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How bnetd Developers Reverse Engineered Battle.net
battlebot writes: "O'Reilly's ONlamp.com is running an interview with the bnetd developers that goes into great detail about how exactly they reverse-engineered Battle.net. This is by the same guy who wrote the recent Salon article, though is far more technical. They talk a little bit about their legal troubles too, and even sheepishly admit that perhaps talking to a lawyer earlier in the process would have been a good idea. Has this project been successfully squashed?"
For your information, reverse engineering is not theft.
BNETD supports all the major features of battle.net, such as chat, channels, user icons, and gameplay! Well I'd sure hope it does!
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
The article says that they have made BNETD virtually indistinguishable from the real battlenet through reverse engineering. What I wanna know is, what function did they assign to the gem in the Diablo 2 client?
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Thing is, anyone with any kind of reasonable knowledge of law, patents, and copyright knows that the Blizzard lawsuit is, to be blunt, bullshit.
Blizzard has no chance, or interest, in winning on the merits of their case. They know that open source developers have limited resources and are unlikely to mount a decent legal defense. So why not sue? It's not a legal decision so much as a strategic one: given the chance to squash potential future competitors for free, why not?
It's a smart move on Blizzard's part. American IP laws favor corporations to such an incredibly laughable degree, it's amazing that Disney isn't suing everyone who uses a wheel (Steamboat Willie, 1928, and anyone who claims to have invented it before then had better have a notaraized motion picture).
Bottom line: disgusting on the USPTO's part, dispicable on Blizzard's part, par for the course for the good old USA. Oh, wait, this is *good* for consumers. I must have missed that edict somehow.
-b
"Whoever came up with this intellectual property stuff anyway?"
Lawyers - when they had one of their annual "How can we make even more money than we do now?" meetings. But seriously it dates back to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act in the UK and for the latest developments in intellectual property there's WIPO.
Video Game cheats, hints a
- Install packet sniffer on local network.
- Read lots of 1's and 0's into a huge dump file
- Familiarize yourself with UDP.
- Tear out clump of hair as stress relief.
- Create nifty diagrams that show the battlenet server as a black box with the game that you and your buddy have made online as the two other pieces.
- Look at the responses that the black box sends back to each of the machines.
- Ponder on whether or not a monkey would be a good programmer since a tail in addition to two hands that can hit those hard-to-reach keys.
- Create a prototype program that relays game packets from two client boxes.
- Play lots of StarCraft through this box.
- Debug lots and lots.
- Decide against implimenting cheats on the server box against your other cohorts that are helping you develop this
- Create a chat room interface.
- Do final testing on the program.
- Program into the server daemon random insult messages that will be sent to all of your friend programmers while testing, making them abandon the project out of anger.
- Profit.
That was easy enough!/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
If we assume for the moment that they had thought of consulting an attorney when they first embarked on this project, would it have made a difference? I mean, seeing as the DMCA didn't actually exist in '98, how could they have made some plan to defend themselves against prosecution under it. As for the straight up copyright issues, it's total hogwash, but at least they could have gotten the lawyerly advice of, "well they haven't got jack on you, but can you afford to fight it?"
I was thinking about this earlier, and the really frustrating thing is how much of computer related tinkering seems to need to be run by a lawyer. I mean if you have a hobby like building kit cars, or constructing furniture, you have no need for attorneys. But if you want to get deeply involved in tinkering with software, etc, you suddenly need a law degree. Companies talk a lot about the damage that piracy has on the software economy, but I have to wonder how much more damage has been caused by the chilling effect on independent developers by this legal morass we call intellectual property.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
warforge has been the team working on a warcraft 3 server (which caused all the problems with blizzard). they started with bnetd's code, but now the projects are basically separate.
shame blizzard didn't do some research before turning the lawyers lose. even if they get an injunction against bnetd, they'll be shutting down the wrong group.
_f
What is easier to sue, a well defined group with names and a good site that explains what they are doing; or a group that works over irc, never uses their real names, might not even have distributed their data over their own computers, and have a website that says nothing of their work (and just distributes it).
I mean, its a hell of a lot easier suing something somewhat established, which is what bnetd was. WarForge isn't exactly well established, they got a group, but who really knows who they really are? I can bet that blizzard doesn't know, and why find out when you can set an example with the established group?
This entire thing was enough to scare the shit out of the several other groups working on warcraft3 support (warforge isn't the only one). This is the main reason why warcraft3 bnetd modified servers are not in distribution (binary or source). Just the client side crack for the exe is given out. (This also is the reason for the insanely low amount of bnetd war3 servers)
Nobody forces anyone to buy or pirate a copy of any of blizzard's games. It's not like paying taxes.
"You haven't made a single intelligent comment yet." - You mean you've read all 631 of my comments?
Video Game cheats, hints a
I fully support the bnetd ideal. That is, supplying a different server then the blizzard one. You would be a lot less likely to find n00bs so to speak there. However.... I get sick of paying for the thousands of warez users that download the iso or image, then burn to cd, then are able to play fully on bnetd.
Unfortunately, blizzard's key remains the copy protection stopping that, and bnetd weren't able to support that at all. So it's back to the beginning.
Maybe if blizz could implement a central cd key verification server ie Half-Life's WON servers, it would be more beneficial. But still, the whole situation sucks. Blizzard aren't that bad, its more likely vivendi or just a complete miscommunication hogwash.
Though i have heard, that blizzard must prosecute now, or they aren't able to prosecute pirates/cd-key removal later on. This true?
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
I have legimate copies of every game/expansion pack they've ever produced, on up to Diablo II. Full retail price, too, not bargain bin or second hand. They _were_ the one company that you could be sure I would buy a game from, maybe not the day it was released, but I'd get it eventually.
As I remember it, this news hit the very day that I couldn't hold out any longer for D2. Strangely, I'd never heard of bnetd until then. Being able to play on a server I could control though, would only have encouraged me even more, to buy their games. I had only played Diablo I on Battlenet once or twice, and not been at all happy... nice idea, but too many assholes. To think that I could fix that problem without extending several dozen ipxtunnels, etc... that is kickass.
They should have hired these guys, not sued them. That would have been a cheaper way to stall bnetd, they would have gotten more for their money, and they wouldn't have pissed people like me off.
Fuck you, Blizzard.
To everyone on the bnetd team, keep kicking ass, and the best of luck to you.
Yes, BNETD is completely dead. The DMCA has prevailed.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It's unfortunate that Blizzard is targeting BNETD. The problem that Blizzard is facing, is leaked copies of the Warcraft III beta being played all over the internet. Every beta tester got a unique CD-Key with their copy of the beta, to play on Battle.net you needed a unique key (i.e. one that was not being used).
The people with pirated copies of the beta want to play too, and since there's no single player in the beta, they need a Battle.net server to connect to. Now, Blizzard isn't about to let 10,000 illegal copies on to their server so the people running stolen copies turned to BNET.D.
At this time, through some strange coincidence, BNET.D attracted the attention of Blizzard. BNET.D said "Ok, game pirates suck, we won't develop Warcraft III compatiblity", got sued, and pulled their code. A handful of the contributers of BNET.D wanted to keep pursuing WC3 and formed Warforge.
Granted, there is a point or two in favor of developing a BNET.D server for WC3:
[] Warcraft III doesn't allow for LAN play
[] I forgot the second one
They've been keeping up with Blizzards efforts to disallow use on non-battle.net servers very well (a patch is usually out in less than two days).
As for my opinion: People are going to find a way to play/use the latest and greatest software without paying for it. Period. The more attractive it is, the faster it will be cracked. Companies need to realize this and make software more available (public betas, lower prices, no prices (free)...) Even then, people will find ways to get products for free, but just like the music industry is starting to realize, people will take path of least resistance to the software they want.
That's my $0.03
--
dan
-- dan.sherman
Its getting to the point where the open source movement will move further and further underground. All the benefits of the open source would still remain if the lead developers remained anonymous (except maybe for ego purposes). Nobody ever has, and probably won't challenge the majority of open source software, but why risk it anymore. Let the software companies and the movie industry waste a large sum of money trying to silence the small insignificant factions. If those factions ever do rise to power and the power bases lose their market as a result, then in time, most of this won't even matter.
Take Microsoft and the northwest schools. It is not just ONE school district talking about mass migration here. If they do it, and pull it off, other districts will notice. They'll see that it actually CAN be done. They'll see that there really IS support available, and they'll see that it IS saving a lot of money, and they can safely tell the BSA to fuck off. They'll switch too. One at a time, one after another. Microsoft will lose them all. Now you have a whole bunch of high school students, ALL of them trained on linux or whatever open source suite appealed to the districts. They go off to college. You will now see the same movement there. And once that wave is done sweeping through, the corporate world is next. It really COULD start with one school district, and in 10 years, Microsoft will have completely lost their grip on the market, never to regain it.
The point is, after a few years of this, everyone will be using open source software to some degree. People will EXPECT software to be free. And when Blizzard, or the movie industry or anyone comes along and sends out letters saying "you can't use that software" a whole lot of regular non-geek people will turn around and say "up yours!" to the respective finger pointer and tell them where they can shove it and take their money elsewhere.
The music industry is already learning the hard way on this. They had their chance. They could have completely cornered the online market for years had they put in place a simple, inexpensive, non-intrusive music distribution system YEARS ago when they had the chance. But no, they were so concerned about rampant piracy and how it might affect their bottom line, they instead played stupid legal games to attempt to stifle the music trading. And for all the court cases, and all the laws that passed, trading has increased to massive proportions. They sue napster into the ground, 10 others pop up to take its place, only non-centralized and no way to easily shut them down. Who do you go after now? the programmers??
Well, you can't if you don't know who they are.
So undergound all this even potentially murky legal stuff. Wait a few years. All those who would threaten you will be overcome by the wave, and afterwards, they wouldn't dare.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
What if you want to play with your friend next door. and there is no lan.
Bnetd's developers certainly do wonders with those reverse engineering hack. The only drawback I can see is their limited ambition.
Why not implement an open protocol to offer a platform so that all the rest of the game developers can write networked games? It's certainly true that Blizzard has the advantage of popular games. But I doubt that those developers have enough resource to keep up with all the strange packets designed by Blizzard intentionally or unintentionally. I also doubt that other game companies will sit idly to let Blizzard grab all the share. Blizzard's lawsuit won't bear the results they expect. It is unthinkable that a gamer will sign up for a service just be able to play one or several games designed by Blizzard.
Wish Bnetd's developers good luck.
Since it isn't mentioned in the article, the reason the BNETD team don't have CD-KEY checking is because they don't have the algorithim that is used by Blizzard... If they did then everyone could see the source code to make perfect Blizzard CD-Keys and anyone could play on Battle-Net without buying the game.
It's not the fault of Blizzard or of the BNETD team that they don't have CD-Key checking. It a no win situation either way.
Normal people worry me!
That was my first reaction too. But after giving it some additional thought, I have come up with a reason the Blizzard/Vivendi legal team might be acting with more insight than it appears to at first blush.
There are several theories as to why Blizzard is taking action now. Possible movement of battle.net to a subscription service. Blizzard's announced future offering of World of Warcraft, certainly to be a subscription service. And the new release Warcraft III which is supported by the bnetd fork called Warforge. And there's the key. Warforge is a fork. A spinoff. Further development of a project that has been an annoyance to Blizzard since 1998.
If Blizzard managed to kill Warforge, what is to stop another group from retracing those footsteps and modifying bnetd again? What about fans who decide they don't wish to continue paying a subscription to World of Warcraft and use bnetd as a basis for a new, freely available alternative? What if battle.net goes pay-to-play and private and public bnetd servers offer a much more attractive alternative?
The fact is that bnetd makes a very sensible target to head off all these possible forks. And once the legal groundwork is laid in killing bnetd, it would be trivial to send out cease-and-desist letters to those whose work is based on bnetd.
Sure. It will be almost impossible to wipe bnetd off the face of the net. But development is going to slow down considerably if bnetd source code is just as illegal as a warez copy of Warcraft III.
AI think it is safe to assume more programmers are virgin.
they need to work WITH blizzard to do the piracy checking. Blizzard does not want to help them get piracy checking working. They want them gone.
To implement checking, they need blizzard's cd-key system. And a company giving their cd-key algorithm to an open-source project is laughable, to say the least.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Don't try to take control from Blizzard by letting people use their client with your server. Blizzard sees it necessary for keeping their business to have that control exclusive to them, and you may not like it, or agree with it, but you need to respect it. Especially if you decide to play their games. This isn't an operating system we're talking about. Where an operating system is just a middleman, something to build upon, there is (usually) nothing more to a game than itself. You take it as it is, or not at all. Some game developers choose to give the user further liberties through game editors and programming interfaces, and that's great, but those liberties should be given, not taken by force.
I'm sure this is going to be a very unpopular opinion with many of you, all I'm asking for is if you disagree with me, explain why instead of flaming, so that I can take your opinion seriously.
Thanks, Nir
-- Classism is the new racism
If I was Blizzard, why would I ever want to give up the CD-checking code? How would they invalidate CD Keys for the pirated/warez versions if now the server does local checking for validation of the CD keys? The logistics of even contemplating such an update would be a nightmare.
The only thing I could even begin to see is a simple packet forwarding mechanism to send the CD Key to Blizzard's servers and then get a response. It will never happen since you still have the problem of BNETD being open source. *snip* No CD-Key check and voila, suck it down evil Blizzard corporate bastards for not letting me play my pirated game!
From reading the article, it's clear that the developers and maintainers of the bnetd project are Blizzard supporters. They are doing for free what Blizzard had to pay programmers to develop, and from the looks of the article, their paid programmers did it somewhat suboptimally.
Blizzard has a great resource at their disposal. The community that developed around their games has reached a point where they have started writing code to correct the flaws in Blizzard's system. How many companies can only dream of having such a devoted fanbase?
Unfortunately, depressingly, Blizzard's response to this is not an enlightened response that embraces such a community for mutual gain, but one which aims to lobotomize it. There will be no winners from this course of action. bnetd will always exist (potentially with consequences for the original author) and Blizzard will only harm a community that for the most part supports them.
Blizzard chooses to hide behind legislation to defend a business model that cannot naturally work , rather than innovate and develop one that benefits all, including themselves.
Well, to them I say sock it. Soulseek has it right - it's their game, and I can totally understand them wanting to try and keep piracy down. Instead of bitching about it, write your own damn games.
You have paid for it, therefore you are free to do whatever you want with it within the bounds of copyright law. If you want to write a replacement for some service that they would like you to use, there is nothing, legally or morally, stopping you from doing so.
Don't try to take control from Blizzard by letting people use their client with your server.
The problem is that blizzard doesn't have control to begin with. Once that piece of software is bought and paid for, they have no control over what you do with it. If I want to alter that program in any way I like, I am free to do so as long as I'm not distributing copies.
Blizzard sees it necessary for keeping their business to have that control exclusive to them, and you may not like it, or agree with it, but you need to respect it.
No you don't. Just because some company wants something doesn't mean I have to do anything to make sure it happens.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
They removed the source from their home page, but you can still get it over at debian's site if you want to see what their talking about.