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Starbase exploit addressed

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Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 2 post(s)
Princess Jodi Cutting Edge Incorporated RAZOR Alliance	Posted - 2008.12.11 17:34:00 - [1] Well, I'm angry. I ran 11 pos's for 2 years and never saw this exploit happen. Margins for our products (which included Ferrogel) were so minimal we put it down to Alliance Soverignty issues. It seemed like since Alliances had to put down towers for Soverignty anyway, Moon Mining income was simply something that came along with it. As a software developer myself, I can see how this could happen. Any initial bug report when POS's were first introduced would be shrugged off as people not knowing what they were doing. For example, in the first days reactors needed to be onlined and linked in specific order. Even after reading all the materials it was a bit of an Art to get things set up properly. So some people made mistakes which triggered this exploit, while others did not. Here's a tip from 28yrs of programming experience: Do Not Let Developers Test Their Own Code! If I program a process and test it, I'm going to test it the 'Right' way. To find bugs you have to have complete idiots try the process with minimal instruction. Only they will do things 'Wrong' and reveal bugs. Now as for Punishment, let me relay a RL story (yeah, stuff it - I don't care for your 'Eve is not RL' bull.) Iran convicted a man of abusing and murdering many children a few years ago. The evidence was overwhelming and there was no question of his guilt. The Punishment was to have this man slowly winched up by a crane in the town square with a noose around his neck. The mother of one of the victims put the noose on. The brother of one of the victims ran forward during that and stabbed the man - and the authorities just shoo'd him away and went on with the execution. The man was hoisted for a slow strangulation death, and then was purposefully left there to hang for 3 days so that his body could not be buried properly, which meant he went to Hell in Islam. This type of Punishment for the exploiters is what I'm suggesting happens to their Eve empires. Say what you want about Iran, but they know how to create a Deterrent.
Princess Jodi Cutting Edge Incorporated RAZOR Alliance	Posted - 2008.12.11 18:54:00 - [2] Originally by: Lord WarATron For future, there should be a name and shame for people guilty of this. Hall of Infamy There already is: Having a Bob-corp in your Employment History.
Princess Jodi Cutting Edge Incorporated RAZOR Alliance	Posted - 2008.12.11 21:19:00 - [3] On the lighter side of things, I just had this vision of a CCP Janitor dusting off the origional Eve Server, plugging in a backup from a few years ago, and wandering the Eve Universe as it was trapped in time. No players, just a bored Janitor chomping on his lunch while roaming from system to system looking for exploit towers. Naming and Shaming individuals with irrefutable proof. I'd pay to be able to play that game.
Princess Jodi Cutting Edge Incorporated RAZOR Alliance	Posted - 2008.12.11 22:00:00 - [4] Originally by: Rramar Claime Edited by: Rramar Claime on 11/12/2008 21:58:51 Originally by: Thynar Edited by: Thynar on 11/12/2008 21:51:42 Edited by: Thynar on 11/12/2008 21:50:11 http://www.********.com/showthread.php?t=3428&page=2 If this is really Maltroc posting, then he seems to imply that the 2005 post was referring to this exploit. edit: "k u g u t s u m e n" is filtered? edit: Ziester faster than me twice ******** edit: LOL had to try it. this is some awesome filtering :D CCP has some good old commie censoring we had here in the '50s .... grats ccp another fail on your list "He Who Shall Not Be Named"
Princess Jodi Cutting Edge Incorporated RAZOR Alliance	Posted - 2008.12.12 00:31:00 - [5] Eve's Resident Economist did not see this. Although mentioned much, I've been ruminating on what that means... Now, there is the off chance that our esteemed Economist is just the nephew of some big shot who got a mail-order Economist degree, but I dismiss that. Gotta give it a bullet point as it does happen in business. I give CCP more credit than that. The point was brought up that Economists tend to look for changes to a system, so its possible that his late entrance into Eve forced him to assume it all worked ok. He almost certainly didn't examine acutal code. Might not even had ever played Eve before, and the learning curve is steep. I suppose that might have explained him missing it. The Eve economy is indeed vast and since its a sandbox the fabled 'Invisible Hand of the Market' does tend to even things out. Maybe certian triggers were not hit such as zero supply or Monopolies. We players know nothing of the internal checks CCP uses. Since this was possible with any reaction the cheaters could shift based on max prices. Ferrogel was simply the most efficient, not the only one possible. So I could see this long-term scam being able to hide in the shadows. Another possible way it was missed. Then you get to the question of Rarity and hit a brick wall. See, at some point CCP decided that there would be some Moon Mins rarer than others. They put together a list of ways that those reacted and adjusted amounts needed based on Rarity. It was finely balanced and actually changed a few times. That implies that CCP planned to produce X amount of items because they had Y and Z amount of Moon Mins in existence. They HAD to know how many moons existed or else the calculations could result in zero supply. Now, keep in mind that Ferrogel was chosen cuz it was the most needed. In essence, not enough Ferrogel was being produced to meet the need. Zero supply. But the trigger never went off cuz the cheaters could create Ferrogel from thin air...err... space. Why was insufficient Ferrogel missed? How can someone audit reactions enough to make adjustments to the needed Moon Mins several times and not see this? Who was so vain in their skill at modeling that they sat back and didn't question when it all flowed smoothly? Those are the answers that we need.
Princess Jodi Cutting Edge Incorporated RAZOR Alliance	Posted - 2008.12.12 20:39:00 - [6] If you don't believe that this was going on for years, here's a suggestion of how to prove it with complete transparency: Pick a random backup from the last 4 years and restore it on SiSi. Let the players check Moons for suspicious POS setups - There are very specific configurations which anyone in a Covert can detect. Set up a Thread where found exploiters can be published, with SS and locations. Then reset the server every downtime back to the same point for a week, so others can see for themselves. CCP will have found all the expoiters for free. The PlayerBase will have its pound of flesh.
Princess Jodi Cutting Edge Incorporated RAZOR Alliance	Posted - 2008.12.15 20:34:00 - [7] Let me relay a tale where another company had a similar issue.... Back in my college days I worked in a pinball Arcade. One of the hottest new games (Tempest? Was long time ago...) had a gimmick where you could continue playing on the same level you lost the last game by putting in more money. People would cash $20 bills and stack the quarters on the machine to reserve it. It just raked in the money. Working till 2AM me and my buddies started noticing wierd things with the machine. For a game that gave one play for a quarter, we would occasionally find large numbers of free replays on it. Like 70+ free games. BTW: this game did not give out free replays. After months of sleuthing this is what we discovered: If you played a game and made it past level 21 (not too hard to do), then ended your game with a score of 11 or 77, then let the credits roll by once the game would give you 99 FREE GAMES. 11 caused the Quarter Counter to rack up 99 games while 77 caused no Quarter Counter movement. Now, our Manager got mad cuz she thought we were using the free tokens to play the game ourselves. Then they thought we were stealing cuz the quarters didn't match the counter. The reality of the situation did not come out till a year later. Seems some programmer designed the codes so that he and his buddies could play for free. The company was forced to replace all the chips in the machines with ones without the bug. Of course, they only did this if you complained or threatened to sue them. Years later, I saw someone playing on the 'Invisible Levels' that were above 99. Since I rarely made it there I asked how he did it. He told me of a futher cheat by ending in 39 which allowed you to start on level 99. We traded cheats. Now, this Starbase Exploit is similar. You had to run 2 successful cycles then shut off the silos. That's buried pretty deep for someone to find if they are bug hunting. CCP, if this was just a bug then I understand how it was not found. But look at the code closely, please.... you just might find something that shouldn't be there.
Princess Jodi Cutting Edge Incorporated RAZOR Alliance	Posted - 2008.12.15 20:39:00 - [8] OOhhhh... I just realized that I'm gonna **** off all the old Tempest players! Sorry, guys, I didn't mean to steal quarters out of your pockets by playing for free using this exploit! Well, at least Eve is parralleling Life at this point.
Princess Jodi Cutting Edge Incorporated RAZOR Alliance	Posted - 2008.12.15 20:56:00 - [9] I could be wrong about the exact procedure. Obviously I've never done it. It sounded like you had to turn off the input silos to keep the reaction running but not using materials.
Princess Jodi Cutting Edge Incorporated RAZOR Alliance	Posted - 2008.12.15 22:24:00 - [10] I'm telling ya... CCP is missing a money making opportunity here... Put all those old backups onto another Server where people can pay to fly around in the Good Old Days. Reset it every week back to where it was. Call it Time Traveler or Eve Historian or Rumininating Before the Memory Fades or sumptin'. Make it a new game and send in the PsychoHistorians.

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