Dark Souls servers taken down due to an exploit ‘that could let someone take over your PC’

The PvP servers for the PC versions of the Dark Souls games have been temporarily turned off, following reports of a potentially serious security issue.

According to those familiar with the issue, an exploit has been discovered which could let someone remotely run code on your PC then take control of it, potentially giving them access to your sensitive data or allowing them to run malicious software.

Although the exploit is clearly serious, it’s believed that only a handful of people know how to perform it at the moment, and they have no interest in using it for anything malicious.

However, according to a recap posted on the SpeedSouls Discord server, one of these people attempted to contact FromSoftware through various means to report the exploit privately, but was met with no reply.

As a result, they decided to perform the exploit in a non-malicious way to prove that it was possible and raise awareness of the issue in an attempt to get the studio’s attention.

During a Dark Souls 3 stream by The__Grim__Sleeper on Saturday, the user performed the exploit to take over his PC, then used its Narrator application to read out a copied and pasted rant.

The stunt appears to have worked, because on Sunday the official Dark Souls Twitter account announced that all PC Dark Souls games would have their servers temporarily turned off while the exploit is being investigated.

“PvP servers for Dark Souls 3, Dark Souls 2, and Dark Souls: Remastered have been temporarily deactivated to allow the team to investigate recent reports of an issue with online services.

“Servers for Dark Souls: PtDE will join them shortly. We apologise for this inconvenience.”

A third-party anti-cheat mod called Blue Sentinel claims to have already fixed the exploit, showing that there is at least a solution.

It has also been claimed that the same exploit was found in the code for the datamined version of Elden Ring, which will presumably also be fixed now.