Tuesday, June 14, 2011

CCP Being Hacked

This is my first EVE is dying thread, but this time it may be correct. As I am writing this EVE is offline thanks to an attack by lulzsec. This is very serious for CCP and actually might be a killing blow.

As I see it CCP has had a lot of problems lately. Despite having a huge monthly injection of cash from its 300k+ subscribers, it, as an organization has become completely dysfunctional. Lets go over the major problems that I am aware of:

1. Unable to get Dust514 onto the XBox platform.
2. Playstation (which will be used by Dust) network being hacked resulting in Credit Card information leaks.
3. Buggy releases of new unpopular features
    -Quafe-zero / PLEX scam
    -Crashing Tyranis Patches
    -Null-sec nerfage
4. Failure to deal with Macros resulting in it's signature gaming experience (0.0) being controlled by RMT traders
5. Failure to deliver new functionality
6. A huge security failure in thier new forum leading to it being taken down after a few hours.
7. Huge negative feedback over handling of the 9th Alliance Tournament Qualification Round

And now.... CCP being driven off the internet by a DDOS attack and probably hacked at the same time. At present CCP is claiming that it was just a DDOS but past experience with these hackers indicates that they do more than just DDOS. The Conservative Part of Canada was hacked, the party claimed nothing was leaked, and then Lulz proved otherwise. The fact that CCP has pretty much taken themselves off the internet leads me to think the problem here is a lot more than TQ going down.

Notice a trend here? I have highlighted in RED those issues that relate to security.


TL;DR.... cancel your credit cards you use to play EVE with. Don't trust them with real money ever again.


Edit:
Interesting feedback for this post...

Anonymous said...
The reason for Dust being PS3 exclusive is because CCP would not like for players to pay for XBox Live as an additional cost and because it would be a market different from EVE players. Sony has since patched up their network from the terribly insecure state is was in before.
CCP had demoed Dust before on the X-Box. However they clearly could not satisfy whatever requirements Microsoft had to be on X-Box so they are now PS3 exclusive. This effectively cuts their audience (and revenue) in half.

The crashing Tyrannis patches are not so much a security issue as it is a QA mishap.
 Think that one through. QA mishaps are indicative of security issues. That is plain and obvious.

Macros have been a long withstanding issue with the game and it's not like they affect other MMOs as well.
Macros exist in all MMOs true, but their existence in EVE is affecting their core end-gameplay. Not cool.

The fact that CCP took down their forum so fast is a good thing. The fact that it happened is not. Regardless, it's fixed now.
 They took it down, brought it back up, took it down again. It was not fixed.

Pretty harsh words for someone that has no idea about the severity of the attack.
Nobody knows the severity of the attack. Not me and I can assure you, not CCP.

Edit2:
Looking at some of the tweets by lulzsec it does appear that EVE was just a random target. EVE was one of many random sites today. Perhaps my I overreacted to be afraid of identity theft in the same way CCP may have overreacted in taking themselves off the internet. Still I am not going to give CCP a break on their many problems, especially those relayed to internet security. If it wasn't for things like the forum fiasco I would not have had these concerns.
Now I want to see what happens to the Atlas Alliance that is taking credit for the attack.

9 comments:

  1. "TL;DR.... cancel your credit cards you use to play EVE with. Don't trust them with real money ever again."

    Pretty harsh words for someone that has no idea about the severity of the attack.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very alarmist. I don't know if you're trolling or not but it's silly.

    The reason for Dust being PS3 exclusive is because CCP would not like for players to pay for XBox Live as an additional cost and because it would be a market different from EVE players. Sony has since patched up their network from the terribly insecure state is was in before.

    The crashing Tyrannis patches are not so much a security issue as it is a QA mishap.

    Macros have been a long withstanding issue with the game and it's not like they affect other MMOs as well.

    The fact that CCP took down their forum so fast is a good thing. The fact that it happened is not. Regardless, it's fixed now.

    LulzSec ddos'ed the login server which took down the website as well. CCP almost immediately turned down their server to see if anything else went wrong. That is a good thing.

    TL;DR: Stop crying and find a use for your (temporarily) liberated time. I know I have :p

    ReplyDelete
  3. Since the El Fiasco De La Forums,however, CCP has...
    (a) addressed jump bridges in a reasonable, scaled manner rather than going for a total tear down, (b) made a rational adjustment to sanctums, and now (c) propose a good fix dealing w1th the mass on drams.

    Since announcement, people have derided -=DUST514=- as twitch-based garbage that will never catch on. I am also staked out in that camp's direction, I admit. Still, I could allow some hope that it is a bolder move to have the console FPS offering linked with the single-shard persistent universe of EVE. (I say I could, but given the evidence of PI and FW, I will not hold my breath.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Please post less dribble like this and more of your usual awesome posts in the future. Ktnxbye

    ReplyDelete
  5. Trying to get a job for Fox News here?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wow, you are so anti eve. From what I can tell Eve took their server and website down to prevent what happened to sony from happening to them.

    As for the xbox issue, MOST mmo's don't use xbox due to their "highly restrictive requirements" (I keep seeing that phrase whenever someone mentions not being able to find mmo's on xbox). Plus the pricing issue as mentioned

    Macros? Geese louise, all mmo's have rampant macro and bot problems, don't single out eve for that problem.

    Security issues with the forum... again Im seeming eve being singled out amoung all the other major forums out there having issues in the last year.

    This is reminding me of the constant WOW is dying, Apple is dying, (insert random company name here) is dying articles that keep poping up whenever something goes wrong with the said company

    (Yes, I did really use Geese Louise in my comment)

    ReplyDelete
  7. This post is leading me to believe you don't know the difference between data theft and DDoS. As a programmer, I can say with some certainty that trying to steal data while DDoSing is pretty stupid. The whole point of DDoS is to shut something down, not keep it up just long enough that you can get something out of it. If you were attempting to steal data, the VERY last thing you would do is DDoS, because then you get the white hats scrounging around the logs seeing what happened, which would expose your rootkit's presence, which could lead to it being disassembled and deconstructed. If your rootkit is at a professional level, this is the absolute worst thing you want happening, as it takes a god-forsaken amount of time to build a new professional grade rootkit with a different profile, different evasion tactics, etc. DDoS on the other hand doesn't really expose the bots in the botnet, as the bots don't operate with enough CPU usage to alarm the everyday user, and routes can be spoofed.

    As for credit cards, having the credit reporting agencies put a watch/freeze on your credit should work out. Being half diligent about looking at your credit card balances helps too.

    ReplyDelete
  8. lol you don't know shit

    ReplyDelete