Met My First Hacker Today

[Pb1of6]

At 63, I guess I fall in the "old people" category you are talking about. I am in computers since the 1980s, I have built all my PCs myself, have been programming with all kind of languages since DOS times, in my private life and in my job (on large company systems). I have also been gaming for 25 years almost daily. I know well how to use e-mail and I guess I could probably teach you one or two things.

One nil to the old codgers ( that includes me )

 

[Dr Zachary Smith]

One nil to the old codgers ( that includes me )

Yeh if codgers had made the game it would be fine, I blame Braben for hiring all these kids !!

 

[Gusty]

Anyone was thinking about, that hacking could be a kind of cyberwar between game developers ?
There is alot of money in.

 

[salad]

Anyone was thinking about, that hacking could be a kind of cyberwar between game developers ?
There is alot of money in.

Nah, its not like its something new, just kids ruining the game for themselves and others.

Happens with every online game.

They're so delusional that they think they deserve the super hacking powers.

I've seen them around since my UT99 days.

 

[Rhywden]

PeerReview, Carbon, Watchmen. 3 technologies from academia (one of which was paid for by Microsoft) all of which try to solve the problem of cheating in P2P. They don't operate in real time and they require non-interested parties to get involved. I guess from the logging that FD are adding they are building something akin to this. BTW, they are called overlays because they can be added over the top of a basic P2P system with (supposedly) very little work.

I personally think that FD found that P2P is harder than C/S model and therefore took longer than they expected to get it working and therefore the securing of the system (of which academic papers exist (EASES is one, RACS is another)). The beta will make exploits like the dumbfire exploit less likely though won't make outright cheating go away.

Well, the thing is that currently some cheats use the CheatEngine.

Which is very lowtech and does not need to manipulate the client' executable (or other files) itself, just the memory it uses.

Due to the fact that this actually works and is not immediately detected by the client, I dare say that they didn't even implement the most basic of cheat-detecting and cheat-proofing techniques.

 

[DefiledDragon]

Seems to me that the "multiplayer" aspect of this game is pretty much . No epic battles between commanders supporting rival factions, no real ability to pirate somebody due to logoffski's, no teaming up to do multiplayer missions because their aren't any and even if there were, you can't team up anyway, but if some socially wants to sit in a station blowing people up for lulz, that's cool. What was the point in the multiplayer again?

 

[Rhywden]

Seems to me that the "multiplayer" aspect of this game is pretty much . No epic battles between commanders supporting rival factions, no real ability to pirate somebody due to logoffski's, no teaming up to do multiplayer missions because their aren't any and even if there were, you can't team up anyway, but if some socially wants to sit in a station blowing people up for lulz, that's cool. What was the point in the multiplayer again?

The awesome background simulation.

Which doesn't work.

 

[Non Grata]

And me, I have forgotton more than todays youth seem to think they know.

If you've forgotten it, how can you know how much it is that you've forgotten?

(Apart from spelling and punctuation, which is a given).

 

[Agony_Aunt]

In my experience for what it's worth, cheaters rarely do it on their own accounts, preferring to use hacked accounts, after all who would cheat on their own account ? Ironically probably a percentage of these cheat programs that are available probably steal the users un and pass and email it to someone else, oh well I might just stop playing this game and completely forget about it, it has enough problems with bugs and being boring, cheats are just yet another fail in a long list of 400 million fails.

If that is the case with ED, we should see forum posts from people shouting about how FD closed their accounts for hacking, which we haven't done so far. Also, such reports could also be from people who did hack trying to claim they didn't, or if i may put my tinfoil hat on for a moment, from hackers trying to muddy the waters.

 

[Jerakeen]

At 63, I guess I fall in the "old people" category you are talking about. I am in computers since the 1980s, I have built all my PCs myself, have been programming with all kind of languages since DOS times, in my private life and in my job (on large company systems). I have also been gaming for 25 years almost daily. I know well how to use e-mail and I guess I could probably teach you one or two things.

I'm the same although I specialised in support since 1988. Probably a bad career choice because I could earn a lot more as a developer but supporting people and solving their problems is what I love to do. I call my PC "Grandfather's Axe" because it's had 2 new heads and 4 new handles but it's just as good as the day he bought it.

Having spent 26 years in support it grieves me to see a company like FD show so little respect to the support aspect of their business and paying their people so little. It comes as no surprise to me that tickets logged months ago for problems that were fixed 2 patches ago are still not being closed.

All due respect to the boys and girls that have accepted these wages but I'm afraid it's just not possible to get experienced support staff for under £11 per hour. For anyone who thinks that's a lot of money, well I suppose compared to stacking shelves in Tescos it would be if you didn't have all the associated costs of being a contractor. No sick pay, no holiday pay, pay both parts of your NI, pay your accountant or umbrella company. When you take all that into account you wouldn't be earning much more than minimum wage and that's before you pay tax. I bet anything you like they don't pay their code monkeys that low. Support is always the poor relation when it comes to wages.

Yeh if codgers had made the game it would be fine, I blame Braben for hiring all these kids !!

Kids are cheap and it allows them to say that they have a dedicated support team.

 

[Zeeman]

I got into George Lucas in Solo, then switch to open to have a look to see what the guy who keeps scratching his nipples is up to.

He basically seems to keep launching chaff, and he does seem affected by the laser fire when it hits, it's just that very little is hitting. Perhaps the station guns should be turrets...

I'd *DEARLY* love to blow him up, buy an Eagle, load up on chaff and dumbfire, spring when he's after someone else.. Except for my hull full of cargo, which means I can't store my ship.

Drats!
Z...

 

[Agony_Aunt]

It's a godawful piece of malware, you may as well phone someone in Russia and give them all your money.

Yes, please phone someone in Russia give them all your money. PM me and ill let you know my details

Actually, there are at least two types of hacks out there. One is the aforementioned downloadable cheat program (which may contain malware). It has a nice UI and everything.

The other is not a program as such. Its code injections that run through a cheat program that modifies memory where values and instructions are kept.

As I said earlier, the best mechanism for dealing with this is not trying to get into an arms race with hackers (look at all the hacks for Windows or almost any other popular software out there), you can't beat the hackers if they are interested and motivated enough to beat you. Not without spending so many resources that it drains the ability to focus on delivering new content and other stuff, and when you look at things like SecureROM, sometimes those anti-hack measures harm paying customers.

As i said, the thing to do is give other players the tools to better capture and record people cheating, and let the playerbase give FD the instruments to catch those cheating. All FD have to do then is analyze the data and confirm someone is cheating, and that's one less cheater to deal with.

 

[Blake_Dragon]

if you run into this situation, in the main menu is a function, "Report Player" (4th down) it allows you to input the name the reason (and there IS a hacking option) as well as server time of the incident.

when you run into this CMDR <accusedtohackalot> did you file one of those reports? it suggests that there is some kind of a log around to be looked at.

this said, please note that I personally don't know how effective that tool is. However, it can't hurt, can it?

 

[Korenwolf]

Support is always the poor relation when it comes to wages.

and don't forget the burnout rate from only ever seeing complaints.

 

[Taimaru]

I would put them into their own instance but instead of other hacker/griefer players, randomly make NPCs look like players (hollow square) so they don't know they have been found out / banned.

They get lolz from seeing that they were found out and will probably make another account anyway. By making them think they are still griefing players and haven't been found out they will leave the rest of us real players alone.

 

[waffadeuce]

On the bright side, 150+ posts and no one has mentioned the Python nerf!
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Doh....
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Cheers.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I am not so confident. The first hacks appeared in the alpha version of E: D. So FD have known about it in a practical, not just theoretical, sense, for over a year. They did some obfuscation to make it harder to hack, but that is only harder, not impossible. Then what? We do not know, of course. Are they fighting an escalating arms race with the hackers, constantly changing stuff and forcing the hackers to keep up to date? Are they waiting to see how bad it gets? Something else? Somewhere in between?

Hackers evolve their tactics to deal with changes. I'd be willing to guess FD have made a number of changes to secure the game, and the hackers found new ways. I found a little evidence for this in one of the threads about hacking ED where the hacker said the old version no longer worked and they published a new one. Of course, that might not be FD putting protection in, it could have just been caused by a regular change that meant the hack no longer word (pehaps a value changed memory address or something).

This is the problem with trying to protect against hackers. Move the goalposts, at best you do is slow them down a little while they look for a new attack vector. And they will find it. Games with lot bigger budgets than ED have failed to fully address the problems of hackers, even some of those with centralized servers have issues, because they have to make the trade off between security and responsiveness. The more you put server side, the more data needs to be transmitted, and in a fast action game (like ED is when you are dealing with combat) any server side delays would be critical.

 

[AsukaZ]

Anyone was thinking about, that hacking could be a kind of cyberwar between game developers ?
There is alot of money in.

huh, interesting idea.

 

[bootsam]

Alternatively give us the jobs as the security services to patrol with the very same cheat powers yet enhanced to nerf them. Cheats have low skills, hence why they cheat. A lot of honest players have high skills. Combine these with a security job with powers and the cheats would be useless. (Note I have poor skills so am not applying). I suspect there are many who'd like the job as a station CMDR. Give the Mods here the job. Give em something from the game to make up for their poor wages.

Let the community police the game.

 

[Rhywden]

Alternatively give us the jobs as the security services to patrol with the very same cheat powers yet enhanced to nerf them. Cheats have low skills, hence why they cheat. A lot of honest players have high skills. Combine these with a security job with powers and the cheats would be useless. (Note I have poor skills so am not applying). I suspect there are many who'd like the job as a station CMDR. Give the Mods here the job. Give em something from the game to make up for their poor wages.

Let the community police the game.

I'm curious as to how you think you can get around an invincibilty cheat.

And handing players an instakill ability is a very bad idea.