news of June 2002

Is there something the C&C community should know? Mail it to MacMark@t-online.de and let's all read it here!


[2002-06-15]
Hunting canned

I removed the blacklist, the disguise list and the reporting feature from this site. I think that those pages failed their mission: I tried over 5 years to reduce the cheating on WChat, but that mission was a failure. Now I will keep the "positive" parts of this site only: I will go on with news and tactics.

This is a big opportunity for other webmasters: They can introduce a new cheater hunting page. It will give you a lot of visits. My opinion is: These cheaters aren't even worth the hunting. I decided to ignore those fools.


[2002-06-14]
Server fixed for Mac

I had a few mails with Virtual Ted (Westwood) about the problems that the Mac version of the WChat client had recently with the WChat server. After the server had been cracked, they made some updates and those updates caused trouble for the Mac WChat version. I told Ted, that it must be the server. Ted's answer was then:

    Yep. We have been making a few changes. Sorry for the inconvenience. We haven't any Macs to test the game out on, so please let us know if it happens again.

    -VT


[2002-06-08]
Cracker shut down wchat server

Today in the WChat CnC talk channel, cracker "mikee420" shut down wchat server. He wrote:

    mikee420-> NOW YOU WILL BE LEAVING

...then the WChat server was down. What I heard from other users, this wasn't the first time it happened today. Looks like someone is cracking. Have those fools no real hobbies? The name "mikee420" reminds me to Beasty420, is that bad guy back? We don't need him.

I mailed Ted about the incidents.


[2002-06-02]
Westwood hacked on high level

Looks like Westwood and the game community was in major trouble over the past weekend.

ElPaladin wrote:

        On May 31st at about 11 PM a hacker who far surpassed anything that CnC Gold players have seen from ACnDC, LordSSB, Beasty420 and other top 'hackers' attacked all of Westwood Online server and caused a great deal of damage to the internal structure of the system. The hacker, Lurker9x, somehow gained control of SYSOP software (possibly via ItzDphie1, OMSmercy or one of the other Monopoly users selectively given the SYSOP software by Ted themselves, or via hacking into Westwood itself).  He took control of Monopoly Chat by booting Helpbot and Monop_Bot from the channel, and proceeded to nuke all users from the server and chatrooms. Similar problems were reported by Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 users although the Renegade and Earth and Beyond Beta servers went unaffected. Once the problem was discovered Virtual Ted signed on under the nick "V-TED" and proceeded to remove the hacker, but in the proccess was removed himself and was continuously delayed in logging on to deal with the hacker and all of his names.
    This guy was a true character, he had some good hacking skills. Notgood7 managed to kill Lurker9x's name, but he only came on to do it again under several other nicks. The scariest part was that even Virtual Ted was having trouble maintaining control of his own server. Lurker was also able to Kill and Disable several peoples user names, and even create changes on the Command and Conquer ladder by using NotGood7s name, even after it had been killed. Eventually V-Ted had no choice but to delete all of the chat rooms, and Westwood has since rebuilt 3 of them- Commannd_n_Conqr, Monop Tourney 2 and Monop Tourney 3 but all 3 remained closed with only the bots allowed in. This leaves a large crimp in the side of Westwood, and leads me to wonder if CnC_Chat will be open again.
      

NotGood7 wrote:

    Hi Macmark. Mark Ritchie here,(NotGood7). Tonight,May 31st around 7:00 p.m. i logged on WW to play some games and win the tourny as i was at 779 points, (2nd place for Nod). No longer then a few minutes went by after i logged on and went into chat and a broadcast from Delphi-WS came up on the screen saying "EVERYONE LEAVE NOW. YOU HAVE 1 MINUTE BEFORE I START KILLING NAMES" Obviously it was a hacker with a sysops program as i indeed found out later. I left the chat and looked for games then i noticed all the chatrooms were gone. A few minutes later, the monopoly chat popped back up and was the only chat available so i decided to go in there and see if i could find out what was going on. After being in the room for only 10 seconds i was "KILLED" and i could no longer log onto my NotGood7 nick. I then logged onto another name and went in the room and that name was killed automatically. This happened with 5 of my names before i was able to be in the room long enough to see that the name of the "op" in the room was Lurker. After being killed once again i logged on another name and typed a sentence before i went into the chat asking him to unban my nickname since he had the power to do so, so that i could play some games and win the tourny. I popped in the room and pressed enter very quickly to get my sentence out before i was killed again. It did not kill me right away this time. His reply to my sentence was "LOL..get another name". I was then immediately killed. Needless to say, he was not going to give me my nicks back and all the passes are no longer working. An hour goes by and I then log onto a nick that i could go play some non tourny games on and I take a glance at the ladder and the person who hacked my name had played games on my name to kill my rank down to 709 points. I couldn't do anything about it but sit back and watch because my password no longer worked and Westwood was closed for the weekend. <...>

    NotGood7
    Antioch, California

updates to these news added on [2002-06-05]:

'yakow smirnov' wrote:

    Macmark, MSEOP1 killed at least two of my usernames tonight, the second time coming after I returned to the "tech support" channel to see what the hell was happening. He wasn't in the room as MSEOP1, but from what was said I am certain it was him. I didn't save the log and it was only after this that I went to your site to discover how badly westwood's security had been compromised. I don't know if any of this is news to you or not, but I thought I'd let you know.

ElPaladin wrote:

    As of 7:25 PM EST The CnC, Monopoly, Red Alert and Monopoly Tourney Chat rooms are all back online.

    Just moments before Monopoly came back online with another hacker (Not Lurker9x) in the room. I also spotted Lurker under (Sysop) [Lurker] earlier today in Monop_Tourney2. I have some snaps for your viewing pleasure :-D

During the past days, MacC&C users had problems connecting to WChat, but it works now again. I had some emails with Ted and he told me that they did nothing with my name. I think the WChat server was troubled after the attack.

Now the chat channels are back and usable, same for the game channels.

updates to these news added on [2002-06-06]:

Yesterday my WChat client was attacked via IRC as it looks to me. I informed Ted and asked for help. We had a few emails until today. Bottom line is, that some guys like me cannot use WChat as usual until Westwood has fixed everything regarding those crackers. Ted's last mail was:

    We're still having problems. We're working on it....

    -VT

Everything will turn out fine.

updates to these news added on [2002-06-07]:

Today everything is working again: WChat, games, all fine. Have fun!


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