Respawn investigating fresh wave of DDoS attacks on Titanfall games

The Titanfall games seem to be experiencing problems with DDoS attacks - again - and Respawn has announced it's investigating the latest wave.

Over the past few days players have taken to social media to report more DDoS attacks on both Titanfall and Titanfall 2, resulting in both regular players and content creators being booted from servers (or unable to connect at all). This time the attacks seem particularly severe, as Titanfall 2 streamers have said they are being "blacklisted" by the hacker so that their games are automatically hit when they join, making their main accounts unusable.

As explained in a video by Titanfall 2 streamer Astraeus, there's a suggestion this isn't a regular DDoS attack where a hacker overloads a server with requests, but that the perpetrator has found a way to manipulate the game's code and disconnect players using this method. Nobody seems sure how the hacker is doing it, but the end result is that legitimate players are being disconnected from servers.

In order to combat the DDoS attacks, a modder called Tristan (or "Taskinoz") created a Streamer Mode for Titanfall 2 to hide player names and prevent stream sniping and targeted DDoS attacks against streamers. A beta was released on Tristan's Patreon back in April, and the mod has been made free for everyone in light of the fresh wave of attacks. Astraeus said the hacker has now found a way around this, however, and has somehow been able to find streamer player IDs to add them to the blacklist.

This is the current state of #Titanfall2. Amongst me @pandasaurrrr1 @GazeOnTwitch @sky2669 @MendozaStreams are blacklisted by the ddoser. I can't even play off stream with my normal or an alt account because we're being attacked 24/7. @Respawn @Titanfallgame #Titanfall

— AstraeusTF (@AstraeusTF) May 19, 2021

This isn't the first time the Titanfall games have suffered from DDoS attacks, of course: the original Titanfall has experienced multiplayer issues on PC for several years, and it was only last month that Respawn publicly announced it would properly address the problems. The attacks have often been attributed to a mysterious and mythical figure called "Jeanue". Some believe Jeanue is behind the latest wave, but exactly who is carrying out the attacks remains unclear.

In any case, it seems Respawn is investigating the fresh round of attacks, and hopefully the developer will find a solution. It may be a while until the problem is properly fixed, however, as community coordinator Jason Garza has said "this one will take time".

I know it's been hard for our TF2 community and I'm sorry. But we are working on a solution, but this one will take time.

— Garza (@r3c0n54) May 20, 2021

Apex Legends has similarly experienced problems with DDoS attacks in its Ranked mode, where cheaters deliberately crashed legitimate players' games in order to farm easy kills and boost themselves up the ranks. Respawn has indicated it is exploring "every avenue" to remove cheaters, legal action being one of them. Hopefully that will include whoever's behind the ongoing DDoS attacks on the Titanfall games.

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