Can A Hacker Really Do Anything With Your IP Address?

Twitch streamer xQc’s November 2021 outage, shortly after playing “Crab Game,” highlighted how exposed IP addresses can invite distributed denial-of-service attacks; the game’s developer subsequently moved to newer Steam networking to mask players’ addresses. IP addresses route data to and from websites and games, and most home routers now let multiple devices share one public IPv4 address, while IPv6 can assign each device its own public-facing address. Neither address type exposes passwords or personal data, but both can give attackers a target. The episode matters because DDoS exposure is a practical risk for streamers and online gamers even without a data breach. Watch whether more game developers adopt IP-hiding networking and whether DDoS-related outages become less common in public lobbies.