Rainbow Six: Siege may compromise IP addresses during online play

By Brad Jones April 28, 2016

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Rainbow Six: Siege was seen as a welcome return for the long-dormant franchise, and was described as a “fresh take on tactical shooters” in its Digital Trends review. Unfortunately, there’s evidence that players might be putting themselves at risk of a significant security breach by engaging in online multiplayer matches.

The game makes use of dedicated servers to host online matches between players, but implements peer-to-peer connections for voice chat. As a result, it’s possible to use a packet sniffer to gain access to the IP addresses of every player in a particular session, according to a report from Ars Technica.

These issues were flagged by players taking part in the game’s beta last year, but apparently were rather far down the laundry list of tweaks that Ubisoft had on its plate. In February, the studio noted that IP privacy was a “priority” but admitted that the fix was proving to be more difficult that expected.

In March, the game’s 2.3 update seemed to bring an end to the issue as the company claimed in patch notes that it had “applied IP protection in order to help protect our players’ information.” Unfortunately, as recently as this week, players have taken to Reddit to state that the security flaw has not been taken care of.

The repercussions of malicious players gaining access to your IP address can spell big trouble. At best, a frustrated opponent might use a botnet attack to disable your Internet access and kick you from the game — but there are much more serious forms of distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack that can be carried out using the information.

Ubisoft certainly isn’t having much luck with bugs and exploits at the moment. While the issues affecting Rainbow Six: Siege are serious enough, the studio’s much-touted Destiny-killer The Division has been torn to shreds by hackers and cheaters since its launch last month.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Brad is an English-born writer currently splitting his time between Edinburgh and Pennsylvania. You can find him on Twitter…

Gaming

Rainbow Six Extraction: 9 tips and tricks for beginners

Rainbow Six Extraction enemy spawning.

Rainbow Six Extraction is an unforgiving game. Not only does it throw a bunch of concepts and strange terminology at you in rapid succession, but its gameplay is incredibly tense and heavily dependent on teamwork. Players who have spent any time with Siege will have a bit of an advantage (many of the operators from the game make a return for this co-op shooter), but there's still a large learning curve to overcome.

Whether you're a Siege veteran or a complete newcomer to the Rainbow Six franchise, here are nine Rainbow Six Extraction tips to help you survive the Archaean threat.

Computing

I doubled my Rainbow Six Extraction frame rate with 1 setting

Soldiers shooting aliens in Rainbow Six Extraction.

Rainbow Six Extraction turns the formula established by Rainbow Six Siege on its head, pitting you and and group of teammates against a horde of zombie-like enemies instead of against another team. The game comes with Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) built-in, but even with a supported graphics card, I've been using the in-engine dynamic resolution setting.

With this setting, I was able to double my frame rate, all with a surprisingly low impact on image quality. Those with the best graphics cards can use DLSS; for the rest of us, Rainbow Six Extraction's dynamic resolution is a dream come true.

Gaming

Does Rainbow Six Extraction support split-screen play?

A squad shoots an alien in Rainbow Six Extraction.

For a highly competitive first-person shooter focused so much on tactics, positioning, and quick reflexes, it made sense why Rainbow Six Siege would not support split-screen play. It would obviously not work if the two people playing were on different teams, but even on the same team, being able to essentially see from two angles at once would defeat the purpose of the carefully crafted sightlines, emphasis on communication, and all the gadgets made to help and hinder spotting enemies. However, Rainbow Six Extraction is another type of game entirely. It still has all the same mechanics but is fully co-op now with no PvP elements at all.

With a squad of up to three Operators, all of which are taken right out of Rainbow Six Siege with a few tweaks, you will go on different missions with varied objectives that pit you against swarms of deadly Archaeans. This entire experience is designed with this squad-based composition in mind, not a lone wolf-style experience, even though you do have that option if you so choose. Getting your friends together is the intended way to go -- and certainly the most fun -- but what if you want to play with a friend in the same place? Split-screen games are not as common as they used to be, even in co-op-focused titles like Rainbow Six Extraction, so does this game let you play with a friend couch co-op style?