Team Spirit analyst names the real culprits behind Steam's massive outage

Mark “sikle” Lerman stated that Valve developers were not to blame for the recent large-scale Steam outage, and that the gaming service was unavailable due to hackers from the AISURU botnet.

The Team Spirit analyst made this statement on Telegram.

“I don't see any journalists writing about this, but I think it's important to let you know. The recent Steam outages are not Valve's fault, but the fault of hackers from the AISURU botnet.”

According to Mark “sikle” Lerman, AISURU is a large network of infected devices that can put a heavy load on the network. During the Steam service outage, many other platforms around the world were also attacked. Team Spirit analyst reported that hackers have greatly expanded their base of controlled devices this year by hacking the update server of a major router manufacturer.

"AISURU is a huge network of infected devices that hackers use to attack websites and services. It can generate a huge load – up to 11.5 terabits per second, making it one of the most powerful in history. The attacks were comparable to the daily load of all traffic in Western Europe. On October 6, there was a record 30 terabits/sec.

In 2025, the team hacked the Totolink router update server. After that, tens of thousands of devices became part of AISURU – simply because users updated their firmware.

The attacks were not only on our favorite platform, but also on many others in many countries simultaneously: China, the US, Germany, the UK, and Hong Kong."

On October 7, Steam users experienced a massive outage twice, which temporarily prevented access to games and the online store itself.

As a reminder, Valve previously asked players to vote for the sets that will be included in Collector's Cache 2025.