Reconstruction News-- 6/29/11

You know, Chobots, that game we used to play? The KATF had some of its greatest-- And worst-- moments there.

Well, now it's been hacked. It's definitely by someone we know, and we're about 90% sure that it's Carabu.

Carabu has so far: Sent inappropriate messages using the scroller bots, fiddled around with the room layout and player sizes, disabled free chat, talked to me directly via the scroller bots, used mod magic, and kicked several people without reason from the game.

I will update this post with new developments as they arise.

~Update 6/29/11~
We have confirmation that Carabu is one of the hackers, but he is not working alone. He claims that he is merely fifth in command. He has also told us that he intends to place pornographic pictures on the Chobots blog in order to scare away all of its players so that he will have his own "playground." He has also made threats to the forum which we have no evidence that he intends to carry out. Stay tuned for more details.

Wow, That company really doesn't care about it's game if they programmed it so carelessly to be hacked by 15+ aged kids. I could program something more secure in my sleep! It's shameful.

Got on a few minutes ago and can confirm it is either hacked or under-kept. The blog says nothing about any hackings though.

The mods know about the hackings, I just don't think they want to admit it until they've resolved it.

If the above is true, it's very bad, because it means they may think that they cannot fix it.

It all depends on variables.

Assuming that on the fact that Carabu is fifth, that there are only 5 people, with a pretty decent knowledge of flash and the Chobots System, they would be working at an increasing pace, mostly based on experience.

Now if they are going at this for a month, they have plenty of time between a team to get it hacked, and secure it. By securing it they can almost claim it as there own, now they have not done this yet. By securing it they would be violating national law, and the Feds would be tracking them down, rather quickly. Now assuming they are smart enough to do small things at a time, and cover there tracks, they can easily be a phantom behind the system until further security measures are placed. The game could easily be hacked through a rogue malware taking the form of a moderators IP address, creating a false account, and doing what they wish. Now, if the team adds further security measure, perhaps a new server, in which does not go over an internet domain in which all changes must go through in order to be updated, the problem would be solved. Though that would in turn eliminate "Mod-Magic", unless they decide to program it into the flash. Now, assuming they do program it, like it currently is, then it could be hacked, like it currently is. Security options are expensive and not a formidable option. The best thing to do would be to ban those suspicious. Retrieve the "Mac ID" of suspicious members, IE Mod Magic without proper payment, Strange Coding, ect, then ban the computer itself. Now, a dedicated hacker would just buy a new computer, or develop a new Mac ID. It's an endless battle really, especially depending how deep they are into it.

TL;DR Security measures for this time of thing is tricky and expensive. Computer programers aren't psychics, they don't know what's up their sleeve.

That is the sad, sad truth. Now that they're in, it will be hard to get them out, and their IPs are masked. The police, USA or Ukraine, may never find them.

What would be nice is if you could ban people's DNA from websites. Maybe in the future.

If you have enough money, there are other things that CAN NOT be masked, that you can ban. Of course, this goes back to how much money both sides have, and are willing to spend on the issue. They could easily do this at a public library computer, and when banded on that they go to a different library computer. There is never a permament solution to this, if the opposing side stays at it, they will find new ways to hack it, it's guaranteed. WoW has had hacking problems for years. People don't hack the games, but peoples characters. Here is an example.

World of Warcraft, the game is played by characters as an Avatar. You have 4 bag slots, which hold items, and a maximum capacity of 1,000,000 gold per character. Gold is the currency used in the game. Originally people would hack accounts, take all the items from all the characters, and their guilds. A guild in wow is a group of plays, normally containing a group bank. The guild bank contains items all guild members has deposited. A hacker would withdraw all that, then send it to another character. That other character, usually a misused one, would be used to SELL gold to other characters for REAL MONEY. Now, what is the solution to this? The game creates and authenticator, which causes you to put in a randomly generated code before logging in. Well, they were finding ways around that, after a month or so. They were putting viruses on computers that would receive the code and instantly take control of the computer, and use that computer to send money to another character source. They have created a fix to that, which is destined to be broken as well.

It's basically a never ending war. World of Warcraft is owned by a very large company, with a very large sum of money. Chobots is owned by what I believe is a Ukrainian Hotel Chain. They aren't quite going to be able to secure it as well.

then why is their motto “ get visual” hotels? really? no.

Chobots is indeed owned by Vayersoft, a major software corporation in the Ukraine.

However, I can easily see that this was not Roco's point. There is basically nothing you can do to make the hackers go away forever, except shutting down the site entirely.

Hey. It's creepy that you guys were talking about me, like that.

Well, really all that happens, its sad to say that: No matter how protected you are, no matter how hard you try, you are still able to be hacked. Such as the 3DS's case where you can't use hacking software on it (examples would be Acekards, R4s or emulators), but eventually, hackers will be able to get around it all. Nothing is really "hack proof", but it can be close enough to the point where its almost impossible.