CCP's War On Bots And Illicit RMT: First Impressions

Since CCP Stillman left CCP for an information security think-tank in Reykjavik at the end of 2013, I've wondered about the organization of Team Security.  Who was left?  We found out yesterday with the release of the latest Security dev blog.

CCP Bugartist, Questions Everthing

First, the new Director of Information Security is CCP Bugartist.  Not much is known about him except that he was apparently hired in October.  I am assuming CCP Bugartist is a he based on the portrait, but that is possibly a false lead.  We apparently will find out for sure at Fanfest in a few weeks.

Next, the team is split into two functional groups, InfoSec and Team Security.  I refer to functional teams, as the two teams have a lot of overlap.   The first team, InfoSec, has a more traditional role in Internet security.  CCP Bugartist described InfoSec in the dev blog:

CCP InfoSec is a team of selected and dedicated security focused individuals who help to ensure the availability, integrity and confidentiality of CCP's Virtual Worlds. Information Security has many definitions. Some are purely technical and others are purely virtual. It is their daily work to strategically combine the strengths of both to find practical solutions for the real and the virtual worlds of CCP. 
The members of InfoSec are:

• CCP Random, His Divine Shadow™, Security Engineer
• CCP Bugartist, Questions Everything, Director of Information Security
• CCP Blofeld, People Person, IT Director

InfoSec’s latest projects include network security enhancements for CCP's worldwide data-center and office locations, security minded code-reviews, fresh company-wide security policies, and improvements of CCP's internal information structures for process-oriented security workflows.

CCP Random, His Divine Shadow™

CCP Random is another new face, apparently hired in January of this year as a security engineer.  Based on his position on both InfoSec and Team Security, CCP Random is filling the rather large shoes of Charlie Eriksen (aka CCP Stillman).

The final member of the team is CCP Blofeld.  Despite the label "People Person", I have no information about CCP's IT Director, not even a portrait.  That could indicate he (or she) is not worthy of actually flying on Tranquility with the rest of CCP.  After all, the C C P Alliance is known as a group of l337 PvPers and perhaps the alliance leadership is afraid he will mess up their killboard.

The second team, Team Security, is the group who is the main focus of my posts on the War on Bots and Illicit RMT^™:

Team Security handles game-related security matters for CCP's products. CCP prohibits behavior such as botting and Real Money Trading ("RMT") to protect the integrity of our Virtual Worlds, and Team Security is tasked with enforcing these policies. 
The members of Team Security are:

• CCP Peligro, The enforcer of the law™, Security Specialist
• CCP Grimmi, Der Equalizer™, Space-Lanes Cleaner-Upper
• CCP Random, His Divine Shadow™, Security Engineer
• CCP Bugartist, Questions Everything, Director of Information Security

Team Security’s duties include waging war against real-money transactions (RMT).  Since the last Team Security blog we have been busy chasing down RMT operatives and their corrupt ilk, applying bans and removing the ill-gotten proceeds from the EVE universe.  

CCP Grimmi, Der Equalizer™

I assume that CCP Grimmi is GM Grimmi moving from leading up the game masters to a new, dev role some time last month.  Grimmi is now the veteran bot banner on the team, having served on the original Eve Security Task Force back in 2011 before joining Team Security last year.  In addition to having served as a game master since the game launched, Grimmi is one of the people most familiar with the logs at CCP.  If Grimmi is moving over full time to the security side, that could mean some trouble for botters.

CCP Peligro, The Enforcer of the Law™

Last, but not least, is CCP Peligro.  Unlike CCP Grimmi, CCP Peligro is based in the Atlanta office, giving Team Security coverage across both the EU and NA time zones.  Peligro is very adept at tracking down botting RMTers and is the CCP employee most likely to send out permanent bans to the botters.  I also see he is now listed as a security specialist.  With Peligro on the job I think I might find more tears to post in the future.


Apparently CCP Bugartist is a traditionalist because he concluded the dev blog with a nice graph.

Graph from CCP dev blog

The amount of ISK seized so far in April, 4.21 trillion ISK, is impressive.  Using the price of PLEX in Jita on 30 March as a reference, that's over $105,000 USD worth of ISK.  I also think that Team Security managed to seize the stock of a couple of ISK selling websites before they were able to sell a large portion of it to players.

Prices in U.S. Dollars

On Sunday I noticed that two ISK sellers, Online-Gold and MMOGA, raised their prices to over twice the U.S. dollar value of a billion ISK sold in Jita.  This is often done by ISK sellers who get large portions of their stock seized by CCP.  In this case, I believe close to all, if not all of the stock of these two websites was seized.

I found the amount raised a bit excessive, as most companies will raise prices to discourage people from buying, not drive them away forever.  But then I realized that both websites cater to Europeans who are charged a VAT by CCP in addition to the PLEX.  Converting the prices to euros, the gap between the CCP price and the ISK sellers price became more noticeable.  But either way, those two ISK sellers are out of the ISK selling business for at least another week.

Prices in Euros

If CCP Bugartist wanted to make a good first impression, he certainly succeeded with his inaugural dev blog.  Explaining the changes to the team's structure, explaining why RMT is bad, and a nice graph showing hundreds of thousands of USD in ISK seized from RMTers is a really nice way to get acquainted with the community.  Also finding out why a couple of European ISK sellers got knocked flat on their backs was a nice bonus I don't think he knew he was giving us.  I think I'm really going to enjoy the Security presentation in a few weeks.