‘LittleBigPlanet’ Servers Disabled In Response To Severe Cyber Attack

Since many players have faced the error messages exploited by hackers to send hate messages, LittleBigPlanet has decided to take down its servers again, continuing a series of online/ offline since March, 2021.

At the very start of March, some hackers abused a server exploit, a script, that could trigger a large amount of levels to be automatically and incessantly published in a short period, ultimately stressing out the servers and causing them to crash. In order to investigate this DDOS attack, LBP servers went offline, promising to bring back the stability of the gameplay and restore the cyber safety of the community by the end of March.

Although LBP did keep their promise and reopened the servers on March 31, the servers were only temporarily accessible and quickly closed later. This situation persisted in early April, in which the servers went up, systems seemed functional, but then shut down in a short time. The devoted fans of LBP even started a trend of #saveLBP in order to raise awareness of the issue.

Luckily, in April, we got a confirmation saying that the intermittently online servers were actually an intentional move testing security updates. However, unlike the first time, there was no official date from LBP guaranteeing when the servers would reopen.

Besides the current hate speech messages perverting the LBP community, other scripts have also been exacerbating the situation. There is the “North Pole Script,” which automatically drags the players’ levels to the top of the earth. In this case, every level will be crushed at one spot, causing the system to slow down, even collapse. Moreover, there is “Spamming Script.” Players would receive messages saying, “Hey I made a level for you,” and once the players click the message, the game would be targeted and irregularly crash. Lastly, we have the “Auto-heart Script.” Players who fell into the script would involuntarily like others’ profiles.

The reasons of the unstable servers are still unknown. Some surmise that the server issues were caused by one, disgruntled member of the LBP community who stole server keys and published thousands of junk levels as a DDOS attack to cripple servers. Others, however, simply believe that it was just a lack of support for games as they get older.

Until now, no official updates have disclosed any promised date for the servers to return. The relentless attacks toward the LBP community have put Sony in a hard spot.