Hackers Claim Responsibility for Attack on Pokemon Go Servers Hacking team OurMine claims responsibility for knocking the game's servers offline over the weekend.
By Stephanie Mlot •
This story originally appeared on PCMag
As Niantic rolled out Pokemon Go to 26 additional countries over the weekend, it's easy to assume the rush of new players was to blame for recent server issues.
But hacking collective OurMine may have also played a part. The group -- famous for infiltrating the social media accounts of Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Jack Dorsey, among others -- claimed responsibility for the popular game going offline on Sunday.
As an OurMine member told PCMag via email, the three-person team is "just trying to protect [companies'] servers."
"We wrote we will stop the attack if any [Niantic] staff talked with us, because we will teach them how to protect their servers," the anonymous representative said.
According to OurMine, if it doesn't break into celebrity accounts and knock games offline, someone else will.
Someone like PoodleCorp, which also attacked Pokemon Go servers this weekend via a massive Distributed Denial of Service attack. The group's Twitter account hints at another invasion planned for Aug. 1.
The weekend's issues, according to the gamemaker, were fixed on Sunday; trainers can continue neglecting their daily lives to hunt for Pokemon.
Pokemon Go launched first in the US, Australia and New Zealand, before slowly making its way around the globe, launching in Germany, the UK and a handful of other countries. The mobile game's universal appeal has everyone from young students to politicians trying to catch 'em all. But some folks, including Sen. Al Franken, remain skeptical about security.
T-Mobile subscribers, meanwhile, now have one less thing to worry about. The carrier now offers unlimited data while using the popular app through August 2017.
