On Saturday, around 2:00 PM, Pokemon GO 's servers experienced an extended downtime that affected all of the game's infrastructure, all due to a DDoS attack carried out by the relatively new hacker group PoodleCorp.
As with most DDoS attacks against gaming targets, the hackers weren't really focused on crashing servers or blackmailing the company, they were more interested in the reactions of annoyed players, which was something we quickly saw on Reddit and Twitter.
Just like the Lizard Squad and Phantom Squad Christmas attacks on Xbox and PSN networks in recent years, the hackers were actually focused on ruining players' fun.
The servers were back up a few hours later. The validity of the attack was questioned a few hours later when Nintendo announced that the game was available in 26 more countries.
The new countries that have been swept up in the Pokemon GO craze are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, and Switzerland.
It’s possible that PoodleCorp did this attack just to get their name out there.
Previously, this newly formed six-member group had defaced several YouTube channels and carried out DDoS attacks on StreamMe, Battle.NET, and League of Legends servers. The group, according to their website, has been active since June 22.
