Ares Games Hit by First DDoS Attack

As first reported in Boardgamewire, Italian tabletop publisher Ares Games has suffered its first ever distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, leaving its websites inaccessible for around 10 hours across three days.

The publisher, best known for games such as War of the Ring, Wings of Glory and Swords & Sorcery, was hit but thousands of fraudulent requests which overwhelmed its servers’ bandwidth and processing capacity. Both the company’s main website and its online store were affected, disrupting direct sales, preorders, and access to crowdfunding pledge management.

Roberto Di Meglio, Ares Games production director, thankfully confirmed to Boardgamewire that no customer data was compromised during the incident and believes the company was probably the victim of an opportunistic attack rather than being specifically targeted.

The incident comes as Ares has been placing increasing importance on its direct-to-consumer business, as well as during the pledge management window for their recent Mega Empires: The Far East crowdfunding campaign, which raised over $230,000 in May and opened its pledge manager last month (July).

Following the attack,. Ares Games is now looking at strengthening the protection surrounding its websites and e-commerce insfrastructure to reduce the risk of similar attacks and disruption in the future.