League of Legends and Reddit were among a handful of games and sites taken down by a DDoS attack aimed at a Twitch streamer known as PhantomLord.
The attack came from a group known as DERP , which took responsibility for the attacks against League of Legends, EA.com, Battle.net, Blizzard, and some other gaming sites.
A post on Reddit gave details of the attack: “A group called DERP is apparently DDoSing League of Legends NA/EU/OCE servers. They also took down Dota 2, Club Penguin, Battle.net, EA.com. They are taking down whatever game Phantoml0rd is playing (or perhaps, trying to play rolf). Most recent event is Phantoml0rd playing on OCE with stream fans and they took it down. On behalf of the League of Legends situation, it seems like they are directly attacking Internap network, Riot’s service provider.”
There is little information about a reason behind the attack , though PhantomLord indicated that he was targeted simply because he was the top Twitch streamer online at the time. The group DERP followed him though games he was playing, threatening to shut down servers if he lost and challenging him to play against them .
The attack affected more than just League of Legends servers. PhantomLord posted on his Facebook page that a fake hostage call was placed to police, leading to him being briefly detained.
PhantomLord wrote , “Just had an automatic pointed at me, put in hand cuffs, and sat in the back of a cop car as I watched as 6 policemen go through my whole house.” He later posted that the situation had stabilized: “I’m good guys. More updates soon, promise.”
The group DERP even took down Reddit after a post with was information about PhantomLord’s detainment was updated.
After the attack on PhantomLord, the official League of Legends status Twitter account recommended that users flush the DNS in order to fix login issues.