There’s apparently a teenage hacker on PlayStation 4 that is disconnecting players from PSN if they “disrespect him.” In other words, welcome to the wonderful world of gaming in 2018.
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A teenager who goes by “SpangeBaab” on PSN (one of many names/accounts), apparently wields some wizardry and has the ability to disconnect whoever he likes from PSN, whenever.
Taking to Reddit, user DowntownReaper shared a run-in with the hacker, which began after said hacker reportedly joined he and his friend’s party and began making random noises. He was quickly kicked. Following this, he proceeded to rejoin the party multiple times, and every time he got kicked he apparently permanently disconnected a party member from PSN.
According to the Reddit user, none of his friends who were in the party have been able to reconnect to PSN since this happened.
Looking into the story, outlet MP1ST found SpangeBaab’s profile, which seemingly confirms he’s indeed the hacker the Reddit user claims he is.
As you can see, disrespect equals disconnect. And something tells me he’s been disrespected quite a bit to indulge in such a holy crusade.
If you’re wondering how the hacker is able to do this, it’s because voice chat is peer-to-peer, meaning all you need to do is inspect the network packets in order to learn someone’s IP address, which then allows for you to ban them.
In order to remedy the “disconnect,” a user likely would have to set up a new network connection and set new IP’s manually.
As you may know, these type of DDOS attacks are sadly not very uncommon on PS4 and other gaming systems. While Sony and Microsoft haven’t gotten better at preventing and managing widespread attacks, this type of stuff is way more common than it should be. That said, a fix for this specific issue likely won’t be coming anytime soon, because in order to make sure this doesn’t happen, the platform holder would have to have global servers to host all voice sessions, and that would be incredibly expensive.
At the moment of writing this, the account of SpangeBaab is now being “moderated.” Of course, this should all be taken with a grain of salt, but it’s probably not a bad idea to block the above-pictured user whose description warns of disconnecting people for disrespecting.
Thanks, MP1ST.
