Cyber Incident Victim: Blizzard Entertainment
Date:
Aug 2016
Location:
United States of America
Summary
Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net servers experienced a DDoS attack causing widespread latency, login problems, and disconnections affecting major titles like Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and Hearthstone. The company confirmed the attack and resolved it, though unrelated Overwatch disconnections were later investigated. Hacker group PoodleCorp claimed responsibility, having previously targeted Pokémon Go, and hinted at future attacks. The incident coincided with the launch of a limited-time Olympic-themed event and followed a ban wave targeting Overwatch cheaters using unauthorized software.
| CIA Posture | Motives | Tactics, Techniques & Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| Available to members | 1 motive | 1 technique |
| Threat Actor | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 1 actor | Available to members | Available to members |
Description
On August 3, 2016, Blizzard Entertainment’s Battle.net online gaming service experienced widespread disruptions due to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The attack caused significant latency issues, connection failures, and login difficulties across multiple titles including Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and Hearthstone. Blizzard confirmed the incident via its official forums, stating its network engineers were actively working to mitigate the attack. Hacker group PoodleCorp publicly claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter, though Blizzard did not independently verify this assertion. PoodleCorp had previously targeted Pokémon Go’s servers and indicated plans to attack another gaming platform in the near future. Blizzard’s Customer Support Twitter account later announced the cessation of the DDoS attack, restoring player access to Battle.net, while noting ongoing investigations into World of Warcraft server instability. The company separately addressed Overwatch disconnections, clarifying this issue was unrelated to the DDoS and required distinct remediation efforts.
The incident coincided with Blizzard’s launch of a limited-time Olympic-themed seasonal event (August 2–22) featuring cosmetic items and a Lucioball game mode in Overwatch. This marked the second major service disruption in two months, following June 2016 outages attributed to DDoS attacks by hacker group Lizard Squad. Concurrently, Blizzard enforced a ban wave against Overwatch players utilizing “triggerbot” cheating tools, a policy that generated controversy among affected users despite the company’s public zero-tolerance stance on unfair gameplay advantages. Technical recovery efforts focused on stabilizing Battle.net infrastructure, with no confirmed data breaches or compromises of player accounts reported. Service normalization timelines varied across affected games, with residual investigation into World of Warcraft server performance continuing after the primary DDoS mitigation.