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Ragnarok Online Hacked, User Data Leaked
Thanks to GameSpot for their article indicating a major hacking incident on the PC MMORPG Ragnarok Online. According to the piece, developers Gravity initially "..reacted by rolling back the game's data a day, as a number of users had created items with game-master privileges", but then the problem worsened and revealed an apparent server-side hack, as opposed to the client-side hacking of Shadowbane, as "...a full list of user IDs and passwords was leaked to the general public... allowing anybody to gain access to any user account." There's also a very informative post on the GameFAQs messageboards detailing the spread of the 'user.txt' file around messageboards and P2P networks. The official Ragnarok site currently only has a form for players to reconfirm their identities via email, and has offered no official statement.
I know, I know. Hacking anything is bad.
Well, but from what I have seen of the online mm* communities, there is a very big incentive ($$) to create and maintain characters, maybe now they will be forced to start living in the 'real world', where noone is willing to blow upwards of $500 for a collection of bits that may or may not exist alltogether.
It just all seems like a big copout to me.
What will those geeks do now? Go out and play frizbee? Damn, that be too much.
What no link to the user.txt?
Is this the same Slashdot that linked to the DoomIII Alpha, that we know and love?
=P
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
This will get worse until it will be sufficiently resolved. Not this particular incident, but virtual entertainment centers getting hit with the old "in-out, in-out" trick.
Now, will game industry take the lead in security development like it has taken in hardware limit pushing?
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
Uhm.. excuse me, but why would the passwords be storedin plain text? Is there something I'm missing here, or are MD5 and crypt's weaknesses so completely crippling that it's better to just store passwords as they are typed in?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Id be triple checking my credit card statements for the next couple weeks just in case. I wonder how damaging this is for the company's business itself... how many customers will pack up and leave?
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
why would the passwords be storedin plain text?
because paging a sysop to give you a new password is too much trouble
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I used to play this back when they first put up an English server. The game is absolutely beautiful, both graphically and musically.
Playing the game, however, was worthless. You know most MMORPGs, where you hit the rats with your little stick until you get enough XP to use the bigger stick to hit the bigger rats until you get enough XP to get the...
Rag is just like that, only with -nothing- else to do. The chat interface was practically useless, and party system didn't work so well. The only reason I played it as long as I did (about two weeks) was the fact that the game itself is pretty enough to distract you from the fact that the gameplay is.. well, useless. Not fun.
On another note, I have a few friends who still play the game off and on. Funny how I remember their usernames... If -only- I knew their passwords....
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
The RO server is 31MB. I know this because I know someone that got into their system using the SQL exploit (this was a month before Slammer used the same technique). He retrieved the actual server software and released this on the net so that anyone could emulate the server (if you had 1GB+ ram). He has done a lot to the RO folks, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was him that did it.
What an incredible story. I'd say somebody will lose their job over this but it seems EVERYBODY will likely lose their job over this. I can't see Gravity surviving the legal action and loss of business that will occur, and rightfully so if their security was as weak as it appears. This is a fuckup of epic proportions and the company's silence is telling.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
I played Ragnarok free beta for about 3 months and the pay for beta period for about 4 months, and in that time i have never seen worse customer service by any company ever, they simply did not care about any of the players. The final blow came in February when some 12 year old kid reported me to the game master as being a bot because i didnt say "hi" back to him, two days later my account was blocked and my character deleted from the server, they didnt bother talking to me in game, they just took his word and deleted my character and any attempt at contacting the company only resulted in a prefabricated email in broken english. Since then all of my friends that would have been paying customers have left the game because of this severe mistreatment. The thing about this is that im not the only one that this has happen too, literely hundreds if not thousands have been banned unfairly like this. Its honestly no surprise that there are so many hacking attempts on the game. I sincerly hope this latest hacking attempt drives away the american users and they go out of buisness.
The US isn't their market: Korea is. RO was a flash-in-the-pan money grab in the US. Korea is where their long-term income originates.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
I played this game during one of the free betas, and the thing that entertained me the most was the god awful Engrish statements that the company issued with some frequency. Even the EULA was hilariously mis-translated. All i could do was wonder, why would a company that is intending on making money with a product, not even expend the minimal effort to properly localize a game to another country before releasing it there?
I let it pass for a while but it was obvious that they are just of their league. The game had already gone through something like 200 patches when I was playing it a year ago, sometimes 2 or more would come out in a single day, and over half of the promised features never worked. Even Electronic Arts could learn a thing or two about terrible support practices from these folks.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Does anyone actually pay to play this Ragnarok?? I saw it last time in Thailand but thats it.. Go play a real MMORPG like Everquest or DAoC instead.
Everquest is crap.
;^) Read my journal.
More to the point, the MMORPG genre as a whole is, currently, crap. They're glorified chat rooms that let you click on monsters in order to obtain the power to click on bigger monsters.
The underlying problem is the whole "leveling" concept. MMORPGers for some reason feel the need to be rewarded based on how long they've been playing. "I'm 76th level you 75th level n00b. My member is larger than yours."
Just look at the outcry whenever someone out there is caught using a bot to level. It's sad that people will spend hours and hours of their time doing something so simple and tedious that a shell script can do the exact same thing.
-walk west- -attack monster- -loot monster corpse- -heal- -repeat-
Computers have the power to automate menial, repetitive tasks, yet these people seek these tasks out! All for the sake of having a bigger number next to their pseudonym in a giant chat room.
So what is a "real" MMORPG, as you mention? What makes Everquest better than Rag Online, or an old MUD? They're all fundamentally the same.
Of course, I'm somewhat biased against MMORPG players.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
Really the same things could be said for most all activities. What do you do in your daily life that isn't a repetative menial task that could probably be done better by a machine?
Some people enjoy these types of games (I am not one of them) for any number of reasons, whatever.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
What do you do in your daily life that isn't a repetative menial task that could probably be done better by a machine?
Aside from masturbation, almost nothing. A machine does the dishes, a machine washes my clothes. A machine takes me to and from work.
I:
1. Read. Unless you read the same book over and over again, it's not menial.
2. Mountain bike. Different terrain every time, very difficult, couldn't be automated.
3. Carpentry. Machines do all the menial stuff. I do the unique and interesting work.
4. Dancing. If you write a bash script that can dance for me, more power to you.
5. Roller-hockey. See the above
6. Tennis. (And all other sports for that matter) Again, see above
The leveling aspect of MMORPGs is the very definition of menial. Most players even admit that they don't enjoy it. They just want the levels to be able to do the other, "fun" things in the game. They "work" at leveling in order to be able to "play" with the levels they get.
It would make sense to remove the whole leveling part that no one likes, so people can get to the fun part of the game. But wait! The "fun part" isn't infinite! Players would quickly do everything of interest to them and then quit. The leveling serves only to delay the inevitable "finishing" of the game. It dangles the carrot of fun things to do -later-, forcing the players to pay for the game longer.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!