A hacking group going by the moniker PoodleCorp has claimed responsibility for taking down the US and European Pokémon Go servers with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack, according to recent reports.
On Saturday, users across the US and Europe complained of difficulties accessing the game or that it was freezing.
The cyber collective PoodleCorp took to Twitter to announce its involvement in the hack, something which is yet to be verified.
The account tweeted the following on 16 July:
“PokemonGo #Offline #PoodleCorp”
What’s more, there was also a message from a user claiming to be the leader of the group which read:
“Just was a lil test, we will do something on a larger scale soon,” suggesting more attacks could be just around the corner.
A DDoS attack works by flooding servers with so many requests per send that they cannot cope, which forces them to crash. It is a very popular technique deployed by cyber-criminals and one that is often used to target gaming apps such as Pokémon Go.
"The online gaming industry is highly susceptible to DDoS attacks due to the competitive nature of the games themselves, monetary gains or the notion that organized cybercrime syndicates can grab headlines with their successful attacks,” said Stephanie Weagle, senior director at Corero Network Security.
"DDoS attack tools are easily procured and at low cost allowing any creative attacker the ability to cause service disruptions at a click of a mouse.”
"Traditional security infrastructure, or legacy DDoS mitigation solutions are not sufficient to handle the flood of DDoS attacks, especially since attackers have become more savvy in their techniques; launching low-level, multi-vector attacks that evade scrubbing solutions. In-line, automated DDoS mitigation is the only effective defense in the world of online gaming," she added.
This latest security incident is one of several to hit the headlines over the past week as the popularity of the game continues to skyrocket.