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Minecraft and Rust Game Server DDoS Protection: Taking Robust Countermeasures

  • May 31, 2023
  • 2 min read
Minecraft and Rust Game Server DDoS Protection: Taking Robust Countermeasures

The online gaming industry is constantly under threat of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, as evidenced by the massive attack on Minecraft last year. In the intensely competitive gaming industry, even brief server downtimes can lead to significant financial and reputational loss. Users are willing to migrate quickly to rival games, which underscores the critical importance of maintaining server availability for a company’s sustained success. In response to these persistent threats, we have developed robust countermeasures for Minecraft and Rust game servers.

Minecraft DDoS Countermeasure

Our tailored countermeasure for Minecraft servers incorporates an advanced approach to ward off DDoS attacks, aimed at preserving the optimal gaming experience:

  • Challenge-response authentication: Utilizes a challenge-response process to authenticate incoming IP addresses.
  • Minecraft protocol ping verification: Verifies the connection using the Minecraft protocol ping to authenticate IP addresses.
  • IP whitelisting: Ensures that only legitimate and authorized IP addresses can access the Minecraft game server, mitigating potential DDoS attacks and preserving gameplay for players.

Rust DDoS Countermeasure

Our Rust DDoS countermeasure is built around the robust Raknet protocol. It provides an added level of packet inspection and whitelisting for reinforced protection against DDoS attacks:

  • Raknet protocol challenge-response: Leverages the built-in challenge-response feature of the Raknet protocol for authentication.
  • Game server replacement: Temporarily replaces the game server during authentication, forcing it to pass the challenge-response successfully.
  • Passive packet inspection: Actively examines incoming packets to ensure compliance with the Rust game protocol.
  • Whitelisting authorized connections: IP addresses that pass the challenge-response authentication are added to the list of allowed addresses, reinforcing protection against DDoS attacks.

Protect Your Game Servers

With our robust countermeasures, Minecraft and Rust game server operators can fortify their infrastructure against DDoS attacks. By implementing challenge-response authentication and protocol verification, we ensure that only legitimate connections are granted access to the game servers. By doing so, we maintain a secure and uninterrupted gaming experience for players, and provide gaming companies and server administrators with the confidence of reliable, attack-resistant operations.

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