....to discover the IP addresses of the players, and start throwing them into various "Trusted zones" (which then leads to the not-entirely-sophisticated process of, er, waggling sliders up and down rapidly in Zone Alarm. Nobody ever said this was an elegant solution). That "ION" program has been around since the days of Halo 2, by the way.
Once you have the host, the theory is that you have a slight advantage over the other players because you have no lag. However, this isn't enough for the cheaters so what they'd do is hit the "standby" button on their router and when the game would come back (after lagging all over the place) everybody bar the host would still be lagging. This would result in lots and lots of headshots with a fair amount of swearing from the others in the session.
Worse, in addition to single players doing this, whole teams can bridge their connections and attempt a "team standby", where one team is fine but the other is doomed.
Not very nice, but there you go.
3) DDoS Host Booters. These are probably the worst of the three tactics on offer, and involve custom made programs that target specific players, then knock them offline via a dedicated Botnet. This is no different to someone aiming a regular Botnet at your home connection.
As already mentioned, most console games are peer to peer and because you can use Internet Connection Sharing with an XBox console, it's the easiest thing in the world to grab some IP addresses and have some "fun". Because the attacks target the player rather than XBox Live itself (which would likely be a futile effort) it's quite difficult to do anything about it.
Many saw an opening for money making with this technique, because there are no end of technologically clueless (but very angry) gamers out there who want to get even.
Want to DDoS someone, win that online session and move up a rank or three? No problem, pay us and we'll create a custom built DDoS Low Orbital Cannon to clear out the noobs. Some games punish players / teams that leave a session early, removing experience points and / or awarding the win to the other team which makes this technique rather appealing.
Although getting on a bit, the below pricing structure is pretty much what it is now:
$5 for a Bot, with nothing else. This is the option for those who already know what they're doing and have a Booting program ready to roll.
$10 for a Bot AND a Booter, for those who have no idea which Booter to pick. You're not going to kick many people out of Halo 3 with one Bot, however, so from there it's
$2 per additional infected computer added to your Botnet of Doom.
$5 extra is needed if you want them to go dabble with your network / Firewall, and it's
$20 if you want them to remote into your PC and set EVERYTHING up for you. Also note that they'll put a fake icon onto the infection file they're trying to nail people with on your behalf - I suppose paying up is in your best interest if you want them to infect as many people as possible.
Some charge per game and / or rank in a particular game, rather than per Bot because hey - they're just that nice, and (more importantly) they figure once you've set up your Botnet for someone you probably can't get anymore money out of them. Keep
control of the Botnet, however, and you'll have money rolling in for as long as the buyer wants to DDoS gamers.
Dedicated Host Booting sites that contain both Booting programs and tutorials are a relatively new addition to the ranks, but they're definitely growing in number. Here's a membership sample from one of the more recent portals:
Worryingly, there are rewards for promoting those communities:
Youtube Comment Bot, originally uploaded by Paperghost.
Youtube Comment Bot Spam, originally uploaded by Paperghost.
