Dark Souls' PC servers go temporarily offline after a severe vulnerability was discovered in Dark Souls 3's online mode

FromSoftware took PC servers of Dark Souls: Remastered, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3, and Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition temporarily down on Sunday. This was done to protect gamers against a vulnerability in Dark Souls 3’s online mode which could allow hackers to execute code remotely on machines. While FromSoftware did shut down the servers after the exploit got some publicity in the past few days, according to Redditor u/Jonientz, the developers were notified of the vulnerability months ago.

The first instance of the exploit being used to hijack a user’s PC was seen on a Dark Souls 3 stream from Twitch streamer The__Grim__Sleeper. On the 1:20:22 mark, the game crashed, and as explained by the streamer, Microsoft PowerShell started automatically, and a computer-generated voice began criticizing the streamer’s gameplay. It was later explained in an image posted on the SpeedSouls Discord channel that the hack was an attempt to get FromSoftware’s attention and wasn’t malicious in any way.

Fortunately, if the Reddit post from u/Jonientz and the image posted on the SpeedSouls Discord are true, nobody except the people who worked on the exploit knows how to execute the hack. Nonetheless, the problem is still severe and a potential launch day Issue for Elden Ring since it can reportedly affect Elden Ring as well.

Finally, if you are playing Dark Souls on consoles, you are fine as the vulnerability is PC-only. On the other hand, if you are a PC player you’d have to make do without online for a short while.

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