2011 Gameclub Philippines cyberattack
The 2011 Gameclub Philippines cyberattack was a month-long Philippine cyberattack on the servers of live service game publisher Gameclub between May and June 2011. The attack crippled Gameclub and saw the demise of one of its games, TwelveSky 2, after the IT staff were unable to recover the game's database.
While the specifics have not been released, it is presumed that the servers were targeted by a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, and Gameclub was able to mitigate the attack by blocking the IP address ranges of the attackers.
Background
During the time of the attacks, Gameclub was publishing the following games:
- Special Force
- TwelveSky 2
- Weapons of War
- CrossFire
- iDate
About
Beginning
On May 13, 2011, Gameclub players began experiencing massive lag and disconnection problems. The cause was revealed to be a massive cyberattack on Gameclub's servers.
The attack continued for weeks and prevented Gameclub from operating. Several on-ground events were postponed. Rumors began circulating on the cause of the attack, which included suspecting E-Games as the initiator. E-Games was holding the closed beta test of its upcoming FPS game, Point Blank, at that time, and Gameclub held the majority of the Filipino FPS player population with both Special Force and CrossFire.
The attack presumably corrupted the game databases, requiring the IT staff to recover them.
Resolution and suspect
Around early June 2011, Gameclub began resuming normal operations for all of its games except TwelveSky 2. The specific solutions for the attack were not mentioned. However, based on its follow-up statements, Gameclub mitigated the attack by blocking the IP ranges of the attacking servers.
On June 10, 2011, Gameclub released a response video about the event, discussing the "rules of warfare" and stating that "there are guidelines to follow and limitations to adhere to when the fight begins". The video heavily implies that the suspect of the cyberattack was one of its competitors (either E-Games or Level Up!).
The IT staff were able to recover the databases of four of the five games under Gameclub and resume normal operations. However, they were unable to recover the database of TwelveSky 2. Despite repeated statements that the game would come back, it was silently removed from Gameclub's game roster.