Hackers attacking the Internet Across Andorra during Minecraft Twitch Tournament

Unusual interruption in the Principality of Andorra: The small city-state between France and Spain has been repeatedly blocked from the internet in recent days. Neither DSL nor mobile communications could be used – this is due to a DDoS attack. The story is a bit strange, because there aren’t many reliable findings.

A few details can be found in the Toms Hardware Online Magazine. One thing is clear: Andorra hosted a twitch gaming tournament that would last for several days. About 150 Minecraft players came together to play against each other for a prize pool of 100,000 euros. But some players had to retire due to internet outages. Internet usage infographic: about 2.9 billion people are offline

Targeted DDos attacks witnessed

It is also clear that targeted attacks have been carried out on the sole internet provider in the Principality of Andorra. Top dog Andorra Telecom reported that the company has repeatedly fallen victim to DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks in recent days.

The DDoS attacks took place during the “SquidCraft” game tournament in Minecraft, one of the most successful Twitch Rivals tournaments ever broadcast. According to the Toms Hardware report, all of Andorra had no internet connection at all for more than half an hour after the DDoS attacks started. This was followed by days of extreme connectivity issues.

This applies to both DSL and mobile communication. At least eight Andorran streamers have been banned from the Twitch tournament after the second day of attacks due to repeated disconnections. It is suspected that the perpetrators planned the DDoS attacks on Andorra Telecom to specifically deprive participants of their chance of winning the $100,000. Until now, however, there has been no such thing as a confession, so the background is still pure speculation at this point.