Among Us creator InnerSloth rolls out server update to fix spam attack

Among Us, the viral online multi-player game if facing a major hacking issue with players across the globe being targeted as part of the ‘Eris Loris’ spam attack.

A team of developers form InnerSloth, the creator of the game will be rolling out a second wave of server updates today with ‘anti-hacks’ to fix the issue.

“Alright, wave 2 of anti-hacks are going out: Wave 1 did fix impersonation, this is why the prominent hack now is just chat spam and mass despawn (black room) Wave 2 should fix both of these. We'll see where we need to go from there,” developer Forest Willard tweeted.

Spam attack

Earlier this week, players took to social media complaining about a mysterious online handle, “Eris Loris,” spamming chatrooms in public games, asking other players to subscribe to the Eris Loris YouTube channel.

“So apparently I was on Among Us created by @InnerslothDevs minding my own business until the lobby disappeared and everyone said "subscribe to eris loris on youtube or you will regret it" then a found out that he was hacking Among Us servers,” read a Twitter thread from an Among Us player.

In one instance, the spam attack began filling player’s in game logs with spam messages promoting the YouTube channel while threatening to hack their personal devices if they do not subscribe to it.

According to a Eurogamer report, the hacker claims to have gathered around 50 volunteers who’ve given their computers to “add more fire power” to the attack. The hackers claim to have hit 1.5million games. They further claim that the attack has affected 4.8 million Among Us players in total.

Among Us creator InnetSloth took note of the issue on Friday stating that the team was working on fixing the hacking issue.

“Hello everyone, We're are super duper aware of the current hacking issue and we're looking into it. We will be pushing out an emergency server update so people who are in game will get kicked from games. Please play private games or with people that you trust!!! Bare with us!!” InnerSloth had tweeted from its official account.

It had then advised people to play private games or to play online with only trusted people.

First server update

The first server update was rolled out later on Friday. Willard had said that the delay in server updates was to avoid false positives. Amid the server updates, many users were booted mistakenly which had further caused distress among players.

“So yeah. I'm rolling out the server update. I'm using a faster method than I've done before, but it'll impact players more. Trying to be careful, but also, you might get booted. It's for the greater good at this point. Consider it an "emergency maintenance for ??? hours," Forest had tweeted.

“Also worth nothing that the reason I didn't roll this update out sooner is that I was afraid of false positives: You totally might see the game think you're hacking when you're not. I've done my best to find this kind of bug, but my hand is forced this time,” the tweet further read.

The game being targeted by hackers and players comes at no surprise considering the popularity that it has garnered in recent months. According to recently released data by Sensor Tower, Among Us was the only game to reach 100 million downloads in Q3 2020.

US Congresswoman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had recently made her debut on popular game streaming platform Twitch to play Among Us. The stream had soon become the number one stream on the platform with over with over 325,000 viewers.