Teenage Gamer Somehow Can Disconnect People From PSN If You “Disrespect” Him

It seems a certain teenage gamer on PSN can intentionally disconnect people from Sony's online platform if he feels someone slighted him. His PSN ID and YouTube account are mentioned just in case you might fall victim to his acts. Someone did the right thing and report him to his parents.

[Switch4One]

Wait, what?? How is this even a thing?

[rainslacker]

Isn't so much a PSN thing. When you do P2P with someone, you can see their IP address. If you know how, you can force a connection to close on their end.

Anyone with a decent understanding of networking IT can probably do this.

[Switch4One]

You explained to me what he did, not how he did it and why it's possible on any network not just PSN.

[Retroman]

Explain how they ( online gamers) contact his parents to report it .

[knickstr]

Doesnt explain why they couldn't sign back into PSN though.

[rainslacker]

I'm not going to go into great detail on how this is done, at least from the looks of it here as not enough info was given to give a definitive statement, because I don't really care to encourage people to get ideas on what they may be able to do to grief others. There are other places people can go to learn that kind of thing, and its not really appropriate here.

However, since it never hurts to know how one can protect themselves, It's an exploit with the typical router firewall that most people have. If you know someone's IP address, you can force their router to think that an attack is coming from another specific IP address, which in this case would be PSN. If the victim could change their PSN IP access address, they should be able to reconnect to PSN.

Chances are, resetting one's firewall, or giving permissions to that IP specifically to allow access for whatever PSN is, will allow him access. The actual spoofed attack would be relatively harmless to the network, so if it comes through, it's just some empty packets which don't actually do anything to the hardware that it may be sent to.

The downside is, is that opening such a connection could also allow other more dangerous hacks to come in, and if one uses a system which is more open...like a PC or mobile device, then it's possible to tunnel through that allowed connection, so there are other measures that should be taken to protect one's data from those who have more ill intent than this guy.

Personally, I wouldn't suggest anyone worry about it, but should they find themselves the victim of something like this, check your router firewall settings first, and just remove the block to the PSN IP's address that would have been created during the actual attack. Those events should be in the firewall's log file. If it happens again, contact your ISP so they can help you if you aren't familiar with network security. They're usually pretty good about that, and can even track down attacks and take care of the other person for you.

[mattxd92]

Edit: as far as the article goes though this seems more than a P2P instance since they were being disconnected from PSN and this was more in response to another comment to you. Seems more likely that the kid was running something that possibly blacklisted their public IP address but its hard to say, the article doesn't have a lot of info.

To explain a little further you can easily see what is connecting to your network if you have access to your router and it supports the functionality. When services use peer to peer connection or P2P its connecting that pc to yours if you are the host. Think old CODMW2 when it would constantly redirect host which would happen if the host rage quit from dying too much (lol). All you have to (this is simplifying) is figure out which is the IP address of the person you are connected with thats annoying you and disconnect him from your network usually by just selecting a setting to cancel their connections. On my router at home I can see all devices connected and can just click a button to disconnect. Its a bit more than that for a connection like this but the principle is the same.

[mattkelly1991]

There are a lot of ways to close a connection. You can use your router or other software to do it fairly easily.

[Knightofelemia]

Have a feeling Sony is going to run this kid through the ringer and most likely perma ban the console and probably delete his account. I hope Sony brings criminal charges to this kid also I doubt the kids parents give a shit but when the cops show up and they get a lawsuit from Sony I will laugh my ass off at this kid.

[Shikoku]

Wait a minute this kid is disconnecting you not banning you or taking over your account thats a bit much there guy.

[Avernus]

Intentionally manipulating PSN / exploiting it to cause others an inconvenience... I can't tell if he's doing it over PSN, or finding their IP's and DDoS'ing them.

Both are crimes, so I don't know what you mean by "a bit much".

[bradfh]

@Shikoku
its illegal to intentionally impair the operation of a computer or prevent or hinder access to a program/data on a computer unless you are authorised to do so

[rainslacker]

Technically, what this kid is doing is a federal, and potentially an international crime, and if any one of the the people he does this to files a complaint, the FBI is actually obligated to investigate and the US Attorney obligated to prosecute. If its an international crime, then there are different agencies that can be contacted, but it will depend on where they are located, but most people should contact their local law enforcement(FBI in the US).

They may not hop on it right away, but they will at least issue a request to the person's ISP, which will probably cause them more disruption than a momentary interruption from one's service. ISP's aren't going to be culpable for hosting a hacker, and this guy seems like he's not really all that good at hacking. Any hacker that brags about his exploits, and is so petty to hack someone in such a stupid way because you disrespect him in a game is probably just some script kiddie that read how to do this on the net.

Most likely someone will complain to Sony, and they'll ban him for using PSN for illegal purposes, and he's likely to be griefed now that there is an article about it, but hopefully others will at least make sure he's guilty before doing something illegal in return. Idiots like this don't typically last long after they start bragging about it.

Funny thing is, when I worked IT security, I could do much worse to people who attacked our networks unless they were really good....and the really good ones were typically in and out before a breach was even suspected, much less noticed, and it could take quite some time to track down the breach and where it came from....if it was even possible. If this guy attacked my home server and managed to disconnect me, I would probably just think I lost my connection, but if he bragged, I'd certainly know where it came from, because apparently the guy is telling his victims what he's doing.

[Kados]

@rainslacker:

Only technically it isn't a crime. If this is a forced P2P disconnect, and he is the one who started the game, then he is the host. All the other players are connecting to his system, simply using Sonys servers as an intermediary to establish the initial connection. What he is doing is exactly the same as using the /kick command on a pc game like Diablo. He is not "hacking" or unlawfully accessing anything other than his own internet connection. Since he is the host, if they disconnect from him, they disconnect from the game. All they have to do is join a different game. A simple solution to this would be for Sony to stop being cheap / scamming people, making them pay to host games P2P on their own systems. Set up dedicated servers for all games and the problem is solved.

All you really have to do is use your PC as a wifi hotspot for the PS4, run a simple command prompt line to see all the IPs currently connected to your PC, determine which IP corresponds to which player, then run an IP kick command to disconnect it. You could even add that IP to a blocklist in Peerblock, and they would then no longer be able to join your games in the future. Any monkey with a basic understanding of windows command lines can do it, no hacking or DDos involved.

Sony could ban his account, and probabably will, but as far as taking legal action, they cannot do anything.

[rainslacker]

Is he the host? The article says he's disconnecting them from PSN.

If he is just disconnecting people from his own network, then yeah, that's not illegal. But it also means that this article is grossly misrepresenting what is going on here.

[RememberThe357]

Yeah damn... Not sure I really feel like messing with my internet is worth taking your freedom. Maybe have the guy pay a fine, but jail time? Nah man, jail is fckin aweful, lossing your internet connection is annoying. Not really equitable.

[RosweeSon]

Why should some little **** have the ability to take people offline because he feels unfairly dealt with in life... what goes around comes around act like a **** and wonder why people don’t like him if he didn’t go round disconnecting people off services they’ve paid for both internet access and PSN costs money why shouldn’t he be fined banned whatever maybe he wouldn’t be such a lonely sad act some people just like to be ****s

[Lexreborn2]

This isn't a cop intervention level issue at all. People want cops to intervene for the dumbest things. BBQin call the cops, walking call the cops, disconnect from the internet call the cops. Let Sony sort it out and leave it at that

[UnholyLight]

You must be one of these such kids. GUYS WE FOUND HIM.

[Lexreborn2]

@UnholyLight no I’m not one of those guys, I just find it a waste of resources to send cops on someone for something like this. If they still your data or take your account from you sure. Disconnecting you? Let that be something sorted between Sony and ISP providers.

There’s plenty of real issues cops can handle then this.

[Mystogan]

Lol, calm down.

[thatguyhayat]

Spangebaab?

His parents? I hope sony bans this delinquent asap

[Deepfryry]

I picked up a random on Xbox one to play Gambit with, thru LFG. He was bragging that he runs a Facebook group where they take people's gamertags they don't like and everyone mass reports them and gets them thrown off line. I didn't think much of it at the time. I'm trying to kill me a prime evil. But the next morning it was the first thing that popped in to my head when I opened my eyes.

[Silly gameAr]

Did you report them?

[rainslacker]

I've noticed that the vast majority of people that say they will hack you, or brag about how good they are in public about it...particularly one that has to do it through facebook, are typically completely clueless on how to hack anything. I doubt they'd even be able to ping another person. Think of it this way. I've been on this site for 10 years, and while I'm not a master hacker, this article is probably the first one out of tens of thousands of comments where I actually said I could do worse to someone than kick them off a server. I learned because I spent half my adult life in network security, and often tracked down breaches, and most security breaches, or at least attempts are pretty pathetic and easily done by just looking them up on google.

Prudence should be a thing of course, but a guy using face book to get others to file false reports? Facebook would shut that down, and most server owners aren't so stupid to think that a sudden influx of complaints against someone who likely has never had any is probably not real.

[XxINFERNUSxX]

If someone is being a shit bag I support him lol. Hell, since the person is not next to me to slap them in the head (which I would seriously do) disconnecting them from the game seems satisfying enough :D This would be great to use in Overwatch on the PC.

[letsa_go]

There is always one shithead that ruins things for everyone else. That shithead is you!

[kneon]

I think there are already some shenanigans going on in Overwatch. Every single time that I've had a game end due to server error it's always been just seconds away from the game ending, as if someone deliberately attacked the server in some way to avoid losing the game.

[darkvenom]

Little pos.

[PlayableGamez-]

Sounds like some 7th gen stuff right here.

[TheColbertinator]

Good thing I don't use PSN.

[rainslacker]

This could be done through any service, gaming or not. If you connect to someone through P2P, you can find their IP address pretty easily with any number of methods.

If I knew your IP address, I could kick you offline here in just a few seconds if I was so inclined.

[Cobra951]

I found your posts here to be eye openers. So explain a bit further. Let's say I piss you off for some reason, you find out my IP, and you do the deed. What happens at this end? Do I lose all ability to go online? Or do I just lose the ability to bring up N4G? Is it a DDoS attack, or something else? As I understand it, the only significance of P2P is that peers' addresses are exposed. You're saying you can disconnect someone from more than just that. Scary.

Edit: I understand not wanting to detail the process. You don't want to help jerks to hurt others. Just a general answer, then. One thing's for sure: I'll never be lax about using my VPN again, anytime my IP might get snooped.

[rainslacker]

Depends on the kind of attack, but I've read two different things here about what's happening. One is they're forcing the victim to close the connection to PSN, the other is they're just disconnecting them from the host P2P server.

The latter is easy, and can be done with simple access to one's personal router, but would only disconnect them from the game, not PSN.

The second requires a bit more work, but basically it forces the victims network to close off the connection to a specific IP address(PSN in this case), typically by exploiting the basic router firewall that exists on most people's router....although there are other methods which are more involved.

I won't detail how to do either one specifically, or even bother to give the terms for what those are but the info is out there.

What I said I could do to kick you off is much more involved though, but I learned that through working in IT.

[jznrpg]

Yes we are glad

[kingtoby2081]

Hmm kids do this on PC as well

[rainslacker]

Yeah, and if the article did any research, they would have found out how to do it as well. It's not really that hard. But, like most articles, research isn't as important as pinning this on a console maker to try and get some hits.

[Kiwi66]

So the guy was on psn yet you seem upset by it because it's not one of the other consoles it happened on

[rainslacker]

I"m not upset. Just amused that the articles writer didn't just write about the process. Or that they'd be so irresponsible to show this being done, so other people might look it up and find out how to do it. But as a news article, it's pretty lackluster, even without the click bait nature, because even the headline shows that there is no real research into what's being done.

Personally wouldn't want other console's players to have to be affected by this, but if someone is going to make this about PSN or Sony, I'm going to point out that its not just a Sony issue. There has been way too much of this kind of crap in recent years, and it affects all console makers. They've all been accused of being responsible for something outside their control, and if I'm upset, it's not over stupid shit like this, it's at the irresponsibility of the press to do a single ounce of work when writing their stories. Hell, I, and many others around here, can post more factual and researched information than 90% of the articles around here, and for some of us, we can spend more time writing a comment than these articles do writing a story, and we don't even get money out of it.

[Neonridr]

@rainslacker - The person who made this post was in no way blaming Sony, only trying to investigate and get to the bottom of it. And the author literally just posted the facts. They didn't blame anything on Sony either. Where did you pick up that from anything you just read?

[rainslacker]

May be posting facts, but a bit of research could have told him how its done, and told his readers how to protect themselves. I decided it might be prudent to explain it better, and offer some advice in above comments.

That advice was not worry about it too much. These kinds of attacks are extremely rare AFAIK, because they're more annoyances to the end user than anything harmful, and when it comes to gaming, most people don't go through all the effort to just grief others. But there are a lot of people in the world who really have nothing better to do than to feel superior by making someone else annoyed.

Anyhow, you are right that the article didn't really blame Sony. May have just been my conditioned nature to think that this would become some sort of big thing to blame Sony for being crap by the community, because a lot of people don't really understand what's happening most of the time.

[timotim]

🤔🤔🤨

[King_Noctis]

“Someone did the right thing and report him to his parents.”

Uh.........

[Sophisticated_Chap]

Not to worry, just don't disrespect him, and you'll be just fine.....

[itsmebryan]

Is this only on PSN? I never heard about anything like this on Xbox live.

[Artemidorus]

I've known people who can tell you where you live and ban you instantly on both consoles.

[T2X]

Then show some respect dammit.

[Bleucrunch]

Yea with P2P that is an excellent way to hack someone as you have a direct connection with them, then it is all simple elementary networking from there...The how he did it (I am not writing all of that) but just know never to create a P2P with folks you do not know.

That is a lesson in life much less gaming ya know.

[honey1984]

Is this a new thing? Is this an easy exploit or is that kid just really good?

[AizenSosuke]

The kira of gaming?

[cyclindk]

But if this were a comic book movie, Tony Stark would have showed up instead, hit on his mom, told him to use his knowledge for good and then gave him his own portable nano-armor suit and forever be known as... dun, dun, dun,... SpangeBaab Boy.