Cyber Incident Victim: InnerSloth
Date:
Oct 2020
Location:
United States of America
Summary
The InnerSloth-developed game Among Us experienced sustained malicious attacks disrupting gameplay through bot-generated spam promoting a YouTube channel and Discord server under the name "Eris Loris," which flooded servers with ads and political messages, rendering matches unplayable. The small development team urgently deployed server updates to identify and remove malicious actors, acknowledging legitimate players might also be affected, while canceling plans for a sequel to focus on stabilizing the original game's outdated infrastructure amid explosive growth. These incidents highlighted scalability and security challenges as the game's popularity surged, with frequent server outages and cheating reported alongside the targeted attacks.
| CIA Posture | Motives | Tactics, Techniques & Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| Available to members | 2 motives | 2 techniques |
| Threat Actor | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 1 actor | Available to members | Available to members |
Description
The InnerSloth incident involving the Among Us mobile game escalated significantly around October 23-26, 2020, when attackers disrupted gameplay through coordinated bot campaigns. A malicious actor operating under the name "Eris Loris" deployed automated bots that infiltrated public game servers, spamming players with disruptive advertisements promoting a YouTube channel and Discord server. These bots flooded in-game chat with messages threatening to "blow up your phone" and included a "Trump 2020" political endorsement, rendering matches unplayable. Players reported widespread server contamination, with some attempting 40+ games without finding a functional lobby, as hacked sessions collapsed within 10-30 seconds of starting. The attacks triggered mass complaints on the Among Us subreddit, where users documented their inability to join uncompromised games. This incident compounded existing server stability issues, as Among Us had already experienced traffic-related crashes in early October due to its explosive growth from 5.3 million Google Play downloads to 83.8 million global installs in September 2020 alone.
InnerSloth's three-person development team responded urgently to the Eris Loris attacks. On October 25, programmer Forest Willard implemented a server-side update designed to identify and automatically disconnect malicious actors before they could deploy spam. Willard acknowledged the solution might inadvertently kick legitimate players, describing it as an emergency measure for the "greater good." Concurrently, InnerSloth's official Twitter account advised users to play exclusively in private games with trusted individuals while fixes were deployed. The company publicly canceled development of Among Us 2 on October 23 to redirect all resources toward stabilizing the original game, citing technical limitations of the outdated codebase that hindered security improvements. This decision followed weeks of mounting operational pressure, including high-profile events like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's October 20 Twitch stream that attracted 435,000 concurrent viewers. The attacks exposed critical scaling challenges for InnerSloth, which balanced preserving the game's viral appeal against addressing vulnerabilities exploited by bad actors. Player disruption and development delays emerged as immediate consequences, though the game maintained its popularity despite ongoing security incidents.