming's servers.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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