So there’s currently a Cmdr stuck in the slot, station defences having no affect, assumed he’s proving a point about cheats...

[Mangal Oemie]

Umm.. nope. As far as i'm aware, the public hack stopped working around the start of 2018 (3.3 was end of 2018 right?). That's about when the hackers went dark.

I have no idea how long it took for the hackers to get a new working version after that, because of course, i could no longer see what they were doing.

From what we understand now, there was a new hack working by the end of 2018. How many times FD stopped the hack working before and after that i have no idea. Only someone who has access to the closed forum/discord might be able to provide that info.

If you read the public cheat forums you can track the periods when FD stopped the cheat working and how long it took for the hackers to fix it.

So... anyone with access to the private group? Can you dig back and track the periods of fixes and breaks? Perhaps make a handy chart? This will enable us to see how this game of cat and mouse has developed over the months. Or is it truly unbroken? Have the cheat devs had a working version without breaks for months? Or are they just quick at getting a new working version?

Actually Mangal, you seem to have insider info! Please share! 3 days to make a fix by the hackers. Not surprising. What about other patches? Did FD have any other (short lived) victories?

I believe your information is incomplete. Because the hacks were fully operational during the 2nd half of 2018 as they were used by bots. When I said after 3.3 it took 3 days, that means of course that there was a working 3.2 version before that. Since FD has no handle on botting, either, and bots use the hacks, they weren't detecting the hacks in H2/2018 either. They may have briefly at the start of 2018 disabled a prior version. I don't know about that. I also don't know whether the forum I have seen is the same as you did.

We all have partial information. I have only seen what I have seen, and passed what I know to Frontier over the months while botting was active in our play area. That is largely a one-way street, and the questions I have been asked suggest that Frontier is ... well, dependent on the community for info on this, and yet still unprepared to work with the community to improve things.

They seem, for instance, deeply reluctant to work with us on anti-botting - maybe thinking that if we help them, we'd start botting ourselves? I don't know. Frontier does not trust those who are trying to help. We've been looking for a proper dialogue for months and months. Promised, but never happens.

The only insider info I have is what we learnt when we were under botting attack. We got nowhere, just like AOS got nowhere, neither with Frontier or with the wider community. We welcome the new attention the wider community is putting on this, and were pleased to hear that while we were working with Frontier on botting SDC a.o. were doing the same on the hacks - we probably at times reported the same things to the same people.

Do you understand the frustration of those who have been trying to work this for months and months with Frontier quietly? The furthest we got was:

• a QA engineer looking into it in spare time (rock star person! And I don't even know more than a Discord name! Please David, give this person a new role of anti-cheat lead or something!)
• an interaction of Chinese whispers between myself, a Triple Elite group lead and a community manager, because Frontier doesn't talk to peasants other than through Triple Elite, apparently, where we demonstrated some ability in identifying bot accounts. Nevertheless, there was no follow-up, even though the Triple Elite lead tried. Promises from the community team were never followed up on...

As someone who makes a living in infosec, this displays some of the very worst practices in the industry around security. It's pretty much an anti-pattern.

 

[znôrt]

There's no reason Frontier needs to focus their response on one subgroup of people who are not any more adversely affected than anyone else - they are just more vocal about it and more willing to inconvenience other players to get their way.

i don't get you.

suppose i sell icecream and waffles. if people gets consistently sick from my waffles, do you really think that i need not respond to all my customers, existing and future, but just to the few who ate my waffles?

i never said frontier should respond to pvpers. frontier should respond for their sorry mess, period.

 

[Schmack]

i don't get you.

suppose i sell icecream and waffles. if people gets consistently sick from my waffles, do you really think that i need not respond to all my customers, existing and future, but just to the few who ate my waffles?

i never said frontier should respond to pvpers. frontier should respond for their sorry mess, period.

I said they shouldn't respond exclusively to PvPers and you said you disagreed.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/index...oint-about-cheats.513607/page-15#post-7830594

Perhaps you misunderstood when I said "special statement". "Special" meaning exclusive to that group. Otherwise it's just a statement, nothing special relating to PvPers.

However, FD doesn't sell the cheat/hack so the waffles/ice cream analogy is a poor analogy. Their EULA prohibits it in fact. They can simply continue using the reporting tool and whatever AC they have running to catch cheaters and responding how they always have. I don't think anything unusually egregious has transpired recently. This type of thing isn't remotely unique.

A better analogy would be that you go to a gym for a workout and someone there is not relinquishing the weights you need to use. They are just sitting there on the phone. You report this to the desk and they either handle it or they don't. If they don't you can leave the gym and either ask for a refund or take them to court or just leave in general (if you don't pay to workout there). Either way, they don't have to issue you a statement.

 

[znôrt]

I said they shouldn't respond exclusively to PvPers and you said you disagreed.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/index...oint-about-cheats.513607/page-15#post-7830594

Perhaps you misunderstood when I said "special statement". "Special" meaning exclusive to that group. Otherwise it's just a statement, nothing special relating to PvPers.

oh, i see now. i actually blanked out the whole 'special' and 'pvp..' part, the point was 'needs to make a statement'. i just took it as some literary licence on your part, but you were actually quoting me ... however i never meant pvpers as meriting any specific statement, they are just the most affected by this. okay, too much formus ...

 

[Leadfoot]

I do have a wish on this. I hope FD and the protester take this opportunity to dialogue and work together. Clearly the protester has access to the tools, FD can't detect it, and they can run together through a set of scenarios so FD can see what they can see at their end. That is, pro-actively and productively work together to put an end to this. If this just turns into a shadow or permaban for the protester account, that would be a big missed chance. Do it, FD! Change your past behavior and work together with your community to fix these things.

I think that's what he's hoping for. That banging noise is Mr. Opportunity knocking on the door.
I don't work for FD, obviously, but I'd highly recommend answering that knock.

 

[Tomx]

Feel rather sorry for Nick Naylor, as far as I know I've never met him but it was clearly an action of protest and didn't harm any other commanders. Having listened to Commander Plater's interview he obviously did it for the best of reasons. Just my opinion. Hope he gets back into open after a bit of consideration.

 

[Bryan K]

If we use your mentality, FDev will allow everyone and sundry to download this cheat, use it as they see fit, until such time as they are redy to code a fix? Come on! That's just farcical to the extreme.

Like Quince? And all the other times FDev have done precisely that?

 

[moose666]

wrong thread, please ignore

 

[PharaohSteve]

I get what his intentions were, but ...

 

[CAPT. Ho Chi Minge]

Like Quince? And all the other times FDev have done precisely that?

Taking advantage of a loophole in the mission system isnt the same as downloading a 3rd party software to circumvent and alter ship stats etc.

No EULA was ever broken at quince or any of the other get rich/rank quick schemes.

 

[Trekari]

I suspect that Nick Naylor knew he would be banned for his actions.

Congrats guys, you put out the tree that was on fire. Now if you'd kindly turn around and take a look at the forest fire blazing behind you, that'd be great.

 

[ECLIP5E]

I’m still on the fence about whether or not this was the proper way to raise the issue of cheating. Yes it’s a problem and yes it ruins the game for everyone but is it right to cheat to prove a point? I can understand the frustration w Fdev not being able to resolve the problem, and that Commander Nick likely felt he had no other course of action. I suppose there’s been thousands of reports filed about cheating (maybe more) with no apparent resolution.

I try to rationalize the actions of commander Nick by drawing comparisons to other real-world issues such as (queue pouring several hundred gallons of gasoline onto the fire here...) such as the debate over gun control here in the US. It doesn’t matter what side of the argument you are on... it’s common sense that the way to stop mass shootings is certainly NOT to grab a gun and go kill a bunch of people. That’s just insane because it’s not a solution at all, it’s just making the problem worse. Yes it brings the issue at hand back into the news, but that doesn’t make it right either. Ultimately the burden lies upon the government to find a middle ground that solves the problem without infringing upon the rights of law-abiding sane citizens.

With ED, the burden lies upon the developers yes. They do need to resolve the issue and prevent cheating. Now we don’t know if this is the case or not, but suppose patching these holes into the code that allow hacking, would also prevent Fdev from adding new features to the game? I’m fairly fluent in php code and know that there’s often hooks in code to be used at a future time to add additional functionality which can be good or bad, depending on who writes the code and their intentions as well. Suppose the only way to stop the current exploits is to turn off the API which sites such as EDDB, Instagram, EDSM and others need to function? Imagine ED without one of those companion sites? Imagine trying to plan an engineering build for your new ship without Coriolis or Ed Shipyard? Now I’m speaking purely from a speculative standpoint here... Perhaps the reason Fdev hasn’t stopped this is because some of these hooks in the code are needed to implement certain features of the game (current or future). Suppose that patching one of these hacks would also prevent the implementation of a new wanted feature such as space legs or atmospheric landings? Would we be willing to compromise never experiencing those highly anticipated features in exchange for no more cheating? The way I see it, either way Fdev is not able to make everyone happy.

A statement about this issue and some sort of promise or confirmation with specific details addressing a plan to solve the problem as opposed to “were aware of this and were taking it seriously and we apologize” would do wonders to calm many in the community.

 

[EdzUp]

If he got banned for his actions but others who have been reported in the past are still free to do as they please it would scream of skapegoat.

What we actually need is Fdev to do something behind the scenes to check for cheats if this means adjusting the client so that it moved memory values around etc and release a new client build once a week. OR detects programs accessing it's memory and deals with it that way.

Personally I would take the checksum of an action approach ie if I sell five items at one credit I would get five credits on hitting sell if this is different your kicked.

 

[Chaparral]

So this event pretty much proves that the god mode app is definitely not patched out.

It is also fair to infer that these bans are case by case.

It might be nice to have some sort of statement regarding the threshold of evidence required to initiate a high priority inquiry.

If parking in the toaster in Shin in Open is the threshold, then open and the bgs are pretty much broken.

 

[EdzUp]

If parking in the toaster in Shin in Open is the threshold, then open and the bgs are pretty much broken.

Or making a video shaming the Devs into action might get ya banned too

One thing comes of this, is this type of cheating available on consoles if not it certainly stops the "master race" arguement lol

 

[m0rl0ck]

Or making a video shaming the Devs into action might get ya banned too

One thing comes of this, is this type of cheating available on consoles if not it certainly stops the "master race" arguement lol

Yeah, you can just add it the list of things you cant do on consoles.

 

[EdzUp]

Yeah, you can just add it the list of things you cant do on consoles.

Yeah but is cheating in multiplayer game really a plus?

 

[FatFreddysCoat]

The hacks were operational as far back as 2016 - it’s not too hard to find posts from when a trainer was first released, and people being caught using it and being punished with a week ban to solo and forfeit of some CR.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I believe your information is incomplete. Because the hacks were fully operational during the 2nd half of 2018 as they were used by bots. When I said after 3.3 it took 3 days, that means of course that there was a working 3.2 version before that. Since FD has no handle on botting, either, and bots use the hacks, they weren't detecting the hacks in H2/2018 either. They may have briefly at the start of 2018 disabled a prior version. I don't know about that. I also don't know whether the forum I have seen is the same as you did.

We all have partial information. I have only seen what I have seen, and passed what I know to Frontier over the months while botting was active in our play area. That is largely a one-way street, and the questions I have been asked suggest that Frontier is ... well, dependent on the community for info on this, and yet still unprepared to work with the community to improve things.

They seem, for instance, deeply reluctant to work with us on anti-botting - maybe thinking that if we help them, we'd start botting ourselves? I don't know. Frontier does not trust those who are trying to help. We've been looking for a proper dialogue for months and months. Promised, but never happens.

The only insider info I have is what we learnt when we were under botting attack. We got nowhere, just like AOS got nowhere, neither with Frontier or with the wider community. We welcome the new attention the wider community is putting on this, and were pleased to hear that while we were working with Frontier on botting SDC a.o. were doing the same on the hacks - we probably at times reported the same things to the same people.

Do you understand the frustration of those who have been trying to work this for months and months with Frontier quietly? The furthest we got was:

• a QA engineer looking into it in spare time (rock star person! And I don't even know more than a Discord name! Please David, give this person a new role of anti-cheat lead or something!)
• an interaction of Chinese whispers between myself, a Triple Elite group lead and a community manager, because Frontier doesn't talk to peasants other than through Triple Elite, apparently, where we demonstrated some ability in identifying bot accounts. Nevertheless, there was no follow-up, even though the Triple Elite lead tried. Promises from the community team were never followed up on...

As someone who makes a living in infosec, this displays some of the very worst practices in the industry around security. It's pretty much an anti-pattern.

Thanks for the info.

However, are you confusing two separate cheats? There are the bot scripts which control effectively AFK flying and trading or whatever. And then there are the cheats that give invulnerable shields etc. Aren't those two separate things?

Or are you saying the bots run the cheats in parallel?

I thought the outrage here was more about people running hacks in open to give themselves invulnerable shilds etc.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

The hacks were operational as far back as 2016 - it’s not too hard to find posts from when a trainer was first released, and people being caught using it and being punished with a week ban to solo and forfeit of some CR.

And FD have time and again stopped those hacks from working, only for the hackers to find a way around it and get them working again.

Its cat and mouse.