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Author |
Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 63 post(s) |
Othran
Brutor tribe
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Posted - 2010.12.07 11:28:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Othran on 07/12/2010 11:28:22 Basically the client needs to be secured. That's the bottom line.
We need to stop calling the bots "macros" because they're not. They are really replacing the client or modifying the data prior to the client sending or receiving it.
As things stand, the client can be compromised or replaced by someone wishing to cheat. Its also subject to "man in the middle" compromises where the client is 100% genuine. Anyone with half a brain has worked this out by now but CCP continue to be unable to detect these attacks.
I used to laugh at my wife's game as it took so long to load or patch*. The jokes on me now though
*the only way to modify her client is by using encrypted patch files, each one of which is verified both on download AND when implementing the patch - every single file in the patch archive; client integrity is thoroughly checked every time it loads and there are "measures to prevent man in the middle exploits". Downside of patch process is that even when the patch is downloaded, the patch process can still take hours to decrypt/verify/re-encrypt the patch files.
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Othran
Brutor tribe
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Posted - 2010.12.08 17:15:00 -
[2]
Everyone is focusing a little too much on RMT.
Lets just look at in-game effects. Assume the bots don't do RMT, they only pay for the account via PLEX. Now you've seen some wild figures thrown around but lets take a very conservative view for a few seconds.
Assume the bot is just run by someone who starts it up when they go to work/school for 8 hours. Now we'll assume that the isk/hour figures for the bot are overstated on the various sites. Lets say 10mill/hour OK?
So for the month we have : 10(mill) x 8(hours) x 30(days) = 2.4 billion isk. Every month. BEFORE you even start playing the game. That's just for a "casual" botter who is actually a player, not a RMT *****.
I've been in alliances/corps where there's always someone that seems to have been "left logged in by mistake" and doesn't talk for 10 hours or so on channels or vent/TS. Haven't most of you noticed the same and isn't it always the same people now you think about it?
Eve sov gameplay is screwed really - and its not the riches of moons that are doing it, its the ability to generate isk literally from nothing (npc bounties) while being at work.
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Othran
Brutor tribe
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Posted - 2010.12.08 18:10:00 -
[3]
Originally by: Feilamya There are entire corps and maybe even alliances of obvious farmers, who are blue to some of the major power blocks. A short trip through the drone regions can open your eyes for the real magnitude of the RMT problem.
I've been to Stain and seen the AAA Citizens Ravens thanks Been out to Perrigen Falls too, Oasa and the Spire.
The point I was trying to make is that even for someone who doesn't care about RMT, this bollox affects you as its simply cheating. No need to talk about RMT - if your enemy has more members who bot when at work than you do then he'll likely win the sov war*
*assuming equality in TZ participation etc.
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Othran
Brutor tribe
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Posted - 2010.12.10 20:42:00 -
[4]
Originally by: Ganagati An example of how this could work? Besides the theoretical "They should figure out how to do it. I'm sure it's easy!". Bots use the same mechanics game clients do to send commands to them. When those commands appear at CCPs servers, it looks no different and is completely indistinguishable from a normal player sending information. At no point do botters crack into CCP's servers. So, I look forward to hearing how they could do this. You have no idea how many lives you would make easier in doing so... and that last line isn't sarcasm.
Well if we're talking about replacing/compromising the client then the fix for that is pretty trivial. Client sends an encrypted token to server after the handshake which is unique every time - just grab a timestamp from the server/client and use that as part of the seed for the token, along with the hash outputs for the critical files in the client. Longer load/login time but something has to give. No valid token = no login regardless of username/password presented.
As far as client comms go, well we're talking about data injection so there are options available there - both client and server-side but only CCP can comment on those as they're not "free" in terms of cpu usage.
This is just after like a few minutes thought so I'm sure its easily subverted. Its not beyond the wit of man to sort this out though. Really.
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Othran
Brutor tribe
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Posted - 2010.12.13 13:06:00 -
[5]
Originally by: Alaizabel Bronstein
Originally by: Vaerah Vahrokha If you are a real corp willing to humbly rent some 0.0 space they demand you so much money you can't afford it, because they assume and know you are botting and therefore asking 1B a month is "fair game" for keeping their mouths shut and ask no questions.
IT's standard renting rate is 10b/month for a single system (you can negotiate discounts for additional systems).
Which frankly isn't unreasonable assuming that the renter corp has 10 members. 1bill each/month = 30 mill a day.
Real 0.0 players who PvE and PvP for a few hours a week make way way more than that a day. 250-400mill a day was normal in the last alliance I was in, and from what I saw the core corps weren't macroing. Do note that the "250-400mill" included faction mods etc which would need to be sold, I'm not talking just bounty income.
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Othran
Brutor tribe
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Posted - 2010.12.13 19:01:00 -
[6]
Originally by: Vaerah Vahrokha
For combat ships I am sure it's possible to find a similar arrangement:
Yeah there is actually and given the weak devblog I think its worth considering.
Remove npc bounties from 0.0 ratting. There's no valid "in-game reason" for them to be paid.
0.0 has unique rewards in terms of materials and faction items. Bounties shouldn't exist - or they should be paid by the controlling sov entity.
Remember that npc bounties are the only way to generate significant quantities of NEW isk in-game. Time to look very hard at this I think.
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Othran
Brutor tribe
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Posted - 2010.12.23 10:14:00 -
[7]
Well I've just done what might be my last petition ever on this.
I've petitioned 20 characters who aren't just obvious, they're blatant.
If they're still here in a couple of weeks then I know that CCP simply don't care about cheating unless it involves RMT.
Do make sure you're all pointing new/returning players at this thread. Best they know the score as early as possible.
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Othran
Brutor tribe
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Posted - 2010.12.23 19:48:00 -
[8]
Originally by: Othran Well I've just done what might be my last petition ever on this.
I've petitioned 20 characters who aren't just obvious, they're blatant.
If they're still here in a couple of weeks then I know that CCP simply don't care about cheating unless it involves RMT.
Do make sure you're all pointing new/returning players at this thread. Best they know the score as early as possible.
Mmmm odd that within an hour of this post I get some "eastern" attention.
Bring it if you like lads - no bubbles = epic fail on your part. Do keep bringing in the alts though.....
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Othran
Ad Infernum
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Posted - 2011.01.13 07:51:00 -
[9]
Edited by: Othran on 13/01/2011 07:51:37
Originally by: Tornan CCP likes bots
A little unfair perhaps?
The truth of the matter however is that CCP doesn't care about bots which are not directly involved in RMT.
That is the only conclusion a reasonable person can make. I know I'm never wasting my time raising another petition on the matter anyway.
Anybody who asks me about Eve now gets told that its unlikely they will ever be able to compete with established players/corps (well botters really). Nothing to do with SP. Everything to do with ISK "earned" while you're not even in the same room/building as the client.
Do the newbies/potential players a favour and tell them the truth - there really is no point in most of them wasting their time trying to play Eve "honestly".
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.13 13:05:00 -
[10]
Edited by: Othran on 13/02/2011 13:05:25
Originally by: pcydo Free bump. In regards to http://www.evenews24.com/2011/02/12/the-rise-of-the-isk-printing-machines-a-case-study-on-bots/
1 day bans.
Oh yeah you're REALLY serious about stamping out bots aren't you CCP?
Total unmitigated bull****. ALL CCP cares about is the revenue stream. Nothing else is a factor as has been demonstrated on HUNDREDS if not thousands of occasions.
I hope lots of people look at this and say "f*ck it may as well get a bot myself".
Spread the word to other sites
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.16 11:40:00 -
[11]
Originally by: Vaerah Vahrokha Edit: the nine mackinaws botter I meet every single day and posted about for months is - guess what - still here.
As are the 20+ courier bots I petitioned - who to my sure and certain knowledge have been petitioned (and temp banned) 4 times now.
CCP are NOT serious about removing botters from the game. They want to keep the isk faucets running and so all the botters get is a slap on the wrist. Bad bot! Don't do it again - oh wait you already did. Several times
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.16 13:26:00 -
[12]
Originally by: Jack Gilligan Why bother with it and the lure of the sandbox economy if a bunch of Russian alliance botters are going to reduce the value of what you do to nothing?
Look you do yourself no favours at all by repeating this, so stop eh? This is in EVERY SINGLE SOV HOLDING ALLIANCE, BAR NONE.
The Russian speaking Eve community does however seem to be deeper into this whole crappy business than most other language groups. I suspect that had a lot to do with ancient drone region nerfs and bots have evolved a lot since then such that they are in use everywhere.
There are however a lot of countries that speak Russian to some extent - eg Serbia. Always pointing the finger at "the Russians" is like blaming the English for people smack talking in local because the majority of smack is in English
I'm not naive. I know what goes on in the South/East. Nor am I anyones alt. Nor am I Russian or Eastern European. This is my main.
The drone regions however are NOT the source of new ISK as they don't get bounties for drones so I wish people would stop going on about them as being the main problem.
There are loads of bots yes but they're not injecting money into the economy.
They are however cheating in-game in that they can build superiority rather than buy it (as bounty macro ratting alliances do) so from my point of view they're still just cheating scum. Being dispassionate though they do less damage to the game than the macro ratters in other null regions.
If anyone wants to go rage on bots then there is NO better area to do it than Stain. NPC null so you have stations. Rats in Stain generate ISK through bounties so shut that down if you want to do cloaky stuff.
CCP won't do anything other than tweak game mechanics - and don't kid yourselves, that is aimed ONLY at RMT botters. Rampant cheating will continue, but blaming the Russians for it all the time is asinine. If we're talking RMT then the US economy is flat on its arse right now - hell California alone runs a deficit bigger than most European countries - so the incentive is the same for people without a job regardless which side of the Greenwich Meridian you are.
Every single corp which resides in sov-holding space have some members who always seem to be ratting. Before those corps complain, look around you. There IS someone (probably several) just like that.
Until the cost of tolerating botters exceeds the cost of banning them bots will remain.
I think the players (all languages) need to convince CCP to do the right thing. It's worth a try before giving up on Eve I reckon.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.16 14:12:00 -
[13]
Originally by: gfldex How likely is it that somebody who is botting is not paying his accounts with PLEX from 4-4? So in that respect they are all ISK sellers.
No its not.
From CCPs perspective, isk generated from bounties and spent on PLEX = net revenue to CCP and neutral effect on economy. Healthy situation and really not a problem, but....
....of course it only works if you disregard the way Eve (and its players) actually works. Which is precisely what CCP have done.
Got to give them credit for it though - lovely re-inflating bubble. Just takes a loss of player confidence though and....
pop
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.16 17:49:00 -
[14]
Originally by: Opertone Can you assume that CCP employees have a feeling that EVE is dying or that perhaps they do not make enough money, so they strike a deal with ISK selling companies and not interfere in their activities. In return they get X ~ (1-20) % of the money by a private transfer.
In simple words CCP staff makes money on RMT, diverting profit from their company to their personal accounts. This can be a clear, logical explanation.
No.
CCP as a company is maximising the revenue stream that it has NOW to the exclusion of all else. The way they are behaving its likely the revenue stream is decreasing WAY more rapidly than they thought. There are two games (one costing WAY WAY more than they got told at acquisition) hanging on the Eve revenue stream so you work it out.
Employees diverting isk to their own accounts? Dream on and find another tin hat.
Employees have nothing to do with it.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.20 10:46:00 -
[15]
Edited by: Othran on 20/02/2011 10:48:57
Originally by: Von Hinten
Originally by: Kuronaga Got a friend who bots.
He laughs, cause on the botter forums it's an ongoing joke that not a single one of them has ever gotten cracked down on.
And when he get cracked down he only recieves a lol 3 day ban:
That sounds like a second ban to me. 1 day = first offence; 3 day = second offence; 7 day = third offence from what I've been told. I have no reason to doubt the person who told me this as he's been botting (and probably RMT'ing) for years and freely admits it.
Edit - the only way to get CCP interested in fixing this is hit them where it hurts - their corporate revenue stream. All my accounts are suspended now - same reason, "CCP condones cheating". I'm sure they don't give a sh*t anyway but I'm not paying real money for a game where the game company actively condones and benefits financially from cheating.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.20 11:45:00 -
[16]
Originally by: Ocih While it would be nice to get rid of the bots, from market to mining, it isn't that easy. I don't have the answer. Every one I come up with has a point of contention that makes it more damaging than good.
Well in that case CCP shouldn't have condoned cheating to the point at which their game cannot survive without it. Their problem as its entirely their fault the problem is so large
I encourage everyone to go google and find out which particular alliance is now ADVERTISING rental for bots in their renter systems priced at 40mill per account per month. It'll come as no surprise to anyone who hasn't had their head up their ar*e for years (hello CCP!).
I suspect the game is beyond redemption unless you're happy with CCPs attitude. I'm not hence the account suspensions
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.21 10:34:00 -
[17]
Originally by: Ai Shun
End of their game:
November 2008: 250,000 subscribers December 2009: 300,000 subscribers (Over 300,000) January 2011: 340,000 subscribers
Amazing what you can "prove" with statistics
Current subscriber numbers are the same as they were in January 2010. They have DECREASED by around 10-15% since Summer 2010 despite the "power of two" promotion and various other "come back and get 60 days for Ç19.95" offers*.
As an aside if you take a look around at the influx of "power of two characters" from last promotion you'll notice a HELL OF A LOT of courier and ratting bots - low-sec heimatar (for example) is full of courier bots in bestowers, pretty much all of whom date from the last power of two promotion. CCP knows this as one group of 20+ have been petitioned 7 times now. Still there and botting though...
*Source is mmodata.net who get their figures from CCP.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.21 20:53:00 -
[18]
Edited by: Othran on 21/02/2011 20:55:33 Edited by: Othran on 21/02/2011 20:53:49
Originally by: Sullen Skoung
Its lowsec? KILL THEM lol
Go right ahead. Bot undocks, bot loses ship, bot autopilots off in pod.
10 minutes later when bot APs back in pod :
Bot undocks, bot loses ship, bot autopilots off in pod.
10 minutes later when bot APs back in pod :
Bot undocks, bot loses ship, bot autopilots off in pod.
Rinse/repeat until bored senseless and sec status trashed for a bunch of cheap T1 haulers with nothing in them but mission hauling items.
Don't try taking the **** about things which you have no idea about mmm? It only makes you look foolish.
Edit - and if anyone wants to be dumb enough to pod them go right ahead. Won't make any difference to the courier bot.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.22 09:44:00 -
[19]
Originally by: Umega
Flood CCP with legit petitions first off.
Does not work.
A few of us have been working out whether its actually possible to get botters permabanned. We've come to the conclusion that it is not.
This is based on petitioning (over the course of 2 months) ONE person who never leaves the system he bots in, is online 20+ hours per day, is solely responsible for over 150 rat kills per hour EVERY hour he is online, cloaks up whenever someone who isn't blue enters system and remains cloaked for up to 14 hours (the most anyone could be bothered AFK camping "his system" for).
He has been petitioned 9 times by 9 different characters in 9 different corps. He has been offline for three 24 hour periods during those 2 months which we're assuming may have been bans - the rest of the time he continues to bot 20+ hours a day, every day.
The only thing that is going to make CCP do anything of a substantive nature is the removal of (real) players subs.
As such, even if you don't really intend to quit I suggest that all players who find CCPs attitude unacceptable go to their account settings and hit the CANCEL SUBSCRIPTION button. Tell them why you're doing it. If enough of you do it then CCP will be forced to gamble that you're bluffing about cancelling or do something SERIOUS about bots. Its worth a try.
NB - that doesn't actually cancel your sub until the next time a payment/PLEX is due. It DOES make your objections to CCP condoning cheating quite clear though.....
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.22 11:11:00 -
[20]
Edited by: Othran on 22/02/2011 11:13:17
Originally by: Greniard
Originally by: Othran
The only thing that is going to make CCP do anything of a substantive nature is the removal of (real) players subs.
As such, even if you don't really intend to quit I suggest that all players who find CCPs attitude unacceptable go to their account settings and hit the CANCEL SUBSCRIPTION button. Tell them why you're doing it. If enough of you do it then CCP will be forced to gamble that you're bluffing about cancelling or do something SERIOUS about bots. Its worth a try.
Just did this. Not sure if I'm bluffing or not tho...
I honestly hope they do something substantive to make me change my mind.
However the bottom line is that I'm not paying any more real money to a games company which fails to enforce its own rules. The more people cheating the more CCP benefits in financial terms.
CCP condones cheating. That's the truth of the matter.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.22 11:17:00 -
[21]
Originally by: WShatner Edited by: WShatner on 22/02/2011 10:12:33 An interesting wee rumour I heard.considering that the EN24 is doing more than any other organisation to try to stamp out botting, apparently CCP are refusing to do an interview with them about the problem, because they're furious about EN24's campaign.... I don't get why CCP aren't supporting this initiative?
Can any of the Eve News guys confirm / deny?
There's a thread going on over at the site which must not be mentioned which suggests that CCP have less than a month before EN24 blows the whole sorry mess wide open. I hope they do it as CCP have a history of doing nothing about cheating until its in the mainstream media and some of them may pick up on the story.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.22 12:46:00 -
[22]
Originally by: lost marble
Give them time,
We have.
Some of us have been pointing out the bots to CCP for years.
The problem is that unless you stay where the bot is then how do you know (guess) what CCP did? I never stuck around to find out, I assumed that CCP would deal with it.
I see the same bots around now that I reported years ago in Stain. On one memorable trip I went through 30+ systems in Stain making bookmarks. I saw 3 real people - they tried to gank me The rest were bots. They're still there.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.22 16:58:00 -
[23]
The discussion over PLEX prices is irrelevant and is simply a distraction from the main point.
Why does CCP condone cheating and what will it take to make their attitude change?
CCP can manipulate the market any way they like to compensate for bots being permabanned. They can manipulate the PLEX prices such that its more attractive than RMT. They have the tools to do this. They choose not to because doing nothing benefits their company financially.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.22 18:24:00 -
[24]
Edited by: Othran on 22/02/2011 18:26:36
Originally by: 4 2 0
Originally by: Othran The discussion over PLEX prices is irrelevant and is simply a distraction from the main point.
Not in any way irrelevant. Players can run as many accounts as they want without paying any real money. Most players wont want to spend the time setting up a RMT buisness to pay for their bot accounts.
Its totally irrelevant in terms of bots. PLEX is "paid for" within a day or two of macro ratting.
Edit - and before you muddy the water more (as that's what you're here for) it wouldn't matter if you increased the cost of PLEX by a factor of ten, bots could still afford it and make some isk for their main/main's alliance. Players couldn't. Bots could, but you know that.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.24 19:07:00 -
[25]
Originally by: Florestan Bronstein Edited by: Florestan Bronstein on 24/02/2011 18:32:48
Originally by: Rent Buzzline It's never too late to get straight.
I don't think the majority of posters in this thread agrees with your opinion.
Consensus seems to be that botters should get permabanned at first offense (instead of giving them temp bans of increasing duration) or that their skills and assets should be reset.
I don't think it is actually.
I for one would just like to see a documented "three strikes and you're out" policy. By that I mean that CCP produce rules that bind them and us. Yeah I know Fantasy Island stuff as CCP won't ever do that.
Basically :
You download and use a bot in clear breach of the rules :
Offence #1 : 1 week ban Offence #2 : 1 month ban and isk confiscation; Offence #3 : permanent ban on all accounts you operate.
Never ever ever going to happen AND be enforced so dream on boys and girls.
CCP makes money from accounts involved in cheating, so they're not going to stop until the real players say ENOUGH!
Not going to happen though, MMOs fade away rather than burn out :)
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.26 07:55:00 -
[26]
Originally by: Consortium Agent
Hi,
Yes, if you have any more suspects or other players can use your site to make it easier to report suspected macro users, whether it be ratters, miners or missioners, then it all helps us to combat theses activities.
Please feel free to contact us again if you need further assistance.
Best regards, GM <snip> EVE Online Customer Support
=============================
Good enough??
No. What you have there is a totally clueless GM.
CCP will accept NO EVIDENCE from third-party sites regarding exploits or EULA violations. Ever. That is set in stone.
Anyway your site is a total waste of time I'm afraid as CCP do not permaban botters UNLESS they are involved in RMT.
CCP condone cheating. Simple as that.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.26 18:54:00 -
[27]
Nina it basically said "yes any info on bots would be welcome".
The GM (name was redacted by poster before CCP got here) who responded seemed to believe that a third-party site collating "evidence" would be fine.
It isn't. CCP don't accept any "evidence" from third-party sites regarding EULA violations. They're quite right not to do so but for sites like dotlan that pull stats from TQ then you have to assume CCP has exactly the same data - in fact they must have more accurate data.
If CCP don't want it fixed (and there's no evidence at ALL that they do) then why bother?
You're wasting your time.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.02.27 08:55:00 -
[28]
Edited by: Othran on 27/02/2011 08:58:06
Originally by: Consortium Agent One more thing I figured I might as well bring up since it's relevant to the discussion.
I'm sure everyone who has filed a bot report has received the defacto form mail response that CCP thanks you and that if you don't see immediate action not to despair and to continue to report these activities.
What they don't, and can't, tell you is that many of the reports you file are small potatoes. Grunts, if you will. Grunts who, eventually, leave a paper trail to their masters. Since it is ultimately the head of the snake you want to cut off, since cutting off the tail doesn't kill the snake, we have to allow CCP the time and leeway to use the grunts for what grunts are good for - exposing the head of the snake. Killing off a bunch of grunts with the ban hammer is useless if the next day the head of the snake fields a bunch more you don't know about. No, it is clearly better to take the time to build the evidence you need and follow the trail of scum until you hear the head hiss. Then you whack the hell out of the head with the ban hammer and the rest of the snake (the tail - the grunts we report) die with it.
Let me put it in another geeky way. An analogy: SETI has been listening to the stars for 50+ years. Scanning the sky, picking stars pretty much at random, doing sweeps of the sky in random and known ways. All of which has produced... silence. Today, some 50+ years later, scientists in completely unrelated fields have developed technology which allows them to locate and report stars with planetary systems having planets of known mass, atmosphere and such. SETI, in response, now points their radio telescopes at the stars that are known to have planets more than they point them anywhere else, especially the stars that are thought to have Earth sized or near Earth sized planets. Why? Because it increases the chances considerably that they might hear some radio waves leaking into space if those Earth-like planets harbor intelligent life. In much the same way... CCP GMs are SETI. Players are the scientists forging new tools that will allow CCP to focus in on the most likely locations of intelligent life (literally).
This is such complete unmitigated bull**** that its not funny.
You are clueless.
CCP will accept NO DATA from your site. It won't happen. Ever.
There is no point in petitioning botters unless you know FOR SURE that they are involved in RMT.
No point because CCP REQUIRES them to keep botting otherwise the economy (heh there's a laugh) will collapse.
The game is built upon a foundation of cheating. A foundation that CCP has been well aware of since bots first appeared.
CCP condones cheating. While they do there is no point in petitioning anyone not RMTing.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.01 07:48:00 -
[29]
Originally by: Arnakoz
i see your point there. i hadn't considered ratting bots. i'm sure those players that use macros would have never bought any of that stuff if it weren't for the macros. besides, are ratting bots even common? i can't say i've ever seen/suspected one.
I can find 20+ in Great Wildlands any day of the week - and that's in the very quiet hours before DT.
I can find hundreds (if not thousands) in the drone regions, Stain and the south.
Ratting bots are the #1 problem as the isk they create (rat bounties) comes from nowhere and hence is just like govts IRL printing money. It causes inflation and ****s up everyone else who isn't doing it. A typical ratting bot can create 3 billion isk each and every month while only running for a few hours a day. Running 23/7 they'll make 15-20 billion a month very very easily.
Ratting bots are endemic in null. They are all you are likely to find in null - no mining/courier/market/mission bots outside empire really.
I'm going to point out the obvious AGAIN - CCP does NOT wish to ban these "players". They have demonstrated that on thousands of occasions by NOT banning the account for more than 3 days. I've tested this pretty extensively now and multiple petitions from multiple people about ONE bot (who's been doing it by his own admission for 3 years) resulted in 3 one day bans for him. That was petitions over the course of 2 months from 9 people.
THREE ONE DAY BANS for over 300 BILLION ISK generated from botting (his estimate). Sounds to me like he's the one with brains and the honest players are morons, with CCP laughing their arses off at the petitioners.
CCP condone the use of bots, so petitioning is a total waste of time. If CCP ever decide to enforce their EULA (yeah yeah stop laughing at the back there ) then it may be worthwhile petitioning. Not until then though.
CCP says "Carry On Botting"......
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.01 09:00:00 -
[30]
Originally by: Darod Zyree
Originally by: Othran
Originally by: Darod Zyree Edited by: Darod Zyree on 01/03/2011 08:25:34
Originally by: Othran
CCP says "Carry On Botting"......
So how do i set up a bot? if CCP isnÆt going to permanently ban any account for using a bot program we can discuss it here right?
Using them, well that's a different matter isn't it? From CCPs actions (or the lack of them) we can only assume that TALKING about bots is a worse violation of the EULA than USING bots
Hence my sarcastic post a few minutes ago
I know - my reply was a bit tongue-in-cheek
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.01 21:13:00 -
[31]
Originally by: Kuronaga
The CCP gestapo-like modding of this topic has severely damaged my view of the company
Actually the modding has followed the forum rules. Shame the in-game rules are ignored with impunity.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.02 07:22:00 -
[32]
Originally by: Nina Mercedez Sweet, only 12 deleted replies so far.
The original thread will stay on eve-search.com in its unmodded form.
Easy enough for people to go look at what was REALLY said, rather than the CCP version of events.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.02 18:26:00 -
[33]
Edited by: Othran on 02/03/2011 18:28:08 While its nice to see some "blue lines" appearing in the thread which aren't deleting things ........
.....simple fact is that the "punishment" CCP hands out in relation to non-RMT botting has been a joke for years.
People like me have only discovered it recently - last year wandering around Stain was my "epiphany" - but its been like this for four or five YEARS, in terms of your "punishments".
Hard to take anyone seriously when they do nothing to discourage the practice until a megathread hits their forums - and even then we're speculating you ARE going to do something.
Edit - techical measures are all well and good but if the punishment is a slap on the wrist.... these people downloaded the bot, they PAID for the bot, its not accidental so 3 day bans are in no way adequate.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.02 20:44:00 -
[34]
Originally by: CCP Sreegs While I don't want to speculate on the specifics of what the end result from a punishment perspective will be our intent is to eliminate the problem. Obviously if people don't feel there's a disincentive they won't stop.
Well I hope this marks a change in the way your company approaches the issue. We'll see.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.03 16:14:00 -
[35]
Edited by: Othran on 03/03/2011 16:19:16
Originally by: CCP Sreegs
Originally by: Darth Vapour This Fanfest thing had better be something epic like the on-screen running of a massive banning script. And not a bunch if slides explaining all the fancy new tools CCP has come up with to better detect bots in the future.
Whoah let's not set the bar TOO high there brosef
Lets not set it too low either otherwise a lot of us will be thinking "mmm more snow".
You may be the "new guy" but you're the company and the company has "history" on things like this....
I think you should expect to be providing a framework that we can ALL understand - players, GMs, devs, whoever. Anything less and I think you'll have an uncomfortable time - both online and at fanfest.
Edit - and by "framework" I mean some clear concise PUBLIC rules about what happen to people who deliberately set out to cheat. This isn't like some accidental exploit so I'd like to see a clear PUBLIC chart of what the process is - eg first time = 1 week ban; second = 3 months; third = permaban
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.03 18:35:00 -
[36]
Edited by: Othran on 03/03/2011 18:36:11
Originally by: Lady Cazana PWND by the new guy
Oh I do hope thats true.
We've heard plenty of fine words from CCP before - LONG before the new guy was here - so lets see what happens. If there isn't a significant reduction in bots then we know its just more fine words and no actions....
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.04 10:36:00 -
[37]
Originally by: Richard Aiel
Im really not trying to be the above epithet, but months this thread has been around, 50+ pages deep, mostly agreeing withe the issue, lots seeming to quit over it, and a dev comes in, gives us a few honeyed words, points to Fanfest as the solution to all our worries and everyone is just falling lock step in behind him?
A few words and youre all ok with that? Wow.. its easy to please you all lol
My account is still suspended - runs out in a couple of months - so I'll wait and see what is said/done at FF.
If its weasel words then I know where I stand and I'll act accordingly.
He's given us a date, lets hear the man out and THEN decide whether its more CCP fluff or a genuine change in the company's attitude.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.04 11:26:00 -
[38]
Originally by: Malcanis
When swarms of utterly blatant bots, which are reported, are tolerated for months (Hi to the guys in Igunn!)
If you petitioned them as well then that makes at least 13 people who have petitioned the same courier bots. Says it all really doesn't it - bots are still there and everyone in the area is aware of them.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.08 19:07:00 -
[39]
Its become quite amusing watching the alts of various alliance characters trying to induce FUD (or as I call it "muddying the water") in this thread.
Choice is pretty simple - you support cheating or you don't. No weasel words.
Yes or no, pretty simple choice really.
Also pretty obvious which choices on the CSM are active botting corps/alliances. Perhaps thats a sensible use of the (otherwise utterly useless) vote everyone is entitled to - vote for the known botting corp/alliances = vote for cheating. Vote for any other random passing moron = vote against cheating. Yeah maybe for once a vote for CSM might mean something other than sending another muppet to Iceland.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.08 19:35:00 -
[40]
Originally by: Ephemeron I have personally observed some 0.0 bot behaviors, they are smart enough not to get safe when standings are positive. So they ignore blues. As soon as a non-blue comes in local, they warp to safe or POS
as alliance member I was told not to attack bots if they are blue, and they are blue cause they pay rent.
That is standard practice for -A- and AAA Citizens. As you've said your alliance knows all about it and benefits greatly. TBH I have never seen a AAA Citizen doing anything other than bot.
-A- and AAA Citizens cheat on an organised basis. Ephemeron has just confirmed that quite clearly.
Over to you CCP
We won't hold our breath for you doing anything as we know you're not going to bother.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.08 20:12:00 -
[41]
Originally by: Ephemeron Make no mistake, ALL big alliances have members or renters that employ bots - with or without public knowledge of alliance leaders.
It would be political suicide for any alliance to take hard stance against botting. When everyone else does it, you have to do it to stay competitive.
However, it is also wrong to assume that every member of big alliance supports botting. Most of the PvPers hate botting, they just can't do anything. CCP has to level the playing field.
Well up to a point I agree. Then I look at Stain. Been AAA Citizens in there macro ratting for at least 3 YEARS.
So while I agree with you that macro ratting is endemic I don't agree with your statement of "most of the pvpers hate botting" as many of the "pvpers" in -A- are the people RUNNING the bots in Stain (and Catch last year).
You're inside -A- and I respect you for being honest but you KNOW that botting is encouraged amongst the -A- renters. It always has been, otherwise how are they going to pay the rent each month?
I hope the new BOFH guy has a clue about the community feeling here. I suspect he doesn't and gods help him if he doesn't for he'll be roasted alive - as will CCP who are on the last of their nine lives regarding this matter.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.08 21:44:00 -
[42]
Originally by: MahNyx
what matter? this is much ado about nothing.
Oh I don't know about that. At the very least this thread - and the now-promised FF response - will indicate to people whether they should go bot themselves. Not much point in staying "honest" if the GMs don't ban mmm?
So for that reason anyway we should keep the thread in view.
Do feel free to keep muddying the water though
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.12 13:17:00 -
[43]
Yeah I don't believe for one second that mission running bots (which are relatively new) are injecting anywhere near the amount of NEW isk that null ratbots do.
I'm sure there's much more botting in empire but I don't believe it generates as much new isk.
We'll see.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.12 14:01:00 -
[44]
Yes but all of that is just moving EXISTING isk around. Yes thats where RMT is concentrated.
NEW isk is what bolloxes what passes for an economy - just like IRL.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.12 14:25:00 -
[45]
Originally by: Valari Nala Zena Dunno what the market bots make, but i can imagine they prolly make the most, how do you even detect who is doing that?
Easily. Every time you modify a market order there is a 100 isk (IIRC) transaction charge.
Even if CCP are unable to log every transaction charge it should be easy to see which characters are way above the normal level - and by "way above" I mean trading 23/7/365, not normal traders - who are pretty aggressive IME.
Thats the problem a lot of us have with CCP - nobody is saying "you must eradicate 100% of bots" but its hard to understand how some bots (even if they're scamspam bots - Jita etc) still exist after all these years. Its not rocket science.
The thing to remember is that while trade bots make their owners a shedload of isk they do NOT generate new isk. That comes from missions and npc bounties.
Killing the bots which generate new isk should be CCPs #1 priority as it both screws up the economy and is essentially a free source of RL money for RMT companies. Then move onto the rest.
We'll see but I'm not holding my breath.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.12 19:01:00 -
[46]
Originally by: dexington
Originally by: Eternum Praetorian Won't a bot generate a completely "Robotic" sequence of key ins, all in the same order and duration, for an obscene amount of time? And wouldn't this "Signature" be completely different then the "Signature" of a human being sitting at the keyboard?
Couldn't that easily be logged by the client?
if you add a little random delay then it's hard to detect any patterns, or you would atleast get a very high amount of false positives.
BS.
In terms of market bots there is a clear trail of transaction charges.
In terms of ratting bots there is a clear trail of bounties.
You can't disguise that over the course of weeks. CCP may not have the resources to track ALL the indicators but they are going to have to up their game very soon - either that or Eve ends up with an even worse reputation for "exploiters".
You CAN exploit in Eve.
What you cannot do is hide the tracks of bots.
If you can hide them reliably then Eve is ****ed - and so is anything else CCP does for it'll be a case of "oh that's the company which runs Eve, don't go near them".
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.12 19:45:00 -
[47]
Originally by: dexington It's has nothing to do with transaction trails...
Yeah whatever Mr Alt #2.
Keep spinning. Nobody believes the BS anymore...
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.15 08:36:00 -
[48]
Originally by: Florestan Bronstein 5 bots are just a drop in the ocean and how does manually banning them solve the problem of botting? it doesn't.
I think the point is that these bots have been petitioned multiple times and are still there.
As things stand it does NOT appear possible to get a bot permabanned unless they're involved in RMT.
That's the problem. Whats the point in petitioning when the "punishment" is nothing more than a temporary inconvenience?
That's why botting in Eve is endemic and it will continue to be so until running a bot is viewed as something more than a minor infraction of the rules.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.15 12:48:00 -
[49]
Edited by: Othran on 15/03/2011 12:50:00 On detection of ratbots (ratting bots) :
I don't really understand what the "technical issue" is here.
Every time you kill a rat you get a bounty and/or sec standing increase. Now I know that sec status only goes to +5 these days but there's no reason why the increases couldn't be logged if required.
So as a first pass to filtering who's potentially running a ratbot you run a monthly check of total bounties per day/week on the playerbase. I'm assuming that data can be easily extracted by CCP and used "offline". Once your automated filter pulls out the top 5% of bounty earners then you enable logging of sec standing increases for those players (or ratbots). A week or so of data will show whether its a normal human being or not. Edit - obviously bounties wouldn't work for drone regions, but TBH they need attention anyway - both in the sense of ratbots and in the sense of being horrible places to live.
Now you've got a list of people who are either botting or account sharing. If its account sharing then that should be fairly easy to identify as the same peaks/troughs of rats killed will appear over time - or IP addresses/login times.
This is the point CCP should be handing the list to your senior GMs and get them to go have a look at how the player/ratbot behaves when something that isn't blue comes into system.
Its not rocket science. It does require a willingness to enforce the rules though.
Fanfest isn't far off anyway so we'll see whether that willingness exists.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.15 14:29:00 -
[50]
Originally by: dexington It would be easy to spot 1 bot running for 23 hours, but how would you spot 10 bots running for 2.3 hours each?. Aslong as gametime is payed with isk it don't really matter for botters if they need to pay 300M or 3B a months, the bots are still going to make a huge profit.
You know this continual "don't do anything for that's not going to work" approach from you is making you look REALLY bad don't you? I hope you're aware of that even if you are an alt. This is the last time I bother replying to you, life's too short
Anyway the 10 botters run by one guy are probably RMT. As such you can be sure CCP will have thought of ways as RMT is their (current) sole focus.
What I suggested would be enough to catch people who leave their bot running while they work, then log onto main for the evening. If those people then have to resort to multiple accounts then it makes running the accounts a lot harder.
I think honest players would welcome that.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.18 18:55:00 -
[51]
Originally by: Durnin Stormbrow Not to add pressure on top of pressure for CCP Sreegs, but I'm thinking there's gonna be a load of eyes on this one.
Aye. Fair amount of expectation/hope pinned on that presentation.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.19 11:01:00 -
[52]
Its not Optus, its Tata who are running the offending traffic shaper. Tata are Optus' "partner" - AKA upstream supplier and I can only assume that Optus agreed to this. Optus massively increased their data caps for customers in Nov/Dec and patently do NOT have the transit bandwidth to cope, hence the shaping times changing from 20:00 EDT to 18:00 EDT.
Pretty bloody odd running DPI on the actual transit (shaper in question seems to be in Telehouse NYC) rather than at the edge/core routers but Tata have a less than reliable reputation so who knows.
All been discussed in the relevant forum anyway - where it should stay.
If CCP want to get involved in talking to transit providers then good luck to them, I suspect they'll get ignored or told to **** off.
NB - Eve is not the only affected game by any means, there's a fair few discussions regarding Optus and games on Aussie internet forums. Same symptoms.
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Othran
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Posted - 2011.03.20 08:14:00 -
[53]
Well Sreegs is the BOFH network security guy which I don't associate with bots and RMT. I'm obviously wrong though as he chose to involve himself in this thread.
We'll see in 5 days. If its fluff then the message is clear (everyone run a bot) and I hope CCP are ready for the sh*tstorm that will follow.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.23 14:47:00 -
[54]
Originally by: Slate Shoa Edited by: Slate Shoa on 23/03/2011 13:42:39 My subscription interval is approaching. All I can say is:
How significant CCP's announcement is, with regards to what they are doing about the hacking/botting issue, is going to be a huge factor in whether or not I resubscribe. If it turns out to be nothing, I will not resubscribe; I'd rather play Aces High II or something with the money.
and no, you cannot has my stuff.
I'm much the same. Last time I "took the summer off" I didn't come back for 4 years. I sort of suspect I may not bother at all this time. We'll see on Friday.
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Othran
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Posted - 2011.03.24 13:56:00 -
[55]
It appears that the security presentation got moved from Friday @ 1800 to 1400 today.
As streaming is only available on Friday/Saturday it appears we don't get to see what Sreegs says.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.24 14:11:00 -
[56]
Originally by: Vincent Athena Presentations are not being streamed. Looking at the TV schedule and the fanfest schedule I noted none of them matched up in time or in some cases, length. They are being recorded and re-broadcast. Hence I think we will see the security one Friday. But I hope someone will report on it here, in a few hours, after they see it in person.
So the "live stream" is recorded? Outstanding
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Othran
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Posted - 2011.03.24 14:40:00 -
[57]
Edited by: Othran on 24/03/2011 14:40:02 Yeah its fairly prominent - Live Stream of Fanfest 2011
What's even more amusing is that they expect people to PAY for a recorded "Live Stream" that can't be rewound. You couldn't make this up if you tried
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.24 15:21:00 -
[58]
Originally by: Vincent Athena OK, the security presentation should be over. What happened?
From the other thread the tl;dr seems to be :
a) you can buy a security token; b) there will be a "report bot" right click option - but not yet.
Better be more than that. Really
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.24 16:35:00 -
[59]
Well the thing is that we can easily check what's going on - dotlan gives you the ability to view npc kills from weeks ago.
It all depends on one thing - what are the penalties and escalated penalties for repeat offenders? If they're meaningless then "background monitoring", no matter how sophisticated, will solve precisely nothing.
If theres a rapid escalation of penalties then it'll take out the casual/personal botters which is a start.
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Othran
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Posted - 2011.03.25 18:08:00 -
[60]
Claudio. You could have said he was working for you :)
I think we met once when I contracted for the evil empire (Cisco). Can't remember where - Triangle Park maybe. Long time ago now anyway....
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.25 18:14:00 -
[61]
Edited by: Othran on 25/03/2011 18:15:16
Originally by: Devil's Call
Originally by: Slate Shoa
Originally by: CCP Sreegs
Originally by: Slate Shoa Questions:
1) What is CCP going to do to make sure player reports/petitions of bots are: a) not abused? b) acted upon (unlike in the past)?
2) What is CCP going to do to continually prove to the playerbase that bans for botting are: a) occurring at a significant rate (ex: not one botter per day)? b) severe enough to be a significant deterrence (ex: not one day bans)?
My take on the subject:
Any feature to report bots is meaningless unless CCP can prove that they are continuously acting upon player reports of bots. Playerbase confidence in CCP's willingness to act on player reports must be restored. The bans must also be significant in penalty and rate of occurrence.
The presentation addresses this specifically.
Originally by: CCP Sreegs The presentation will be available on Youtube in the next day or so and a Devblog will be published shortly thereafter.
Thanks for the reply Sreegs. I'm looking forward to the video and Devblog.
Same here, can't wait.
Its about half-way over now. Decent stuff, Claudio gives it more credence for me, the three strikes policy is well overdue and should be part of the EULA so people know where they stand.
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Othran
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Posted - 2011.03.25 18:42:00 -
[62]
Edited by: Othran on 25/03/2011 18:43:17
Originally by: Florestan Bronstein Edited by: Florestan Bronstein on 25/03/2011 18:35:03
tl;dr of the presentation - feel free to bot until you receive the first-strike (temp) ban. [if the 2nd ban is 30 days, first ban will probably be between 5-10 days, so no big deal]
How anyone can read this as "now is the perfect time to stop botting" is beyond me... now botters have the explicit assurance they won't get permabanned on 1st or 2nd detected offense.
So the logical thing to do is bot shamelessly until you receive the 1st ban, then sell your botting characters for ISK (or the tainted account for RL money), open a new account, funnel the ISK of the character sale from the tainted to the new account and leave the old account alone.
Ummm Claudio is good. Very very good at heuristics and behavioural analysis of code IIRC. Sreegs seems like a decent BOFH - he seems like enough of a b*stard to get the rest of the CCP culture changed. Either that or he'll get fired.
Do note that (IMHO) the previous detection methods have been extremely crude. I suspect now that you'll get picked up as suspect very soon and once a first ban arrives I'd suspect your accounts will be flagged for "enhanced" monitoring for a few months.
I like Sreegs even though he's American - at least he doesn't say "you folks" which is my abiding memory of Triangle Park (NC)
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Othran
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Posted - 2011.03.25 18:48:00 -
[63]
Edited by: Othran on 25/03/2011 18:53:55 He has the right instincts - eg all botting isk removed. I hope he's allowed to follow through on his instincts.
Edit - Also Sreegs I now know from watching you that if anti-botting fails then its not down to you or Claudio. So don't fail or the only conclusion is that CCP (the company) overruled you. Best of luck.
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Othran
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Posted - 2011.03.25 18:55:00 -
[64]
Originally by: Reddx Panther Imho
1. Botting is part of the game play, so you can't break it overnight without changing the game
2. At the source of botting is poor game design - activities that can be automatized easily shouldn't be source of in-game rewards
3. Ultimately, botting will/should become integral part of the game
Take the troll elsewhere f*ckwit.
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Othran
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Posted - 2011.03.25 20:27:00 -
[65]
Edited by: Othran on 25/03/2011 20:29:02
Originally by: Everard Headbutt One of the biggest problems is surely the client itself and the amount of information sent to and from it, hence why you keep hearing of exploits that allow autopiloting to warp to zero and numerous other things? Is it not a time for a total rewrite of the client to remove this ****e?
That's why Claudio is there. A rewrite is impractical yet CCP know there have been code leaks in the past.
So you need someone with the experience (and talent - you need to think differently to other people to do IDS effectively) to analyse the behaviour of your existing code and then spot the anomalies and potential network exploits.
IF there is actually a will to ban botters then I reckon the security team will make a significant difference.
However in the past CCP have done little to engender trust that they wish to seriously tackle the issue.
Wait and see time really. I'm watching Stain and points East on dotlan/in-game - if there's a will to fix the cheating issues then it'll show up there first. Likewise when/if they stop the crackdown that's where we'll see it first.
7/10 on making the right noises. Final score pending.....
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Othran
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Posted - 2011.03.27 09:31:00 -
[66]
Edited by: Othran on 27/03/2011 09:31:59
Originally by: Crucis Cassiopeiae can someone say to me what was said on fanfest about botting? in short bullets...
i am finding on many places some hints... but its all unclear...
What I got from it :
1) Background bot monitoring/detection software is in place - a load of people (1000 or so) who used RoidReaver got banned;
2) Current GM "decisions" on macroing s/w are now basically null and void. The security team will make the calls now, not random GMs. The ToS and EULA will be the final arbiter of decisions - where there's a conflict then ToS/EULA wins;
3) No mass banning, slow burn as evidence is accumulated;
4) Report Bot menu option as petitions weren't working effectively;
5) Three strikes and you're out - unspecified ban for first offence, 30 days for second, permaban on third offence.
I suspect that none of the ratting bots have been hit yet. There's one system "out east" which I've been watching for 3 months now - I know who the bots are, I know the typical ratting figures per day and theres no change visible yet. Likewise there's another system in Stain that I've been watching for months - I'm hoping to see a change in ratting figures fairly soon, certainly before 20 April when I have to decide whether to resub or not. We'll see.
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Othran
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Posted - 2011.03.27 10:07:00 -
[67]
Sreegs said several hundred in the presentation and then at another point mentioned RoidReaver and 1000. Can't remember whether it was in response to a question on forums or live.
Anyway 1000 accounts out of 360,000 is hardly a "mass banning". Its 0.28% of the active accounts
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Othran
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Posted - 2011.03.27 10:24:00 -
[68]
Originally by: Everard Headbutt Didn't see the whole presentation (still waiting for it to be upped to youtube) but didn't sreegs say he wanted the eula to be the final word, but it depended on people higher up in the chain who still hadn't made a decision?
Yes but I think the intent here is that if the EULA/ToS doesn't allow some s/w which common sense says it should then the EULA/ToS needs to be rewritten so it explicitly DOES allow that s/w. Having GMs (even senior ones) effectively undermining a legal agreement shouldn't be happening at all.
The message was very much "this is the security teams' area now" - or at least that's what I got from it.
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Othran
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Posted - 2011.03.27 10:26:00 -
[69]
Originally by: Florestan Bronstein (never heard of a bot called "RoidReaver" so either it's some obscure mining bot or CCP just uses it as a generic name so as not to advertise specific bots)
Nor have I - he actually mentioned it in this thread, he may have called it a different name at the presentation, can't remember TBH.
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Othran
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Posted - 2011.03.28 13:53:00 -
[70]
Edited by: Othran on 28/03/2011 13:53:37
Originally by: Hairy Beta Edited by: Hairy Beta on 28/03/2011 12:55:56
roidreaver seems to be okay.
http://www.publicdemands.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?6928-So..-how-many-of-you-have-been-banned-in-this-mini-wave
Lovely its a .co.uk and its being used for commercial purposes so we can get the whois populated correctly - and if its false registrant info we can get the domain removed from the registrant too. Nice and easy too, not like .com domains where the vast majority have incorrect registrant info and nobody will do anything about it.
You'd imagine CCP might have a clue about things like this.......
Edit - Nominet case number assigned and in progress.
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Othran
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Posted - 2011.03.28 14:59:00 -
[71]
Edited by: Othran on 28/03/2011 15:01:43 It accomplishes something in that you find out who the owner of the .uk domain is - or who he purports to be.
.uk domain names have fairly strict rules - part of which is that if you run a commercial site you must provide accurate contact info, this overlaps into Distance Selling Regulations (UK consumer law) as well.
In the case of that particular domain, well its got a nameserver in RIPE IP space ostensibly allocated to a US LLC company that doesn't seem to exist. Same nameserver for a mining bot which has two .com addresses. Not even going to bother looking at the whois for the .coms as it'll be garbage and it'll be a USA registrar.
So in this instance (if I'm right) we can get the .co.uk pulled either because the registrant info is wrong or the registrant does not do any business within the UK (which he doesn't). Now at that point we can get RIPE involved via Nominet and get the IP allocation pulled.
All of that can be done EASILY. Its not the usual whack-a-mole crap you have with .com and US registrars who don't even attempt to validate registrant info.
Anyway if it annoys the domain holder then I like it.
Its not rocket science.
Edit - oh and a .co.uk domain attracts significantly less in the way of merchant fee "premiums" than a .com so you push costs up. If not you **** the bot vendor off and that's good....
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.28 15:42:00 -
[72]
Originally by: dexington
Originally by: Othran In the case of that particular domain, well its got a nameserver in RIPE IP space ostensibly allocated to a US LLC company that doesn't seem to exist. Same nameserver for a mining bot which has two .com addresses.
ns1.publicdemands.co.uk (178.79.137.18) is the same ip running the forum, the server is probably hosted by linode.com, who the ip also is assigned to. The servers running the forum, are located somewhere in england most likely close to london where linode.com also have facilities and hardware.
Can't really see what the problem should be, looks perfectly legit to me.
It would to you. Now **** off.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.28 16:01:00 -
[73]
Edited by: Othran on 28/03/2011 16:04:10
Originally by: Slate Shoa I haven't had time to watch the whole thing, but I think this is the presentation:
EVE Fanfest 2011 Security Presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4gZm-85JOs
Keep this link on each new page in this forum if this is the promised youtube video...
That's the one although it seems to have had a bit cut off at the start.
Edit - from 13:40 or so to 22:00 is the whole crux of things. That's the man who has the know-how. Sreegs knows what he's doing but Claudio is the key.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.28 16:23:00 -
[74]
Edited by: Othran on 28/03/2011 16:25:13 Uhuh. You know who has the IP space? Like hell you do. You looked at the obvious and failed.
The reason is YOU HAVE NO CLUE.
Again, **** off and stop trolling.
Like I said a Nominet case is open and they have agreed with what I've said. Registrar and registrant are informed that whois IS being populated. As usual its 123-reg so Nominet are well used to this.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.28 16:49:00 -
[75]
Look dex/Whitehound/Grimpak/whatever apologist you are for cheating - you really have no idea.
Feel free to prove you DO to the rest of us.
Some of us however have a clue. The LLC you are failing to get to is apparently registered in Florida (yay for Florida "**** the world, we'll spam you" laws) only that it isn't. Of course it isn't as have you ANY clue how much online merchants dislike Florida companies?
.uk domains are cheap in terms of online charges (Visa/MC/etc).
I did what Sreegs thinks he's doing now for years.
I did it for Cisco on a stunningly expensive contract (mainly I did inline assy on 7400 series routers for a good while). I then got sucked into various stuff on the basis that I could do it on the cheapest cpu basis.
I then did it on a private basis for another few years - from pen testing to simply walking in and blagging my way in (social engineering). I can't do it now as I'm of the age that I look like a senior manager (ie old) so the social side of testing is gone.
Feel free to believe its BS though.
To the domain holder of publicdemands.co.uk - the domain will be populated. Enjoy the start of the game, we'll play some more feel free to jump now as I have all the relevant info on your stuff now. A new nameserver would be amusing?
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.28 16:56:00 -
[76]
Originally by: NinjaSpud U 2 need to chill the **** out
what is this accomplishing? even if you both track down the street address and owner names of those companys, what can you do about it?
this is CCP's war, let them fight it.
You are spot on. Sorry.
Its just hard to let it go when a .uk domain is involved. Simple reason is that its nice and easy to get the .uk domain removed from scammers/etc. Its not like that in most other countries and people NEED to know that if its a .uk domain and trades (ie takes money/goods) then all of the consumer law applies - including full disclosure of name/address/telephone for the registrant. Also if you are a trader on one .uk domain then unless its a .me.uk (personal domain) then ALL of your .uk domains are commercial.
Low hanging fruit.....
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.28 17:30:00 -
[77]
Edited by: Othran on 28/03/2011 17:31:53 Edited by: Othran on 28/03/2011 17:31:30
Originally by: Princess Scorned
That's all well and nice, but what would be the legal basis for getting all that information? They are not doing anything illegal.
They are. The legal basis is that the domain holder of publicdemands.co.uk has signed up to the terms of owning a .co.uk and then got caught pretending to be a non-trading individual.
Oh and there's probably some tax evasion which is a criminal offence.
Enjoy Mr/Ms Russian player.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.28 17:37:00 -
[78]
Oh and here we go :
Thank you for contacting us regarding the publicdemands.co.uk domain name. You have informed us that you believe that the domain name is incorrectly opted out of the WHOIS. We have investigated publicdemands.co.uk and have issued notice to the registrant and registrar that the address details for the domain name will be opted in to the WHOIS unless changes are made so that the domain name meets the opt-out criteria.
So in 5 days everyone gets the details of the person who last registered publicdemands.co.uk. Of course he's propelled by matter out of his rectum now but I'm confident I'll trace him - hopefully he's not above the Chinese restaurant in Torquay
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.28 17:39:00 -
[79]
Edited by: Othran on 28/03/2011 17:40:43 Edited by: Othran on 28/03/2011 17:40:14
Originally by: dexington
Originally by: Othran
Oh and there's probably some tax evasion which is a criminal offence.
lol, taxes from the massive amount of money he is making running the forum?
Everyone should note that this guy and Whitehound/Grimpak have tried the FUD approach all the way through this thread. I'd treat them all with the contempt they deserve and frankly I can't understand why it took Noir so long to deal with Whitehound/Grimpak
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.28 17:49:00 -
[80]
Edited by: Othran on 28/03/2011 17:49:37
Originally by: Princess Scorned
Originally by: Othran Edited by: Othran on 28/03/2011 17:31:53 Edited by: Othran on 28/03/2011 17:31:30
Originally by: Princess Scorned
That's all well and nice, but what would be the legal basis for getting all that information? They are not doing anything illegal.
They are. The legal basis is that the domain holder of publicdemands.co.uk has signed up to the terms of owning a .co.uk and then got caught pretending to be a non-trading individual.
Oh and there's probably some tax evasion which is a criminal offence.
Enjoy Mr/Ms Russian player.
Oh I see and does a citizen need to press charges or is it prosecuted by "default" (don't know the right word in english)
So....you think I'm russian, based on what you stupid nimwit?
No i'm not russian, not from the US, english is not my native language. Hmm..where could I be from? Since you've already tagged me with one of your limited biased stereotypes you're probably thinking I'm chinese. Which I'm not.
That only makes you even more of an idiot, besides a zealot. Get out of your mum's basement, see the world. Internet Spaceships Game isn't all that important, you know. It's a *game*.
Oh dear someone is butthurt.
Got the nominet email did we?
Rage on.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.03.28 18:05:00 -
[81]
Originally by: Slate Shoa
Quote: EVE Fanfest 2011 Security Presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4gZm-85JOs
From the presentation, it looks like CCP is streamlining the bot reporting process and coming up with ways to avoid having to make judgment calls for each bot report. This streamlining is good.
I would still like to hear what is being done to continually prove that bot reports are being acted upon. In the presentation CCP Sreegs was commenting about how the old bot reporting system has a bad (no) feedback system. It seemed that Sreegs was going to comment on how the new bot reporting system feedback would be changed, but then it looked like Sreegs forgot to talk about it (assuming there was something planned).
Are the players who report bots going to be notified if their reports successfully catch a botter? Is there going to be a Wall-of-Shame (or equivalent)?
If some privacy agreement is preventing CCP from disclosing the result of a bot report, then that privacy agreement needs to be changed. CCP needs to be visible in its handling of botters and continually prove to the playerbase that botters are being delt with; lack of visibility will lead to additional (and justified) anti-botter rage.
I will wait for the Devblog to be published to see if my concerns are addressed there.
Monitor it yourself. Pick a system on dotlan and watch. As of 19:00 28/3/11 there appears to be no problem with most bots on most of mine.
I'm giving CCP another 3 weeks. That is it.
If I don't see significant changes to bot numbers in that time then that's enough. After that everything is bullcrap from employees who are told what to say.
Its not rocket science. It is willpower and CCP are way way WAY overdrawn on any trust
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.04.04 15:59:00 -
[82]
Edited by: Othran on 04/04/2011 15:59:57 Part 1 of "who is RoidRipper*" is complete - whois is populated, so you can see the registrants address;
Part 2 is now in progress - time to get a real registrant name or the domain gets suspended. Nominet is on the case as we speak;
Part 3 will no doubt be follow the money, couple of weeks I guess......
I got bored this week so I followed up a couple of things
*RoidRipper=publicdemands
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.04.04 17:34:00 -
[83]
Edited by: Othran on 04/04/2011 17:34:57
Originally by: dexington
Part 4 publicdemands.com goes online...
Oh quite probably but the trail is there with Paypal transaction numbers. If its a .co.uk registered to a UK resident (ostensibly) then Revenue & Customs will be happy to come play. Couple of thousand x $15US per version (so $15US/sub a year really) is ú20k a year over the years.
If it isn't a UK resident then it at least pushes up transaction costs as its a .com
It amuses me and its utterly trivial to do, so when I'm bored I do stuff like this.
Horses for courses really - you troll and thats about it these days but whatever floats your boat.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.04.05 16:24:00 -
[84]
Originally by: Pandadora
Originally by: Elanor Vega
Why is he an *******??? every person that have page like that and is doing things like that is aware that that is criminal activity... and that there may be consequences... and i say... that person deserves it... becouse not only that he is doing criminal activities... he is ruining game for ppl that pay for it...
No, botting or the programming of bots is not illegal. Its against the rules of CCP, and thus they need to address the problem. Also, the reason here is obviously just some kind of personal vendetta and not some form of criminal prevention (even if the author is right with his accusation, i doubt he check the rightness of .co.uk domains all day to check if they valid. This is in the same league as throwing stones in the window of political opponents, because you dont like what they say. Thus, he is an assh0le. :)
We have a person writing bots to cheat in Eve. He charges $15US per version as far as I can tell. For $15US you can (and I quote) "never pay for Eve again".
He utilises a .co.uk address to process the payments and fails to follow the law in England & Wales for that website. He lies about who has registered the domain - or he's forgotten where he lives now
He doesn't pay tax on his earnings for the bots.
Now think how much I care about you?
That's right, I worry more about what my **** looks like than you
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.04.05 17:19:00 -
[85]
Edited by: Othran on 05/04/2011 17:19:15 Sorry Elanor Vega but you don't quite get it.
Its simple really - if you use a .co.uk (or any other .uk) domain for the purposes of trading (ie I mean commercial use, buying/selling) then you are legally obliged to provide certain information on the index page of that website. That information is name, postal address, email and telephone number. They must ALL be valid, if not you have broken Distance Selling Regulations, which is civil law - possibly criminal depending on what you did next.
However if you DO use a .uk address for trading and don't disclose it (the usual "registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted out") then that domain is in breach of contract and Nominet WILL pursue the matter fairly quickly.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.04.06 10:33:00 -
[86]
Originally by: Mashie Saldana Hi Sreegs, you say you don't want to mark a previously botting character that has been legally bought, however why should a botter be able to legally sell his characters in the first place?
I mean one very simple fix would be to add an overlay on the character portrait where it sais "Botter" or similar. The character would become unsellable. Also it would be a nice feedbackloop for people that do petition botters to see such a piece of text show up on the suspected botters.
I think thats a bit extreme. If someone gets hit by the banstick once and learns their lesson then why keep punishing them? Smacks a bit of sackcloth and ashes TBH
A simple solution would be "if you sell the character then you must declare that it has been previously banned".
There could be a read-only message in the Notifications section of the mail client on the character which details the ban. That way the buyer (and potentially any CEO) could verify that you haven't been banned in the past.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.04.13 16:36:00 -
[87]
I think I'm seeing a downturn in ratting bots over the last few days but I'm not sure.
The change could be due to the sov upgrades alterations (sanctums/etc). However it seems to be affecting npc null as well, so I really don't know.
Also there's a couple of minor wars on so maybe people are actually fighting. Long shot I know but meh
If I were to speculate I think that you'd find people that use one sort of bot (eg mining) are quite happy to use any other sort of bot too. For example if you want bounties you're hardly likely to bot in the drone regions, but an alt in a npc region could provide the personal isk while the other alt grinds for alliance/rent. One gets hit with the banstick then so does the other.
Gut feeling is that the drops in sov space are due to the upgrades changes; in npc space they're due to war "oop North"
Mining bots were always going to be the "low-hanging fruit" (ie - easy to ban/obstruct) from a malware/IDS point of view. By that I mean - easy to do, little/no adverse effects on customer service resources/provable to civil court standards.
I suspect that coming up with a similar "Ratbot" detector is proving somewhat intractable. It IS going to require human interaction/intervention on a fairly frequent basis and I rather suspect the recent truesec interactions are intended to give CCP more time to work out a more proactive position.
Yeah I know that sounds like management BS and it is, but there comes a point that most companies realise that they're losing the fight.
I suspect CCP have (nearly) reached this point and what you're seeing now is a little transition from "No idea who can deal with that at 2am in Iceland... No I've no idea who you'd email...Raise a petition" to "OK we have a plan for this".
Long long long way to go given the Eve playerbase and the (almost normal now?) metagaming aspects of Eve.
I think they've made a start.
PS - The new forums nonsense just says to me "don't ever do this in-house again". Stop re-inventing the wheel, plenty of companies could have had new forums designed, secured and probably with more bells and whistles than your guys could come up with in another 35 man-years Long long way to go there.....
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.04.25 09:23:00 -
[88]
Originally by: Florestan Bronstein
Originally by: riverini
Originally by: Opertone ban their Device ID, serial numbers... permanently
I guess u mean local MAC address? if so I approve! armchair hackers, please name countermeasures and how hard could they be?
sudo ifconfig eth0 hw ether 01:02:03:04:05:06
Its even simpler than that. Pretty much every cable router I've ever seen has an option to clone a MAC or enter your own MAC.
Also, every single network card here has the option in its settings to spoof a MAC in Windows 7, Vista or XP. If its not in the settings then you can do it via the registry.
You might have more luck with ADSL routers that can't bridge - most of them don't offer any way of changing the MAC via the web interface. However if the telnet interface is up then its usually just the same as Linux - ie same as your command above.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.04.26 11:31:00 -
[89]
Originally by: Mikk36 Your WAN MAC address is only visible to the next router in line, the one that belongs to the ISP. If CCP would like to know that number, they would have to contact Your ISP and ask them for that MAC address. And even if they knew that number, they couldn't do anything useful with it since it's not passed along on the internet.
The MAC address of the router/modem/NIC is visible to the local machine. Eve runs on the local machine therefore Eve can interrogate the NIC/router/modem as to what the current MAC is. If MAC matches banlist then Eve closes.
Not that it matters anyway as the MAC address can be spoofed and NICs/modems/routers can be replaced.
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.04.26 16:21:00 -
[90]
Originally by: Vaerah Vahrokha Something better would be to generate a sort of machine dependent GUID factoring in hard disk serial number, BIOS and so on. The GUID would be partially flexible, IE it could store 10 bits of information, checking 7. If the user tries to change some PC pieces, he will still stay banned until less than 7 pieces match the original GUID.
Still doesn't work (just use another machine) and is a support nightmare.
Ask MS if you don't believe me, they spent billions on machine fingerprinting for Windows activation and still ended up with the same level of piracy*. Much much MUCH higher support costs though
The only way to accurately ban a given user is to KNOW who that user is. That means no more account activations with anything other than a credit/debit card (and no pre-pay cards either).
I doubt CCP have the remotest idea who a large chunk of their accounts really "belong" to. ie Name, Address, Age etc. PLEX is a double-edged sword for sure.
*certain countries get dirt cheap basic versions of Windows as any revenue is better than none and unpatched versions of Windows are bad PR cos of the crap they spread. tl;dr piracy works - or something
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Othran
Brutor Tribe
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Posted - 2011.04.28 16:18:00 -
[91]
Why name & shame? There's no real point to it.
Giving feedback on botter petitions as in "yes they were botters and have received a ban" or "sorry but they weren't" is all that's really required. Rules on not disclosing GM correspondence cover the specific names but I'm sure we'd get a feel for the effectiveness soon enough.
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