Gaming giants Sony and Microsoft may consider working together to combat DDoS attacks.
In an interview, Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft, revealed that he doesn’t consider the PlayStation Network going down to be a positive event, and said that “all it does is put the fear and distrust from any gamer that’s out there”.
He said: “So I look at all of us together as this is our collective opportunity to share what we can about what we’re learning and how things are growing. Those conversations happen, which I think is great.”
Sony president of worldwide studios Shuhei Yoshida, said that it is always working against these attacks, saying that an attack happens every day. “Some days are bigger and some days smaller,” he said. “Some days they devise new means, new ways – it’s like cat and mouse. We have a partner company we work with, and we always update the new ways the attacker might deploy, so it is a constant battle.”
TK Keanini, CTO of Lancope, told IT Security Guru that a united front by itself does not make the bad things go away, but a front not united stands no chance. “I do think that the central and shared aspect of this unified front is on communication and information sharing that attackers are not counting on happening,” he said. “These guys are competitors and don’t speak to one another but with a common threat, these walls disappear as they all face a common enemy.
“The most important aspect of this united front is the information sharing taking place in near real time. It is about identifying the important characteristics of each attack and then devising a countermeasure that can discern and police the bad traffic from the good. With each of these effective countermeasures, the attackers are then forced to innovate and bring new forms of DDoS to bear and round and round this co-evolution we go.”
Jared DeMott, principal security researcher at Bromium, said: “Game makers are certainly not the first to work together to combat common threats: the financial industry does this; US Government contractors share information via the Defense Industrial Base; retailers have recognised the need to do so after the Target attack; but gamers will certainly benefit by mutually sharing information about attacks against their networks and systems.”
