Since the early hours of Tuesday (27), Habbo has been experiencing major instability in all hotels. Users from all over the world are unable to connect and, when possible, are disconnected after a few minutes. Sometimes, when accessing Habbo, they come across the maintenance downtime page, which usually occurs after prior notice.
According to Sulake, there is no maintenance underway. The causes of the incidents are a DDoS attack of significant proportions.
What is a DDoS Attack?
A distributed denial-of-service attack, abbreviated as DDoS, consists of overloading and crashing a target's server with an arbitrary volume of requests. To do this, hackers program robots that simulate users who try to access, simultaneously and repeatedly in a short period of time, a resource on the Internet, in this case Habbo (habbo.com). With so many accesses, the resource is no longer able to serve users.
Any resource available on the Internet is a potential target for a DDoS attack. Although most Internet-based companies are prepared for this, hackers can adopt techniques and employ infrastructure capable of bypassing the systems that keep their resources stable.
This type of attack alone does not generate major consequences beyond unavailability. Therefore, there should be no concerns regarding users' personal data.
Two attacks in 2024: Is Habbo a vulnerable target?
Isn't the first time that Sulake has reported a DDoS attack in 2024. In February, another attack caused stability in Habbo for several days, especially in the English-speaking community. However, it's not known whether there is a connection between the attacks in February and August.
Given that Habbo is a widely known community in the world, it may attract the attention of malicious people who want to destabilize the service for a variety of reasons.
Habbo has mechanisms in place to prevent DDoS attacks, but as mentioned before, hackers can bypass them. It's up to Sulake to analyze the dynamics of these attacks in order to adopt appropriate measures to prevent further attacks.