Vuk Lau: NC Leadership Was Involved In RMT

John Rourke: So this going back to signing up for a corporation then, is it?  Some faceless bunch of idiots who spend their whole time bickering before screwing you over for every isk you’ve got?  And when they say jump, you have to jump, because they own your ass!

Charlie Fodder: At the moment, John, when you say jump, we have to jump or it *is* our ass!  In a corp you get a paycheck, some security and stability, and a whole corporate fleet behind you if the going gets tough.  Big difference.  And for all the freedom you talk about in this crew, it’s gotten us chained to dangerous operations that we can’t refuse because we never have any damn money.

- Clear Skies, Act 2, Scene 1

The dialog above from the classic machinima movie Clear Skies really shows the choices players have in Eve Online.  Stay independent or join a corporation or alliance.  Unlike MMOs like World of Warcraft, Eve, as is typical of pre-WoW games, really encourages group play and joining player-run corporations and alliances.  Also unlike almost all other MMOs on the market, CCP allows players to do bad things in game.  Hopefully, when joining a corporation, a player is able to find a home that provides some security, stability, and backup when things get tough.  But the danger always exists that a player will get into a situation where a "faceless bunch of idiots who spend their whole time bickering before screwing you over for every isk you’ve got" takes advantage of you.

CCP now faces a situation in which it needs to take some sort of action.  The problem isn't that an alliance director just embezzled a lot of funds.  The problem is that an alliance director embezzled a lot of funds and engaged in illicit RMT.

The player in question is Vuk Lau.  It had been rumored for months (if not years) that Vuk Lau was involved in the RMT trade and the recent release of the Northern Coalition GenStab channel logs by RAZOR Alliance confirmed the rumors.  With Vuk Lau serving on CSM 5, that meant that the RMT sites had a spy in the information loop between CCP and the Council of Stellar Management.  This exchange was published on Eve News 24.

In February, I was approached by one of my best informants (Who we will call TheTrickster for the purpose of this article) and received this piece of intel regarding a CSM delegate breaking his NDA:

TheTrickster: i have learned that CCP’s new tactic in the war against RMT is to sell isk on the black market themselves at vastly reduced prices
TheTrickster: thus killing the market by making it no longer profitable for the RMTers
riverini: i FUCKING SUSPECTED IT
TheTrickster: well my source is Vuk Lau, so pretty reliable
riverini: how did u learned it, and when i say taht i don’t mean the srouce
riverini: ohh
riverini: ohhhh
riverini: lol, is Vuk Lau’s business being affected?
TheTrickster: yes, that’s how i found out about it, he was bitching loudly in that magical channel i mentioned

Is CCP really selling black market isk?  Eve News 24 is holding a contest to encourage people to go through the logs and find the choice news nuggets.  And people are finding the proof.  For example, I believe riverini's source was referencing logs from 3 Februrary 2011:

[22:26:42] [rawr-4s-hinata] I think Lee Chanka is mad CCP nuked all his cans :D
[22:26:43] [rawr-4s-vuk-lau] how the fuck you see there 25k $
[22:27:05] [rawr-4s-vuk-lau] (11:23:32 PM) rawr_vuk_lau: fucking CCP
(11:23:35 PM) rawr_vuk_lau: crashing RMT market
(11:23:44 PM) rawr_vuk_lau: my dudes are selling 1 bil for 10$
(11:23:53 PM) rawr_vuk_lau: discount on bigger quantities
(11:24:03 PM) rawr_vuk_lau: good old times when 1 bil was 40€
(11:24:29 PM) SavageBastard: how did they crash it
(11:24:49 PM) rawr_vuk_lau: they are RMTing
(11:25:03 PM) SavageBastard: haha what
(11:25:07 PM) rawr_vuk_lau: undercutting big players
(11:25:20 PM) SavageBastard: on the black market or are they officially selling isk now
(11:25:25 PM) zagdul: I'm back
(11:26:19 PM) rawr_vuk_lau: black market

But Vuk Lau's activities have been going on for a long time.  Below is an exchange from 30 April 2010.

[22:06:15] [rawr-4s-vuk-lau] ISK IS ALWAYS THE ISSUE!!!
[22:06:19] [42-mynas-atoch] fuck it, charge us a one off fee of one billion isk for the office and the costs are covered
[22:06:20] [rawr-eyedoll] oh god no, not minmatar
[22:06:21] [rawr-4s-vuk-lau] i gave MANY billions to PL
[22:06:31] [zeturi] MANY
[22:06:34] [rawr-hinata] MANY MANY BILLIONS
[22:06:35] [rawr-eyedoll] and you sold many billions in ebay (
[22:06:43] [me-kesper-north] billions and billions?
[22:06:47] [lodra-mister-vee] beelions
[22:06:49] [me-kesper-north] possibly an entire CARL SAGAN of billions
[22:06:50] [42-vily] how much DID you give PL?
[22:06:53] [rawr-4s-vuk-lau] actually trilions, when you are mentioning ebay
[22:07:05] [rawr-4s-vuk-lau] vily - MANY
[22:07:10] [rawr-4s-vuk-lau] ok

Going back to this year, capital ship losses led to this exchange on 15 February 2011:

[00:15:39] [rawr-fsr-sala-cameron] ya javer is dead
[00:15:41] [rawr-fsr-sala-cameron] so 10 confirmed
[00:15:49] [rawr-4s-vuk-lau] Javer is dead yeah
[00:16:20] [rawr-4s-hinata] Vuk we need new ones asap :D
[00:16:42] [42-tedy-lord-2evil] omg people what have you done
[00:16:54] [cei-callum545] http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=8891046 no rr
[00:17:34] [wi-voids-luckyaba] hahaha that carrier came to you straight out of a sanctum
[00:19:25] 7-drk-antonivs leaves the room
[00:20:01] [rawr-4s-hinata] how much is 60b in $?
[00:20:15] 7-drk-antonivs joins the room
[00:20:18] [rawr-4s-vuk-lau] depends
[00:20:23] [rawr-4s-vuk-lau] if I give you friendly ratwe
[00:20:25] [rawr-4s-vuk-lau] rate
[00:20:26] [rawr-4s-vuk-lau] not much
[00:20:30] [rawr-4s-hinata] lol
[00:20:52] [rawr-4s-vuk-lau] good old times when I was selling isk 40€ per bill
[00:20:59] [7-drk-antonivs] well 8/120 made it thru the lag at the gate
[00:21:01] [rawr-4s-vuk-lau] now if I get 20€ I am happy

That is nice that Vuk Lau was willing to give a discount to corporation members, right?

The whole "we're not RMT, you are" pointing at the DRF by the Norther Coalition was a load of hypocracy, as an exchange between the leadership on 11 April shows:

[20:12:34] [lawn-bluep-edna-sputum] thing is both sides call the other RMTers either both sides are lying or teh RMT is in other regions...
[20:12:47] [lawn-bluep-edna-sputum] or more likely, a little bit everywhere...
[20:13:00] [lawn-bluep-edna-sputum] but i do tend to agree its more likely within renter alliances
[20:14:18] [rawr-mv-balor-haliquin] from what intel i can gather
[20:14:26] [rawr-mv-balor-haliquin] about 10% of the NC RMTs actively
[20:14:37] [rawr-mv-balor-haliquin] including about 15-20% of the leadership
[20:14:57] [rawr-mv-balor-haliquin] For the russians, about 25% of them RMT
[20:15:13] [rawr-mv-balor-haliquin] with 75% of their leadership actively RMTing
[20:15:14] [42-ukc-reza-najafi] where you get those % numbers?
[20:15:16] [42-ukc-reza-najafi] just guess work?
[20:15:28] [condi-akay-quinn] Did one of you morons just Eject an Aeon with a 400 man Hostile gang in Local (and at your tower)?
[20:15:32] [condi-akay-quinn] (From a CSMA)
[20:15:32] [rawr-mv-balor-haliquin] thats from epople i know who RMT and digging names
[20:18:42] [rawr-mv-balor-haliquin] the russians are telling two tales, the first is that they are telling their main fleets that they are all about killing the evil NC. But their leaders only care about getting access to the Tech mooins so they can turn them into a RMT powerhouse
[20:19:03] [42-ukc-reza-najafi] pretty much what Vuk is doing right now :p
[20:19:51] [rawr-mv-balor-haliquin] lol

This last exchange occurred a month before The Mittani's emergency Goonion address stating that the fight against the DRF was one against RMT.

For those who claim that RMT does not affect game play, I have a couple of questions.  Did it really make sense for the NC to sell huge fleets of supercapitals to the DRF and Pandemic Legion?  And how much better could the NC have held onto its territory if it had access to all the isk generated from moon goon?  Perhaps only if the players in charge wanted to turn that isk into real world currency.

For the last year, Eve News 24 has led the outcry against illicit RMT activity in Eve Online.  Although RMT affects the entire MMO industry, we are witnessing the direct impact of RMT activity in Eve today.  Since RMT is against the EULA, CCP needs to take strong action quickly against all of the RMTers in the major null sec alliances.  Because if players see this type of scandal go unanswered, the attitude of players will move those of John Rourke.  And given CCP's plans for DUST 514, any weakening of null sec will affect the development plans of both Eve and DUST.

Note:  For those who could not tell, all the reporting in the logs came from Eve News 24.  I did however, check the logs quoted to make sure they were not taken out of context.  In my opinion, these posts were not trolls, sarcasm, etc.

Although I've done a bit of original reporting on the War On Bots™, Eve News 24, along with Kugutsumen, has basically owned the RMT story over the past year.  I'll let them fight over who has the primary honors.

I Received My Copy Of ISK

Yesterday I received my copy of ISK, The Industrial-Sized Knowledgebase, in the mail.  ISK is the book I wish I had been able to buy when I started the game.  Yes, I know that some of the information, like agent quality and divisions, is already out of date.  I don't care.  Because I already spotted information that I didn't know existed before.

Let's take for example missions.  Now, I know that some missions have asteroids you can mine, but Laci and Mermalior were nice enough to create a table on page 197 that lists the missions that have roids and how much you can mine.  And I now know the trick to make sure I can respawn not only the roids but the NPCs so I can farm them for 7 days.  I really feel silly for not figuring out what I was doing wrong.

Did I mention those stupid tags that are piling up in my hanger from all the missions I ran?  I didn't know about the Datacenter agents until I started reading the guide.  More importantly, I did not know I could turn some of those tags in and receive blueprint copies for faction ships!  I'd love to be able to make a Tempest Fleet Issue.  And the BPCs have 2 runs.  I now have a reason to do my next faction grind.

I am loving all of the charts in the book, especially in the wake of my recent computer crash.  For example, I'm getting ready to invent some Tech 2 cruiser blueprint copies.  I had lost the bookmark to the page with the list of decryptors.  Instead of trying to search for the page again, I can now just go to page 284 and the answer is right there.  No alt-tabbing for me anymore.  I have the paper copy of ISK handy and the guide is very easy to search.

I'm a very happy pilot right now and I'm sure I'll be reading though the guide over the next few days finding out even more things I didn't know.  I can't wait for the next edition when they put in all the Incarna stuff.  You can bet I'll buy that one too.

How CCP Lured Me Into Low-Sec

I admit it; I'm a carebear.  Low-security space scares me.  You find all kinds of dangerous things out there.  Like pirates.  Very scary.

Now, I have been known to venture into low-sec.  I have a research agent in low sec I visit every now and then.  And I've been known to make trips to pick up courier contracts that involve traversing a single low-sec system since that is pretty safe in a blockade runner.  And of course, I made the pilgrimage to the Eve Gate when I was in Eve University, so I'm not a complete noob.  Just mostly one.

However, the recent changes to the agent system along with a desire to mine in Ammatar space put a strange idea into my head.  I could gain enough faction with either an Ammatar or Amarr corporation that Wandering Rose could have perfect refining in stations in Ammatar space and all I would have to do is run courier missions.  With the changes, I was able to just do courier runs.  No nasty combat missions that could hurt my standings with the other factions. And since courier missions go so fast, lots of storyline missions and chances to get +4 implants once I get the standings up to 5.0.  What's not to love?

Low-sec.  Maybe I just chose poorly, but the level 4 missions seemed to take me into low-sec.  A lot.  And because I chose to rig my Prowler for speed and agility instead of increased cargo capacity, I sometimes needed to make two trips through low-sec to complete a mission.  So for two weekends, I ran around low-sec getting my faction with an Amarrian agricultural corporation up to the 6.66 needed for perfect mining.

Guess what?  Low-sec is kind of empty.  Actually, where I travelled, very empty.  I think I only crashed one organized gate camp, which really got the blood racing, especially when a Dramiel jumped through the gate with me.  But otherwise?  Not much to it, really.

So does that mean I'm ready to start doing combat missions in low-sec?  Are you out of your mind?  There is scary stuff in low-sec.  Like pirates.  That's just crazy talk!

CCP's War On Bots: An Unusual Threadnaught

I have to admit that my interest in CCP's War On Bots™ was spurred on by NinjaSpud's threadnaught Reporting from the front line of the Bot-War.  I didn't really know a lot about Eve Online's botting underworld until I started googling some of the phrases in the tears from botting sites that were posted in the thread.  At the beginning, NinjaSpud identified the bots by code.  Now?  People post thinly veiled references to bots if not the bots names themselves.  I've done it myself.

"When did the rules change?" you might ask.  I always thought that mentioning bots or botting sites was against the forum rules.  Indeed, a year ago, mentioning TinyMiner would get a thread locked.  Now, CCP seems to be happy to watch players dance on RoidRipper's grave on the official forums.  What changed?

My guess is the emergence of CCP Sreegs to lead CCP's War On Bots™.  While reading the thread I was reminded of a talk Vio Geraci, at the time a Goonswarm counter-intelligence officer gave Eve University back in June of 2009 in the wake of the Goons dismantling of BoB.

"They'll [spies] give us chat porn, we call it, the tears of our enemies harvested in text form.  It is very motivating to see the despair that you are inflicting on your enemies.  Our spies will often give us that.  I hate, by the way, posting it.  Because anything you post to your own guys, like, to your general membership, you are putting the spy that gave it to you at risk, so I despise doing it.  But Goonfleet and Goonswarm absolutely love it to the point that sometimes my CEO will come to me, my CEO now is Zapawork, but Darius used to do it all the time.  He would say, 'Vito, hey stupid, post some chat porn, we need it,' and then I would have to post chat porn if I had any handy."

- Counterintelligence and Social Engineering, Vito Geraci, Eve University Guest Lecture, 6 June 2009 (24:45 - 25:28)

The Darius in question was Darius JOHNSON, the head of Goonswarm when the Goons took away BoB's identity, and eventually their space.  Also the Darius who later morphed into the man now known as CCP Sreegs. What I assume is happening is that CCP Sreegs sees a forum thread he likes (and Goons love good forum threads) that is furthering his cause by posting the tears of botters who he banned.  He is not allowed to post them himself, but if the players do it, well, what can he do, right?  After all, he's not a forum moderator.

Just as Darius JOHNSON overrode the concerns of his intelligence folks to use the intelligence to bolster Goon morale, I believe that CCP Sreegs has convinced people in Iceland that players providing proof that botters are hurting instead of just CCP claiming they are doing something would help the war effort.  While CCP Sreegs, as a CCP employee, can't engage in such behavior himself, I don't think there is a rule stating he can't help promote it among the player base behind the scenes.  Eve IS a sandbox, after all.  Some players enjoy reading tears.

CCP's War On Bots: Peak Concurrent Users - 1 May 2011 to 5 June 2011

I believe we are reaching a point in time that looking at the peak concurrent user numbers are not telling us much about CCP's War On Bots™.  Not only is the launch of Incarna just a few weeks away, but CCP has begun a campaign to draw more users back into the game.  But the figures still show some interesting things.

My first graph is a 7-day rolling average of peak concurrent users covering 5 weeks, from Sunday, 1 May 2011 to Sunday, 5 June 2011.

7-Day Rolling Average

I changed my methodology since my previous post looking at PCU numbers.  I have switched from the numbers from Eve-Offline's 90 day chart to the 30 day chart.  As a result of the greater granularity of the data, the PCU figures are about 1000 - 3000 users higher than I previously reported.

From 1 May to 12 May, the numbers continued a downward spiral, fueled I believe by aggressive actions against OCR bots by CCP Sreegs' security team.  At that point I believe that a bunch of botters who had been banned for 30 days on and around 10 April were allowed back into the game which accounts for the rise in CPU.

Sunday Peak Concurrent Users

The graph of peak concurrent users on Sundays, the busiest days in Eve Online, definitely show the effects of the banhammer.  The numbers for the 3 weeks from 24 April to 8 May are way down from previous weeks.  As I expected, the numbers were back up on 15 May.

Following this, though, the numbers become hazy.  On 21 May, CCP began a program of rewarding players who recruit new players through the Buddy Program with PLEX.  Following the announcement, although the PCU numbers remained steady on Sundays, the 7-day rolling average increased until 30 May, when both the U.S. and U.K. had holidays in which players did not have to work.

After the 30th, CCP encountered some, to put it kindly, adventures that resulted in extended downtimes that suppressed player turnout on both the 31st and 3 June.  I would guess that the numbers were a result of players just giving up for the day, although CCP always puts something into the client code that keeps bots from working properly until the bot developers fix things.  The continuing software updates could have also suppressed the logging in of bots.

So over the last 2-3 weeks, what really happened?  Did CCP have a successful promotion that was marred by server issues that kept players from logging in?  Did the offer of PLEX to recruit new players fall flat on its face?  Or did CCP Sreegs manage to ban as many accounts as players were able to recruit?  The window into the shadowy world of CCP's War On Bots™ is beginning to close.

An Eve Online Bot Developer On How To Combat Bots

Last Thursday I wrote about the unauthorized release of the source code for the Eve Online client and what it might mean in CCP's War On Bots™.  I'm not a master code writer by any means so I suggested for some subjects looking up those with a lot more experience.

One of those people is a man known as Da_Teach.  He is the developer of the Questor missioning bot, which means he may know something about writing bots for Eve Online.  But more importantly, he has experience writing bots and hacks for many MMOs, including the now defunct WoWSharp for World of Warcraft.  Like CCP Sreegs, Da_Teach also has ties to HBGary, the technology security company that was hacked by Anonymous after the head of HBGary Federal, Aaron Barr, claimed to have obtained the identities of the members of Anonymous.  But Da_Teach's ties aren't professional.  According to Da_Teach, he knows HBGary founder Gary Hoglund though MSN Chat where Mr Hoglund helped Da_Teach with the development of WoWSharp.  Mr. Hoglund allegedly then used much of the information gathered by Da_Teach in his work uncovering the details of Blizzard's Warden anti-hacking software.  Yes, the HBGary founder is THAT Gary Hoglund.  However, Mr. Hoglund apparently doesn't like to share the credit.

Da_Teach is also unusual from what I've seen of other Eve bot developers in that his bot is completely free.  He is actually writing Questor for the lulz.  I'll quote Da_Teach:

"Edgar get's me, I've tried to make this clear to everyone multiple times. But for the ignorant people I'll do it in bold: what I do, I do for fun and for myself. And I can have fun in a lot of ways, I can have fun hacking a game. But (while I never actively tried it) I can probably have a lot of fun protecting a game too.

"One important thing here is the I part! You probably use/develop Questor for money. I don't really care about money, it brings me no pleasure and it doesn't buy me happiness (omg did he just use an old saying, yes he did!).

"I also played EVE long ago (2-3 years) but got bored, I then indeed gave away all my accounts to an ingame friend. Then last year I got the 'need' to play EVE again, only to get bored pretty fast (within a few weeks). I then started writing Questor and had a lot of fun getting to the point where we are now. I must admit that it is slowly losing my interest again.

"What does this mean? I will support Questor (for now) and I still have a half-rewritten Questor v2 (the core-rewrite), but I am spending a lot of my free time on Rift at the moment. You might have noticed this with the less frequent updates to Questor.

I wrote on Thursday that as long as CCP continued to use Python that hackers could decompile the source code.  But that doesn't mean that CCP could not cause bot writers huge headaches.  Da_Tech gave his thoughts on the subject.

"Here's what I see happening, initially CCP will detect bots by behavior. It's probably how they caught the RoidRipper/H-Bot users. Since neither of those two actually change anything within EVE.

"After most of them are caught, I see CCP going for the 'injectors'.

"You have two flavors, you have the Python injectors (Eran bot, spelling) and you have the 'process' injectors (Questor and ISXEVE). Both are easy to stop but I see the python injectors easier to stop then Questor / ISXEVE. For the Python Injectors you could easily just remove the PyRun_ functions completely, with no way of them to actually inject Python, it'll end pretty damn fast for them.

"To disable Questor / ISXEVE in the same way would mean that they'd have to remove the other python functions as well, and those are most likely used by their interal C/C++ functions as well. So that's not really possible. A 'quick' solution would be to mask those functions by using an obfuscator, but that wouldn't stop ISXEVE (it would stop me, because I'd be too bored to keep searching for the required functions).

"Once you're done with the obfuscation path, you'd add checks to the Python functions to detect unauthorized usage. This step would have to be done after the obfuscation, otherwise it would be too easy to crack.

"Possible ways of detecting unauthorized usage would be to send the call-stack to the server (for both the c/c++ functions as for the python functions!), this was done by the Blizzard-Warden and while not impossible, very hard to circumvent. The way to circumvent this would be by modifying the code, however if you then have a separate thread/function/whatever to check for code modifications then it suddenly becomes a factor 10 harder.

"Once your done with that, here's another simple step. Obfuscate your Python code already, but not in the traditional way. Randomize your byte code! Yes, you have the source for both the Python compiles as you do for the Python runtime. Every patch you change this bytecode and RE'ing the python code has become near impossible.

"After that you've pretty much stopped ISXEVE and Questor or made their life very hard. "

If Da_Teach is correct, ultimately stopping or severely curtailing botting in Eve Online is beyond the ability of CCP Sreegs' team.  CCP will need to alter the way they write and deploy their code.  If CCP does this, then CCP Sreegs will have a fighting chance.

One last item.  I'm not in the habit of writing an article that mentions a bot by name without making the comment that using the bot is pretty dumb.  I can't go that far with Questor, but I can leave you with a final quote from Da_Teach.

"In the end the only advice I can give you is that if you do not want to get banned, do not use Questor. But this advice then also counts for ISXEVE, etc. The simple reason is that we currently have no clue what CCP will implement and how hard it'll be to circumvent those protections. It is very easy to miss a detection routine if you do not know it exists! "

Finding My Niche Covering The War On Bots

One of the things about Eve Online is that players can find a niche for themselves that make them unique.  Whether that is espionage like The Guiding Hand Social Club and the Goonswarm Intelligence Agency under The Mittani, facilitating the sales of titans while ridding the universe of veldspar like Chribba, or founding an all-female pirate corp like Mynxee, players find many different ways to play in the sandbox we call New Eden.

The same holds true for blogging.  Whether it is Mike Azariah's unique RP blog A Missioneer in Eve, Mark726's sightseeing adventures on EVE Travel or the creative craziness of Seismic Stan's Freebooted, Eve bloggers are able to find a niche in what we call GalNet.

Up until now, I didn't really have a niche.  I would write about various things that interested me and occasionally people would be interested, but nothing really came of it.  But with the uproar over botting and RMT I decided to go back to my blogging roots from the political blogosphere and start doing some digging.  The result is the War on Bots™ series and the past week has seen some serious linkage to The Nosy Gamer.  First came the mention on Kirith Kodachi's podcast Broadcasts from the Ninveah, which was really nice.  But what blew me away was being used as a source on the War on Bots™ in a story on Ten Ton Hammer titled "The Looming Technetium Crash In EVE Online."

Well, I now know that a few people are paying attention (although Kirith has for a long time) so I know I'm doing something right.  I know I am not going to be some sort of null sec political or military analyst like Mord Fiddle or Hallan Turrek.  But maybe there is an interest in the things I like to analyze after all.

A Myth About Eve Online Mining Shattered

I've heard that mining in Eve Online is so painful that people would rather get a wisdom tooth pulled.  I had a wisdom tooth pulled yesterday.  I can tell you I'd rather mine.  Of course, only if I have Orca support.  Without an Orca?  I'm not sure.

CCP's War On Bots: Does The Source Code Leak Tell Us Anything?

Sometimes I think I should write a comprehensive article (or series of articles) on the shadowy war CCP is engaged in with botters and illicit RMT shops.  I see a lot of people on the Internet take isolated incidents and fail to see the connections.  Take, for example, the latest scandal surrounding the release of the Eve Online source code.

Apparently someone has decompiled the Eve Online client code.  Again.  Eve News 24 is covering the story, and I really can't fault riverini's take on the matter.  As much as EN24 publishes propaganda in the on-going wars in null sec, riverini has done an outstanding job covering the story of RMT and botting in New Eden for many months now.  His write-up on the motives of the people presenting him stories is very useful when attempting to weight the reliability of the information.

I'm also going to look at the article that the hacker was pushing riverini to publish and what it may, or may not, mean in CCP's War On Bots.  I'm going to focus on the two "fun facts" since I think those are the ones I can write about reasonably intelligently.  I'll start in reverse order.

"Fun Fact #2: CCP records *every* move you make in eve online. Everything. We see it right here in source code. Next time you get the infamous logs show nothing response from CCP -  sleep well capsuleers we know for sure your are getting shafted."

Let me analyze this statement from the perspective of someone who spends a lot of time analyzing server-side application logs.  I personally believe that such logging code IS in the source code.  Such code would be useful for debugging purposes when the code is deployed on the Singularity test server and for local testing inside the Eve Online offices.  Everyone remembers Tuxford, right? 

But having that much detail of logging can be counter-productive, if for no other reason that the space involved in storing that level of detail for any length of time is enormous.  But sometimes, like analyzing huge fleet fights, having that level of logging would be very useful.  I think what CCP probably does is regulate the granularity of the logging someplace in the registry on their servers.  For most places most of the time, I believe everything is not logged.  But on special occasions, I assume the registry can be tweaked and a flood of information is then available.

How does that affect the War On Bots™?  Well, it means that unless CCP gets reports of bots hanging around a system on a set schedule, they probably don't have detailed logs.  So if the hinted at "report bot" function comes around, increasing logging levels in those systems may become automated.  That is the only way I see this affecting the war, because the last 2+ months has shown that CCP has developed other means of fighting the bots.  Or at least the mining bots.  Perhaps they need other methods of fighting ratting and courier bots.

"Fun Fact #1: CCP has telnet client/server built into client source code which ships with eve-online. Yes this means they can/could remotely execute commands on your computer."

Remember what I wrote about leaving testing code in place above?  I assume the same is true for the telnet code.  And yes, I am assuming that there is telnet code in the source code.  I think there almost has to be in order for the Thin Client testing CCP conducts to work, considering the thin clients don't have graphics cards.

But can CCP use telnet to send commands to your computer?  From what I've read on the botting forums, some bot users believe CCP is doing something to them.  I don't know if a CCP employee would need to use telnet to do so, but it would explain all the reports of minimizing windows botters are suffering.  And it is that phenomenon that I believe CCP is using to confirm bot use.  Once the windows minimize on an OCR bot, it starts doing stupid things and reveals itself to be a pretty dumb artificial intelligence.

I know I have not written about how having the source code can make a bot writer's life easier.  In truth, I'm a log monkey who can script things to automate the process. I can talk about the relationship between logs and debugging and how programmers do certain things.  Writing botting programs is a little above my knowledge level, so I'll have to defer to experts you can find elsewhere on the interwebs.

So what does the latest revelation really mean to the War On Bots™?  Truthfully, not much.  CCP has to know that as long they continue to use Python that the ability exists for hackers to break down their source code.  The look into the code also potentially fills in some of the blanks on how CCP is doing some of the things they are doing to botters.  The only thing the revelation may do is give Eve Online bad press and keep people from playing the game.

Well, I guess that is one way to keep people from botting.

Related Post:  An Eve Online Bot Developer On How To Combat Bots

Google Fun With Eve Botting Sites

I've watched the outrage among the Eve Online player base about botting in New Eden.  I haven't done much.  While others rage at CCP to take action and others organize suicide gank squads, I've just reported on the events.  Really, I'm the kind of guy who always flies unarmed ships through low-sec.  I'm not going to gank anyone, right?

Well, not intentionally.  I haven't touched a hair (or a pod) of any botter in-game.  Outside the game?  I didn't mean it, honest!  It just happened.  I didn't notice anything unusual until I started looking at the search terms that people used to find the blog.  Apparently people are coming to The Nosy Gamer looking for information on Eve bots.  Let me give you a few examples.

The first concerns the late, unlamented RoidRipper, the first victim of CCP's War on Bots™.  Please take note who shows up #1.

That's right, me.  I didn't mean to hover over RoidRipper's corpse; it just happened.  That same post also gets me near or at the top of searches involving Eve Pilot as well.  I like the results of this search best.

I love the text Google chose to display: "In fact, in order to avoid detection and a ban from CCP, users of Eve Pilot have to actually PLAY their botting pilots."  If someone is looking for a bot, that is the last thing the potential botter wants to read.

But I have other posts that are also at or near the top of the Google searches.  I'm pretty sure that the proprietor of Ghost Suite isn't too happy with this result.

Sure, the description isn't too bad.  But those were some really good tears in that post.  I'm pretty sure after reading that post that any potential botter will think three times before using Ghost Suite.

But I've saved the best search, "tinyminer banned",  for last.  Not because I am at the top of the search, because I'm not.  I just love the juxtaposition.

The TinyMiner text claims that the bot is undetectable.  Then immediately following are two posts of mine with examples of users of TinyMiner who CCP banned.  Priceless!

Now, rankings come and go so these probably will look different tomorrow.  That's why I posted the screenshots.  I never thought this would happen.  I didn't plan it.  But I think it is funny.