Dark Souls servers taken down following discovery of critical vulnerability
Bandai Namco, publisher of the Dark Souls role-playing game series, has taken down its player-versus-player servers while it investigates reports of a serious vulnerability that allows players to execute malicious code on the PCs of fellow players.
Word of the critical remote-code-execution flaw emerged over the weekend in Reddit threads here and here. An exploit that hit a user named The_Grim_Sleeper was captured in a video stream posted over the weekend. Starting around 1:20:22, the user’s game crashed, and a robotic voice mocked his gameplay and maturity level.
“What the fuck,” The_Grim_Sleeper said in response. “My game just crashed, and immediately Powershell opened up and started narrating a fucking” screed. “I didn’t even know that shit was possible.”
Details about the vulnerability weren’t immediately available. Initially, reports said the vulnerability resided in Dark Souls 3. On Sunday, Bandai Namco representatives said the company was removing PvP server play for Dark Souls 3, Dark Souls 2, and Dark Souls: Remastered as it investigated the reports. The tweet also said that Dark Souls: Prepare to Die would be affected.
