Ddos Prevention Guide

So you are getting ddosed, server lagging like crazy? Have to leave your game? Perhaps it's happening each and every game and you don't know what is going on. Well this guide will help you understand how to prevent it and hide from the attacks.

What is Ddos and how it affects Left 4 Dead 2.

To put this is in the most basic of ways for all of you to understand. A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) Attack is an attempt to try and make resources from a network or machine unavailable to the intended users. Basically the server is flooded with a lot of network information that basically blocks out the connection for everyone on it.

Now most of you may have come across this as the form of massive lag where you can't move at all and you end up dieing within the game. Basically all the Users (i.e Players) are lagged out from doing anything in the game but all the computer AI continue to work as normal since that part is not controlled by a player.

Zombies Attack Lagged Survivors = Death

These attacks have been growing as of late and it would seem that anyone can get their little hands on the programs that allow them to do so. All they would need is the ip of the server and boom instant lagged servers.

I have done a lot of research on the subject seeing as there is a lot of rage in Left 4 Dead 2 and many Kids think it is alright to lag the server for their advantage or troll. Whatever the case may be.

Now there is a few ways people do this and I am going to list the ways they find the ip to lag the servers with. Some of it is very basic.

1) A person in a game hits ~ to go into console and types "status" (without quotes) this allows the information of a server to be put on the console and gives everything from names of the players on the server and the ip. In some cases internal and external ips depending on the server.

Mostly people lag the server for 20+ seconds to kill off the other team and feign dumb to get the win. Others just lag the server to make every quit and get the win regardless.

2) A person on your friends list can view your game info quite easily and grab the ip from there which allows them to lag the server quickly and with rapid succession without too much trouble.

Some take it a bit further and make a secondary account on steam and fill it with content and invite people to it to keep track of them.

3) There is a source on the web that allows you to track people on your list or off your list by name to see what server they are on, who is in it, and what map they are on and so forth. This is the most troubling of things, because literally anyone can look you up when they see you online or even when your profile is private, they can still search to see if you are online and get the info that way.

But don't worry there are ways to make it difficult for them to find you and also to even hide from them, and I will explain everything in detail.

Preventing Ddos Attacks when playing on a regular server.

Now there are 3rd party servers like NFO server services that have ddos protection with all of their servers and block out all the negative traffic when someone is trying to ddos your server.

But who wants to pay a lot for a server when you just want to play Left 4 Dead 2 on a boring day and just want to have fun? My point exactly.

All official Valve servers *DO NOT* have ddos protection for the following games:

Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead 2
Counter Strike Source

and I do believe Counter Strike: Global Offensive is another that has no protection. More research will have to be done to update this list.

This means that these games can easily be ddossed on official servers and 3rd party servers that have no protections.

So what do we do, you ask?

First things first, you might want to think who could be doing this on your list first of all, is there someone that you think is capable of doing it and for whatever reason has been taken it out on you. If you see that your games are constantly being lagged out over and over almost instantly as you get into a game that would the case.

Could be that there is someone else in your game that is being targetted, which can't be helped on your part.

Once you have found out what possible way it may be, then you can take action.

Putting your profile to friends only allows your login status to be viewed by friends which makes it dificult to tell if you are online at the time or not for anyone who isn't your friend, but a little dedication people can of course find your status in a very particular way.

*Update* Since steam has actually updated profiles for the trading card phenomena, the list of friends on someone's profile is ordered by who is the highest level. Before it was ordered by who was playing a game and who was online but not in a game. This adds a bit more security because this was a way someone could tell if a person was on a game or not, by checking one of your friend's pages who did not have their profiles private.

*Now to the POINT of all this*

There are a few ways to protect yourself and make it a lot harder for someone to find your game. First of all people search outside of being on your friend's list through the in game server browser. This is an old school way of looking through all servers one by one to find your name within the player's list of all the servers game infos. Takes a long time but with some dedication and patience, people can find you in due time.

You may ask yourself, what do I do to stop that. Could I just change my name on my profile?

YES, indeed you could, this would make them restart their search to look for that name and further make their process that much harder and cumbersome to partake. But as I said dedicated individuals would continue to be persistent.

There is a way I have found that would remedy the situation and completely hide you from that search. The game comes with a command that is very useful for this, there is only one drawback to it and that is that you have to reenter that command each time a new part of the map loads in.

The command is: setinfo name "whatevername"

Now many don't want to have to always type this in into console, so I would suggest binding it to a key. Like so:

bind ] "setinfo name "whatevername""

You can enter a word without the quotes for the name, but if you want multiple words you need quotes.

EXPLANATION: This command changes your ingame name to whatever you put it as, keeping your profile name the same as you always had it. People that search for you will be searching for your profile name not the new on that you changed and there is no way to know what name to changed it to, unless someone in the game itself were to tell a person that was going to lag your server.

This of course is not the only way people can serach for you.

As I said this one is actually very time consuming way of doing it and most people will not take it upon themselves to spend hours looking for one person on the server browser.

There is another way people use most often and it refreshes server info every 5 minutes or so, so finding people's servers can be quick with just the name people have. Of course the method above about changing your name in game does the trick for this one too.

*NOTE* I am not mentioning the service that gives this information out because it would be like leading cows to slaughter for every troll, and rage stricken kid out on steam.

I can say though that there is another way that stops them from finding you with that service. That way is that the search protocol for that service cannot read special characters as follows:

Lets say for whatever reason you name yourself this on your steam profile: ȀǑ ȄȅȚȘ

Someone copieing that onto the search bar will result in no one being found when you are in a game. But they can of course use parts of a name to minimize the results.

Lets say your name is this: Ȁo Ȅets <------------- Special and regulars keys.

Well this right here will allow them to type "ets" into the search bar, and guess what? Everyone with "ets" together in their name will be listed and that list would be completely smaller than searching through all thousands of players on servers. They can even type just the "o" in there and find all with an an O in it. You never want to give them a possible way to find you.

Now you may be wondering, "I have seen people with no names at all playing, steam doesn't allow nothing to be put for name!" In fact that empty name is actually special blank characters that can be read by steam. I will not be supplying it, because that search bar can also find empty names.

So what happens when you have your profile private and change your picture and name? Can they find you?

The answer is YES! Everyone has a steam url to your profile in which someone could find you. Well what if you add a custom url in your profiles settings?

YES they can find you like that too, all they would do is go to a site that finds the steam id for a particular url and save that steamid to find you if ever you change your url again.

You're best bet to prevent some hurt kid to lag your servers, is to make it as hard for them as possible to find your game. Though people in the game itself can still lag it out, there is not much you can do about that except play on a protected 3rd party server.

I will recap the best possible ways to protect yourself on the next section.

Recap - Best Methods of Prevention

To recap the last section these are the best possible ways to prevent or make it harder on anyone who is trying to lag your server.

1) Get rid of bad friends.

2) If you are going to change your profile name, use all special characters that spell out your name. Such as: ȀǑ ȄȅȚȘ

*NOTE* windows comes with a character map program in the start menu that you can get special letters from.

3) Use the in game console command: setinfo name "whatevername"
This will change your name on the server but keeps your steam profile name intact and throws off anyone looking for you. *BEST METHOD*

you can bind this command to any key in console: bind ] "setinfo name "whatevername""

4) Play on a 3rd Party Protective server, like those from NFO.

Closing Notes

I know this was a lot of information to hit you with, but the more you guys know the better it is for all of you to continue playing without having to deal with getting your game lagged out. It's a growing problem and Valve should really try and implement a change to stop this from happening. TeamFortress 2 does not have this problem with the server programs so there is that.

*NOTE* if for whatever reason you are banned from the community and still want to play l4d or l4d2 but keep getting your games lagged out, just use the in game name change command and you will be all set.

Hope this helps guys.

P.S. I will be adding a section for those who dedicate your own servers at home at some point.

[PӨLICΣMΛƬЯЇЖ]

peoples home IP can be got through steam/ please fix this

[giju]

Great guide!