Facing the Threat: The Impact of DDoS Attacks on the Korean ‘League of Legends’ Championship

The Korean ‘League of Legends’ Championship (LCK), the official ‘League of Legends’ league in Korea that has continued to grow for over 10 years since its launch, has been postponed. Due to external DDoS attacks, everything including viewership, viewership revenue, and player performance were affected.

The LCK DDoS attacks began in late February. There were several attacks targeting the players’ live broadcast league, and after repeated delays, one game ended in a brawl with a non-opponent DDoS for almost 7 hours. The LCK tried countermeasures focusing on online servers, but players’ matches were again suspended, and the league eventually switched to privately recorded broadcasts.

Afterwards, LCK and Riot Games Korea took a defensive stance by promoting the introduction of offline servers without revealing game times. Fortunately, the protective measures worked and the players were able to interact with the crowd again and complete the remainder of the spring regular season.

However, the problem occurred again during the playoffs. A DDoS criminal group, which has been continuously targeting players’ personal practice environments for a long time, has now launched a full-scale attack against the popular T1 team. The players’ training environment before an important match had been ruined, and the effect was visible in the results of the match.

LCK league and competition can be solved by building offline servers, but currently there is no way to prevent DDoS attacks that interfere with players’ personal practice. Both Riot Korea and LCK are supporting players’ practice by issuing temporary accounts, but it is unclear how effective these temporary measures will be.

As the DDoS attack situation continues into a long-term war, the voices of supporters hoping for a quick solution are steadily growing louder. Although it has been over a month and a half since the full-scale attack against the league began, there is still no official information on who is responsible for the attack or how the DDoS attack continues.

Although there are many analyzes that attacks continue through loopholes in the game client, Riot Games headquarters is still unable to provide a game-level solution to the attacks against LCK and players. The protective measures that have been used so far are at league level, temporary measures, and working methods.

For these reasons, on April 9th, during the media day before the LCK spring finals advance and finals, some users sent condolence wreaths to Riot Korea located in Samseong-dong, Seoul. Fans who were angry about the damage suffered by the players they supported believed that the fairness of the league had been lost.

In the end, to solve DDoS attacks, it is important to thoroughly detect and address the source of the attack, but basic security updates and game-level fixes are also required. At the moment, defense is being implemented at a level that players and fans can tolerate, but it is not known what problems will arise in the future.

What league fans and game users are waiting for now is Riot Games sharing information. DDoS attacks targeting popular streamers and players, which started at the beginning of the season, have already been ongoing for over a quarter. Even if the situation cannot be resolved immediately, there is a need to talk now about the current situation and future game-level response plans.

Popular games are always the targets of hacker attacks. However, with constant support from consumers and interest from fans, it is possible to overcome the crisis and survive. Now, the LCK only has the finals and finals left in the spring, the first season of 2024. We hope that the LCK will rise again with the handling and management of the game befitting an e-sports league the best in the world.

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