Turn off Open and Private until the current hacking/spoofing situation (rogue devkit?) is conclusively handled.

[Leadfoot]

The people using the cheat trainer menus are usually younger, and Elite has a generally older playerbase, and as everyone likes to point out, isn't incredibly high on the daily concurrent players charts, making it an unappealing target for most immature trolls looking to ruin other peoples fun for their own amusement.

I invariably switched to solo when going to places like that. It's fun listening to system chat and then trolling them.

Seriously though, that kind of stuff is what caused me to hesitate for almost 2 months before I decided to pull the trigger and get this game.

If it wasn't for the fact that we have solo and player group modes to play in, I would probably be still working on Skyrim.

 

[Brrokk]

What I'd really like to know and haven't seen answered is: do the hackers have to instance with you first to impersonate you, or can they set it up by just typing in your Cmdr name?

 

[Northpin]

What I'd really like to know and haven't seen answered is: do the hackers have to instance with you first to impersonate you, or can they set it up by just typing in your Cmdr name?

Pretty much i guess it's just an alteration of a value stored in the memory.
Since they can alter basically anything in the game, it's probably easy enough to change the presented CMDR name (obviously while in game, after they logged-in with theit 5Euro account bought from shady sites)

But if they resort to this, it can only mean someone specifically requested this feature to be used as revenge against other players

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

What I'd really like to know and haven't seen answered is: do the hackers have to instance with you first to impersonate you, or can they set it up by just typing in your Cmdr name?

They can change their displayed name to anything, but to mess with your account in more detail (mess up your reputation and/or missions etc.) they have to have instanced with you (or get info from someone who has).

 

[Brother Sabathius]

What I'd really like to know and haven't seen answered is: do the hackers have to instance with you first to impersonate you, or can they set it up by just typing in your Cmdr name?

They do not need to instance with you.

 

[GroG79]

They do not need to instance with you.

Oh please do explain

 

[Old Duck]

What I'd really like to know and haven't seen answered is: do the hackers have to instance with you first to impersonate you, or can they set it up by just typing in your Cmdr name?

Pure guess on my part based on IT background is that they are only spoofing the name itself, not the account. To hack the account and gain access to another user's assets would require a pretty serious flaw in Frontier's servers, where this information is stored. So a hacker might be able to call himself CMDR Old Duck, but he shouldn't be able to sell off all my wonderful ships and fleet carrier.

BTW, this is exactly what happened on the Space Engineers server, where the flaw was with the server itself. A hacker accessed the server and poof - all my very hard-earned stuffs were gone. That incident destroyed online SE for me... I haven't played seriously since then.

 

[Brrokk]

Pure guess on my part based on IT background is that they are only spoofing the name itself, not the account. To hack the account and gain access to another user's assets would require a pretty serious flaw in Frontier's servers, where this information is stored. So a hacker might be able to call himself CMDR Old Duck, but he shouldn't be able to sell off all my wonderful ships and fleet carrier.

BTW, this is exactly what happened on the Space Engineers server, where the flaw was with the server itself. A hacker accessed the server and poof - all my very hard-earned stuffs were gone. That incident destroyed online SE for me... I haven't played seriously since then.

OK, but FD have told us to look out for and report unexpected bounties etc :-(

 

[Northpin]

OK, but FD have told us to look out for and report unexpected bounties etc :-(

i really hope they dont use the advertised / display name during instancing to apply bounties and influence/rep modifiers and they use some form of hashing which would basically authenticate the cmdr's actions against the server.
do they?

 

[Brrokk]

i really hope they dont use the advertised / display name during instancing to apply bounties and influence/rep modifiers and they use some form of hashing which would basically authenticate the cmdr's actions against the server.
do they?

This is my fear. If that's the situation, you can be spoofed even if you haven't logged in for a while. I'd like more information, but maybe FD don't even know themselves exactly what's going on yet.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

Pretty sure they will know who is cheating and the spoofing. won't get anyoue unfairly banned.
It's been a thing for years.
I'm just wondering why now.
Might just be about the availability of such things for all i know.
Hacks do tend to come and go though... it's a thing.

 

[shockbait]

This is my fear. If that's the situation, you can be spoofed even if you haven't logged in for a while. I'd like more information, but maybe FD don't even know themselves exactly what's going on yet.

If it's anything like the trainers for GTA and DBD, and most others going back 20 years, the name spoofing is just disinformation to cause chaos in the community.
It's just the name, not anything to do with your account/cd key/etc.

To answer whether they need to instance with you, not necessarily, a common tactic is to spoof a "famous" streamer/youtuber/community member, but anyone they instance with is fair game, with most programs it's literally 1 click to steal someones name on a peer-to-peer network. But if you're a random unknown pubbie, you have little worry they will spoof you unless you directly instance with them, or have them on your friends list. In most peer-to-peer games, if a hacker is on your friends list, they can mess with you without even being instanced with you.

As for what they can actually do, just killing you and forcing you to eat a rebuy is probably the most damaging thing they can do. They can disconnect you from the game, and probably have the ability to give fines, bounties, change notoriety, and effect many other variables while they are instanced with you, but most of these things, if done to an extreme, should trigger some kind of red flag/safety from the transaction server*, so the best they can hope for is that you can't afford your rebuy.

Source: Former anti-cheat admin for TeamWarfareLeague, first hand experience with these programs learning how to identify them.

*=They could theoretically give you a hundred billion bounty, but that would most definitely trigger the anticheat protocols of any competently programmed game.

 

[Northpin]

that would most definitely trigger the anticheat protocols

trigger what?

the legends say that sometime ago, after carriers were introduced and cmdrs being able to jump 500ly and reach systems previously unreachable, the said cmdrs noticed far-away systems already tagged.
How Come? Cheaters using trainers to increase their jump range beyond limits was the most obvious reason.
FDev said they cannot do anything about the already cheat-tagged systems, but this makes you wonder - dont they have any data analyzers raising flags when a ship is jumping 450ly without any supercharge? Seems they haven't

So back to our days:

• dont have they any data analyzers to raise flags when a ship is suck in the mailslot at Jameson and taking station fire without exploding? seems not - someone had to tag FDev over media channels to have someone ban the offender after they put up a show for like 2-3 hours in a Saturday evening.
• dont have they any data analyzers to raise flags when a ship is firing a thargoid shutdown field? seems not
• dont have they any data analyzers to raise flags when a ship is one shotting another ship using a laser? seems not

and the list could go on and on

Just remember, ED is the first and only multiplayer game developed by FDev, it was built on a very naive multiplayer perspective (see griefing, seal clubbing, crime and punishment), with no subscriptions, no in game customer support, no active / pro-active policing
So it's sort of a cheaters paradise, luckily its a nerdy paradise so it's not a popular cheater's destination


edit: lots of typos

 

[shockbait]

So it's sort of a cheaters paradise, luckily its a nerdy paradise so it's not a popular cheater's destination

I did say "competently programmed"

 

[Ozric]

I don't think I should have to explain why, but I didn't think I'd have to make a suggestion of this either so here we are.

You didn't have to make a suggestion here, but here we are.

Frontier have already confirmed they are investigating it as a matter of urgency, something which I hope it would be obvious they were doing before making the announcement.
All this thread does is provide rampant speculation without any actual knowledge. So as pointless as it was, I'm closing it