The PC versions of the Dark Souls games have been suffering from a server outage since January and the game’s publisher Bandai Namco has officially released information explaining the cause of the issue. The PC server problem has resulted in players being unable to play the PvP portion of the game after the company discovered a severe remote execution (RCE) vulnerability. If left unattended, the critical exploit would allow hackers to take control of other players’ PCs. Understandably, Bandai Namco has been hesitant to put the servers back online until the problem is completely resolved.
The published disclosure was shared on Github and details the exploit that had FromSoftware shut down the servers. The vulnerability is present in Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls Remastered, Dark Souls 2, and Dark Souls 3. There has been no word on whether Demon’s Souls has been similarly affected but the document says it is “very likely” it is. Although the issue is present in Sekiro as well, the new information promises there’s no way to trigger it. Elden Ring fans can rest easy because any issue that there might have been has now been “completely fixed.”
According to the person who first discovered the major issue, the developer of the fan-made Dark Souls anti-cheat software Blue Sentinel, “sent From Software a huge document documenting many other Dark Souls exploits, including both security vulnerabilities like out of bounds reads/writes and in-game exploits such as banning other players, editing their game data, etc. To my surprise, they fixed every single one of them in Elden Ring, which is amazing.” While this is great news, they also revealed that the Easy Anti Cheat implementation in Elden Ring “is heavily flawed and can be trivially bypassed in multiple ways.” Adding, “Even if the simple bypasses are patched, it would require a full rework to make proper use of all EAC features, which is absolutely necessary for it to be effective.”
Keep an eye out for more news on how Bandai Namco is resolving this major exploit and for more information, check out the source below.