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U.S. Army to d00dz - We're Coming for You
Thanks to cdagobah for mentioning a post up on the America's Army game site. Executive Producer Phil DeLuca posts a message updating the community on a recent anti-hacking campaign they've initiated, and has a clear message for would-be wrongdoers. From the post: "Allow me to speak directly to the bad guys for a moment: When you get banned, know that we know and have records showing you were doing something that's a violation of terms of service, breaks your EULA, and also happens to be against the law. We know who you are, and can track down where you play from. We have incontrovertible proof you did something illegal. The Army is angry, and we're coming for you. "
.... and we know you have weapons of mass destruction hidden somewhere! Come Clean!
We know who you are, and can track down...
The Army is angry, and we're coming for you.
Nice to see that the Army is doing something useful. I wouldn't want any of these teenagers walking around the streets.
First they break the EULA, next they're killing babies. Gotta stop this evil when it starts!
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
The game just isn't anymore now that all the snipers never seem to miss. Seems that right when the game starts - POW - I am head shot in 30 seconds. Over and over and over and over again.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I don't play AA anymore, as there just isn't enough time in my day...but I really hope they fly at all these little idiots with the full weight of the US Army and everything that entails. Yeah, I know, no tank will be bashing in their doors, but the dreaded and feared lawyers will be out there with writs in hand!
It always cracks me up with the d00dZ saying "yeah, they can't do anything to me, I'm not breaking no law or anything...they can't catch me anyway...I'm l33t!". Now it's time to finally shut them up...if even for 5 minutes!
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
America's Army official servers all run unmoderated, relying on the automated PunkBuster system to weed out hackers. Unfortunately it just plain doesn't work. AA has been getting as bad as Red Faction was with hacks recently. I hope they do something effective, although threats may not be the best way to do it. They ought to look into something other than punkbuster, for example UT had quite a few independantly-developed anti-cheat mods which worked quite well, and AA runs on the UT engine anyway... I'm tired of rapid-fire 203s, dammit!
Since when is it illegal to use a wall-hack or aimbot? ;)
Seriously, does anyone know the details?
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
Our tax dollars, hard at work. Doesn't this make you proud to be an American?
I've never played this game, and know little about it...but if I'm understanding this correctly, some people used some cheats in a video game, and a developer is insinuating criminal repercussions? Is it safe to assume that there were no real monetary losses?
Yeah. I'll believe that the federal government will actually prosecute when pigs fly.
Inmate 1: What are you in for?
Inmate 2: First degree murder, but I'll be out in 4 more years. What about you?
Inmate 1: I cheated in a video game, which was technically misusing US Army property. I'll be in here for a long time.
Inmate 2: Daaaaaaaaaaamn.
-Turkey
Maybe they should focus on... oh I dont know... Osama Bin Laden?
this sig has been discontinued.
They dont know the extend of what we know, and moreover how we know it. They used up all the knowledge that could have been put towards proofreading.
My Xbox Live Gamer Card
... will the army rangers who come to arrest me use techniques they learned in the game? Will they all be little camping sniper whores? how many grenades do they get (or am I thinking too much CS here...)??? I took the tutorial, I think I can hold my own.
Grease & Counterbalance
What is it about Beltway Bandits and civil servents working with the millitary that produces these freakin' desk-commandos? Like they've even fired a weapon before. There's a special place in hell for all these losers where they're forced to PT their flabby @$$es all day.
It's illegal? They're coming after you? What they really mean is if you try and join the army, the future will look like this.
And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I just got a temp ban from the official servers." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "Wallhacking." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench.
Sir, You are a wanker. You are frightening nobody. Stop pretending you are a tough guy and go back to managing your software team.
Nobody except judiciary has the right to go after me when I've done wrong.
Everything else breaches separation of powers and / or is plain illegal. Like the RIAA paying retired police offers to play Gestapo. Or the army saying "The Army is angry, and we're coming for you".
Rather than threatening its own people, I'd prefer the army focusing on defense, and on respecting the law themselves. As a suggestion, they could start in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo.
except Alice.
Dear GI Joe,
wake up and smell the coffe, war is not about obeying rules. It's about winnning.
The US army is going to use lawyers because it cannot police it's own servers. I do so look forward to you explaining that to the press.
Given that once again the US Army cannot deal with problems in a rational, pragmnatic and effective manner I suggest you always do what the army does in this situation. Call for the marines.
Cause we all know that only terrorists cheat at online games...
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
c'mon guys, this is war! Play fair!
We have incontrovertible proof...
Raise your hand if you've heard that one before.
Throughout the article this guy keeps saying "bad guys" like he was fighting for something tangible and sacred. Get some perspective man, you're booting cheaters from a game server, not saving babies in 'Nam.
How about: Tampering with software and servers owned or used by the Army is cyber crime.
Oooooh, oh no! I'm not fully clear on what people are doing that's got General McNads' panties in a bunch, but I'm assuming it's a bit more annoying than just using a wall hack, perhaps people are trying to crash servers and the like, but that happens to every game/website/store on the web! But because it's happened to the army's game, now they're really serious and pissed. Hello, US Gub'ment, this is the sort of "cybercrime" that goes on daily and is ignored or completely fumbled by current law bodies. Now you know what Joe Developer has to deal with daily when he wakes up and his web-store has been hacked to shit. Did you care then? Nope, but apparently now that it's personal it matters. The guy writing this sounds almost surprised by the affront of the "bad guys": 'How dare they hack us! I mean we're the army for crissake!'
And the bit at the end saying "We're coming for you." Honestly, I think this guy actually believes someone's going to have their house stormed and shot up. At best they'll be sending a lawyer, there will be due process in court, and life will continue as usual. Someone, please, get this over-inflated self-important bastard away from his keyboard and someplace where his gung-ho attitude might actually affect change at the scale he hallucinates. It's a friggin game.
"My god Er, I can't believe we are standing in the presence of THE Moon Master!"
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
I really hope they fly at all these little idiots with the full weight of the US Army and everything that entails.
Spoken like someone who isn't paying enough taxes to care how his government spends his money.
Really now, do you want military-sized, wasteful, beurocratic budgets to spend time tracking down people who cheat in a video game?
They'll never be able to find you...
They'll knock on your door and threaten jail, but give you the option to enlist instead to put those 'skills' to 'good' use. :-P
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
"Thanks for exposing a hole in
-our- security.
We'll work hard to plug that hole
so that others won't be able to
crawl through it, in future."
I'm reminded of the Hacker Challenges
of other security conscious web sites.
I have been playing Enemy territory for some time and have noticed a lot of cheaters ,aimbots and wallhacks.
It has come to my attention that you have undertaken the role of punkbuster, only with rifles and live ammo.
Could you please um, 'solve' the problem on the Enemy terrirory servers please?
Maybe send these people to obligatory service in Iraq or something?
Thank you.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
As a long-jaded gamer and server admin, all I can say is hooray. Finally, an organisation with the resources to combat cheating kids. To draw an analogy, these guys are the script kiddies of the gaming world - most of them are just silly punks out to ruin the gaming experience for others and have no real idea of how many people they're affecting.
Sure, non-gamers say "but its just a game", but (to draw another analogy) imagine if every social sports game you played had streakers, people doped up on horse steroids, and people that just walked up to you and started screaming abuse. It would quickly become annoying.
Of course, in the real world, doing that sort of thing quickly has repercussions (ie, someone smacks your bitch ass up) but online, its a real pain in the ass (especially in a free game with no real mechanism to ban users - like Steam, but that's another kettle of fish) to stop these users from ruining the online experience of others.
Personally, the thought of Delta Force guys kicking in some random hackers door at 3am and throwing in a couple of flashbangs makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Hell, they could record it on video and put it on the America's Army website and people would PAY MONEY to see it.
Does it really matter how pithy you are if it's *your* house they've got lased? Wolves seem to be perfectly happy living in holes excavated in the earth, but I would guess most people find that lifestyle sub-optimal.
I guess the Army has to find a war to win somewhere. You'd think that they'd be spending their time and resources getting vehicles and personnel in Iraq armored, but I guess you've got to have priorities.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
Hah, so it isn't a cyber crime to mess with other's computers if they're not owned or operated by the army? Thanks for stating the obvious, Capt. Obbvious.
Brought to you by Lt. Redundant.
EA Games: makes its employees work uncompensated overtime in order to make deadlines (read: in order to keep their jobs). US Army: bans and declares cheaters on game servers to be compromising to national security. One is killing people to make games, the other is killings people for playing... Fitzghon
And here I was thinking it was an attempt to recruit kids into the army.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I don't know how many people play AA, but if you don't, let me explain how this works to you.
The primary hacks are: full auto 203s. Imagine a grenade launcher, add unlimited ammo, and a firing rate of 700 RPM. Imagine maps where there is almost nowhere that cannot be hit. It becomes impossible to deal with. This can also be applied to rocket launchers, sniper rifles, just about any gun in the game can benefit from full auto. Then there are the speed hacks which allow players to run to the objs in about 4 seconds, the obj hacks, where players can take the obj without even being near it, or maybe the respawn hacks, where even if you kill the hacker, he comes right back from the dead. And don't forget a hack that adjusts for the game-physics and run speed, so literally there is no safe thing to do. And don't forget the standard set of aim-bots no fog hacks, etc. All there, and in more numbers than most games, and even more than CS. Almost every server had a blatant hacker on them at anytime, and most had a couple of covert hackers.
Then there is the problem with the server company having a monopoly on honor servers.(honor is a number displayed by your screen that is a rough indicator of skill, but only kinda) The servers crashed non-stop, the support tickets went unanswered, and generally SCI was a pain in the ass. It went so far as there were Freedom of Information Act requests put on the Army and SCI's contract. There was no response. It took SCI repeated requests to allows us access to PB screenshots, which take a picture of whatever your screen is, and them send them off to the server. But this was hacked too, allowing the hacker to send any image he wants, so on many PBSS it was a picture of tub girl. CVAR checks didn't work because after every crash(usually 3-4 times a day) it resets all server scripts. Every AA player who has played since 1.9 remembers the good 'ole days of HomeLan and admins, who were utterly ruthless.
Recently Speakeasy's gamefire division has been allowed to rent honor servers, but they currenty don't have PB enabled, so no-one plays on them anyway. But this just started the 10th, so we will need to wait and see.
There have also been numerous bugs including the "critical error" or "General Protection Faults". In 2.0-2.2 a critical errors would happen non-stop meaning that no AA session lasted for much more than an hour.
And for people who have been bashing Phil Deluca or [Dev]Skippy, recently a large number of hackers were banned, and that caused a notable improvement in the quality of gaming. Under his control, they also released 2.2.1 which has cut down on the critical errors. Things under skippy are looking up, so I really wouldn't be suprised if you see on CNN in a couple of weeks that "the Army has sued several internet sites for hosting hacks for the Army's free recruiting tool video game, Americas Army".
We've been through hell, but for some reason AA just has me coming back for more. Some of the 1.9 era maps are brilliantly done(Bridge SE is possibly one of the best maps ever in an online video game) AA is also the only game to have realistic long range combat. Not just twitch shootin, but tactics will almost always win in AA. Don't bash AA if you havn't been in the community for a long time.
If what Skippy says happens, we are going to be a very happy bunch of gamers.
Mod Wisely.
In the early 1940's, Japan learned an important lesson - "let the sleeping giant lie." We may not react swiftly, but when we do it's with unstoppable force.
Wow, this guy has some balls to be comparing a bit of video game hacking to pearl harbor.
Illegal in YOUR country...
Seems to me that the only thing, if anything happens legally, will be a simple smack on the wrist, like a $50 fine or something. I doubt there will be arrests, kids getting thrown in jail and the like; it's much more likely to be a 'I wouldn't want that letter in my PO Box..' type thing. And for people outside the US, meh, we'll just keep on banning. There's also a few interesting ideas about a counter-attack script type thing floating around, but only has as much credibility as any other rumor, I suppose.
from Fallujah.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
yeh, but read all the comments after it. It scary to see all those cries of HOOAAHH and the effort they go to for the graphical sigs.
they are all a sorry bunch of losers. wanna be army boys who wouldn't cut it in the real world.
Reading that dev's post shows that he has the same mindset they all do and although he's just trying to scare the kids into not cheating, I think a lot will believe they're going to have their doors bashed in during some fucking dawn raid.
bad guys. heh. tosser.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
Sgt: "Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W .... NOW kid!!"
NAR: And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and got IP banned from America's Army."
Heh, "Group W" seems appropriate in ways I hadn't thought of before.
I posted this bit in reply to something else before scrolling all the way down. This makes me feel really lame.
Considering that the military is using America's Army as a recruiting tool, a PR campaign, and a psychological experiment it's in their very best interest to take a such a hard line against any and all hacks.
Sheesh... is having a positive opinion of America's armed forces a high crime on /. ??? Message after message of bash bash bash.
That said, accessing a department of defense computer system without authorization is a felony, so yah, they really *could* go after people if they wanted to.
Get a sense of humor. He's joking. He doesn't actually have the power of the US Army usable behind him. If you ask him, "You and what army?", he'd most likely laugh. This is the same thing as a "Trespassers will be shot" sign. You sound like you're modding a Funny comment Troll - oh wait, this is the community that invented the Moderator's Lack of a Sense of Humor.
Seriously. You guys sound like you think there are active soldiers who aren't overseas.
On the other hand, he really shouldn't be saying what he did without a big disclaimer. I'm sure that if you look a little bit, he's more guilty than the cheaters are.
Inmate 2: Bend over.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
For a special announcement.
Your point is valid for any other game out there. The fact is, though, that no matter how entertaining AA is, it's an advertisement and recruitment tool for the Army. It's a tool of propaganda aimed at young people, for the purpose of enticing them into military service.
It's immoral (and annoying) to purposely disrupt other people's fun for your own amusement. But it's also immoral to make a credible threat of violence to someone who is disrupting your advertisement. Just because the programmer's a nitwit doesn't mean he can just talk shit about the Army coming to get you.
Right now, upwards of ten thousand American men and women have been either killed or injured in the course of this war. In this context, f*cking with a recruiting tactic starts to sound positively saintly.
Send the Cheaters to Vietn... I mean Iraq.
RFC 1925 - The Twelve Networking Truths:
(3) With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead.
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1925.html
Did we (American taxpayers) want a military-based, largely unnecessary computer game to be developed without us even being asked? For the most part, no we didn't want money being spend on America's Army. But since its already done, we might as well continue to support and work with it instead of just dropping it, bitching about the lost money and not getting anything productive out of the project.
Worst case scenario : Politicians claim the government is taking a pro-active stance against those who break EULAs. Lawyers make more money.
Best case scenario : Happy gamers equal happy citizens. Cheaters are offered fines/jail time/military service time making happy armed forces. Politicians claim the government has a strong presence on the internet with the ability to arrest people online. Lawyers make more money.
LOL! Speaking of the obvious, you signed up to play a game created by the U.S. Army and given away for free. Did you really think the Army would do that if it wasn't going to try to recruit you?
Player and Army Privacy
"Finally privacy is a big concern for us. Players register under a userid and gameplay information cannot be traced to an individual's real identity."
Obviously, anything online can track all sorts of information about a user (duh), I guess I just find it funny they offer the warm and fuzzy privacy gurantees on one page, and then threaten(?) "naughty" users elsewhere on the site, after they get a mad-on.
Here
Regarding the Japaneese lesson, it looks as if the US Army also has forgotten a lesson: Vietnam. So they have to learn it again in Iraq. And that't why they have such high recruting requrements that they have to trap kids with a video game. Only, the blod in Iraq is real.
And now, excuse me while I take some precautions against the MIBs who will soon come after me for voicing an opinion against the Army.
"And what authority has this tribunal got?" said Polly coldly.
"Thousands of men under arms," said Clogston.
"Sorry. The trouble is, when you say to a general 'You and whose army?' he just has to point out of the window."
Anyone whoe remembers the whole Kesmai/EA/Aol Multiplayer battletech fiasco knows this well. The problems is his cures are often worse than the disease. In MPBT he used players that volunteered as helpers to police the game. Unfortunately MPBT being divided into five very large teams more than a few of these "Helpers" became their teams ultimate weapons.
The problem was further aggravated by the political nature of the game. As accusations against the "Volunteer Police" Grew they had to defend themselves. Back and Forth it went, the simple message that having people who had invested years into their various team being refs was a very bad idea, never got the respect it deserve
I don't play Americas Army but for Phills sake and the games sake, I hope he has payed help this time and some effective means to actually identify the hackers and deal with them. The last time he had none of these and it was a disaster.
I know not with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but W0r1d W4r 4 will be fought with aimbots.
~~Every few years or so I'm accidentally fashionable!
Well they _were_ no threat. Now they see US as an occupational force and iraqi freedom fighters _will_ make sure the price of occupation is high unless US spends all its budget on rebuilding the iraqi state immediately. This can easily escalate into WW3 and I am scared.
Sir, there seems to be a Kettle on line two, who wishes to discuss a certain color with you. //Pretentious & sanctimonious, its like a two-fer down in Elitistville.
Come and get me; I'm from New Jersey!!
This sig is false.
Those "urrefutable proof" and "we know where you live" sentences is pretty much crap. Everybody knows electronic data can be easily fabricated and cant be accepted in an actual trial (unless is certificated by several official sources like verisign and bank servers) so I pretty much doubt any game log or a game server log no matter how comprehensive will do as "urrefutable proof". And we "know where you live" please! have you heard of schools, offices and cyber cafes? even if these guys have used their own houses, you think Hackers have signed up with their "real" names and address? this game doesnt even ask for a CC (which could be stolen or even fabricated by a hacker anyway) trace their IP? when was the last time you meet someone with a registered static IP in their household? I know they are the army and all but technology itself has its limits. This guy just watched "the net" once too many times.
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
They will come after 12 year old John Doe sitting in his mom's sewing room playing a game, but can't catch the 18 year old dude who killed twelve service men in Bagdad. Seems a bit of a mix up in priorities to me.
Seems to me this is quite backwards. We go out of our way to blame Microsoft for these types of 'vulnerabilities' in their software. Perhaps we should be applying the same standard to this. It isn't the hackers fault that there are serious holes in the client software that can easily be taken care of, it's the fault of the software manufacturer for making them to begin with.
And they all moved away from me...
I disagree. Under your agruement we could also say there are inherent flaws in browsing the internet. Therefore MS's browser isn't a problem, it's the nature of the internet. That's pretty much where MS stands, and I think that is wrong. The other problem is that there are other manufacturers out there who are demonstrating that you can mitigate the problem and do it successfully. Half-Life 2 has extremely little cheating or hacking going on. Perhaps we should pay closer attention to how they are addressing the problem.
...our current President of the United States, I made it a point to listen to the entirety of his speech that occurred at the onset of the war with Iraq.
In that speech, he outlined a number of solid reasons for the war with Iraq. One that stood out, for me, was the removal of Sadam in order to give freedom and safety to the Iraqi people. He continued by talking about the WMD's, region stability and even how all of this could have been avoided by Sadam Hussein's Regime, which would have been if they simply stood aside and gave up their power.
Even if the underlying unspoken reason is oil, quite frankly, I am happy with that reason. Like it or not, the reality of our modern world is that we rely on the availability of oil for every single good and service that is available. Unfortunately, there simply is no readily available replacement for oil that could be put into effective use on short notice.
Without oil, farm equipment cease to operate, there goes the food supply. Without oil, trains and semi-trucks cease to operate, there goes readily available goods, like clothes, food and power. Power I say? Yes, how else do you think that powerplants, even nuclear plants, receive the fuel they need to generate electricity? It just doesn't appear at the powerplant by will alone.
If we had a readily available, cheap and instantly ready to implement, as in we could pour it into our gasoline and diesel running engines, solution to the oil issue, I would be all over that in a heartbeat.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I can see the Army doing this.
Having guys being trained on system security monitor the servers to improve their skills as a training exercise.
Having military lawyers file suits to help them get familiar with the civilian courts.
Of course, a 203 into the pc would just be satisfying.
In God we trust, all others require data.