Farmers in WoW Use Rootkit to Teleport Hack

[holycrapper]

Here's yet another cheating/farming post that I find interesting; from the WoW Forums (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-realm-sargeras&t=130159&p=1&tmp=1#post130159):

Apparantly farmers are using maphacks to move from unreachable cliff to unreachable cliff in Ferales, loot the eggs, and then teleport to Tanaris to turn them in. Pretty damning stuff (video in the forum), although I couldn't get it to work.

[Alex]

What's up with that link?

Edit: Oh sure. Fix it while I'm posting.

[Jetherik]

A Blizzard employee by the name of Tyren gave a resposne (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=6065742&tmp=1#post6065742). I wonder how long it will take for Blizzard to fix this. The Farmers are some of the worst to ruin the game, right before the gankers, and then people who buy from the farmers. If people would just go make their own gold instead of buying it from the farmers... Oh yeah, the people might actually have to play the game. God forbide that should happen.

Thank you for providing information regarding this exploit. However, in order to minimize awareness, and abuse of such an exploit, we ask that players email such information to our Hacks team at hacks@blizzard.com.

[Conner Dain]

It must be great fun to know that in a game where the sole purpose is to gradually build your wealth, skill, weapons, etc, through repetitive play and applied determination, you can simply bypass all that by cheating or buying your way to the top.

[Zurik]

MMOs are like communism: They work great....in theory.

[Captain Awesome]

The link works, right click and save the video to your desktop. Its crazy seeing those guys port back and forth.

Dont play this game anymore and the cheating is what broke my excitement in Diablo 1 & 2.

[GunnyMo]

While the cheating sucks I think it really only affects the PvP realms as people can easily aquire all the uber gear. I don't think it's so bad in PvE enviroments. I play on RP servers and really haven't seen a problem. I don't think it affects the economy in a negative way. In fact, farming high end weapons will only flood the market with them and send the price down, imho.

That said, I certainly don't approve of these cheaters/farmers and hope Blizzard continues to find ways to remove them from the game.

[Abash Alarmist]

I think Blizzard should sue Sony for deliberatly hampering their service. A lot like the one Battle.net wannabe (Forgot the name) where the users used faults in the game to manipulate it. Sony should be held responsible for this.

[bradlay]

Sony should be held responsible for this.

How could this be in any way Sony's fault?

[fndarkone]

How could this be in any way Sony's fault?
the rootkit is from the sony cds.

[bradlay]

the rootkit is from the sony cds.

Right. And...

[bradlay]

rootkit doesn't hack programs, people do

[Kelegacy]

the rootkit is from the sony cds.
Yes, but wouldn't suing Sony be like suing a gun manufacturer for killing your brother, even though some other asshole that shot him?

Edit: bradlay beat me with the same type of arguement

[Captain Awesome]

I think Blizzard should sue Sony for deliberatly hampering their service. A lot like the one Battle.net wannabe (Forgot the name) where the users used faults in the game to manipulate it. Sony should be held responsible for this.

Sony shouldnt be responsible here. Blizzard should be, they run an manage this huge online game. It's their slow response time that is at fault here.

Maybe Blizzard needs to create an instant online patcher like Steam? :)

[Reanimated]

Thanks again Sony.

Your malicious software that you've infected millions of systems with world wide is just fantastic!

[MasterEvilAce]

Didn't someone say the rootkit exploit was patched in WoW?

[notcivx]

It must be great fun to know that in a game where the sole purpose is to gradually build your wealth, skill, weapons, etc, through repetitive play and applied determination, you can simply bypass all that by cheating or buying your way to the top.

You mean fight monsters all day in a game built to be a timesink.

[fndarkone]

Yes, but wouldn't suing Sony be like suing a gun manufacturer for killing your brother, even though some other asshole that shot him?

Edit: bradlay beat me with the same type of arguement
i dont think its sonys fault that people are using this to hack. im just saying that is where the dude above is coming from in blaming sony.

[sparkfizt]

aaaarrrgggghhhghgh Sony did'nt invent the rootkit, it's a virus technique that's been around for ages!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit

Sony just brought the term into the spotlight -_-

*just goes ahead and stabs himself*

[Abash Alarmist]

What are the odds for the average farmer would realize that a rootkit would be viable if it weren't for Sony's fiasco?

[bickle]

aaaarrrgggghhhghgh Sony did'nt invent the rootkit, it's a virus technique that's been around for ages!

Sony just brought the term into the spotlight -_-

Not quite. Sony paid a company to develop this particular rootkit, they included it on millions of CD's, and installed it on millions of computers.

[sparkfizt]

so we're assuming your average gold farmer is competent enough to actually write and deploy a rootkit? they just never thought of it till Sony's DRM debacle? nevermind to my knowledge the only reason for people to use rootkit techniques is to try and fly under the radar of warden, blizzards anti cheat mechanism local on your machine. Any client side hack is manipulating the incomming and outgoing data stream to confuse and trick the server into letting you do unallowed things.

I'm betting though this is a rather obvious hack on blizz's end and the ban stick is gonna go thwack some heads. :P

[sparkfizt]

Not quite. Sony paid a company to develop this particular rootkit, they included it on millions of CD's, and installed it on millions of computers.

sorry, I wasnt' referring to Sony's particular kit, but instead rootkits as a general topic. It just seems few understand what a rootkit really is, and assumes the only rootkit ever made came on Sony's CD's :P

yah they did'nt write it themselves :P although It will be interesting to see what comes of the supposed infringement on the LGPL tied to Sony's DRM madness.

[Stooby]

What are the odds for the average farmer would realize that a rootkit would be viable if it weren't for Sony's fiasco?

Pretty high considering they hire software developers to make bots and other such utilities for WoW. How do I know? I have been offered money to provide said software.

I seriously doubt they are using Sony's rootkit. And, even if they were, Warden would be able to detect the hack just as easily as before. You see, Warden doesn't scan the hard drive for the hack. Warden scans memory space. The Sony rootkit doesnt stop WoW from seeing the hack in memory space. Thus, the rootkit has no effect on WoW.

The reason the people havent been banned yet could easily be the fact that Blizzard staggers bans for hacking. They do that so they can catch as many users as possible before banning. If they ban one person for the hack, the writer of the hack will make it undetectable again very quickly. If they stagger the bans and wait for 10 people to hack they can ban 10 people before they have a chance to get a version that WoW can't detect.

The bottom line is the Sony rootkit has actually added nothing to the hacking fray. It has made some script kiddies aware of rootkits, but they dont know how to write shit anyways. The only WoW bots and hacks that are public nowadays that these script kiddies could use would be detected without even batting an eye by Blizzard.

Also, Blizzard is very effective at catching hackers in WoW. They have a great antihack system that can easily catch any known hack and many hacks that they know nothing about. The way it changes dynamically based on system is pretty cool. It prevents us from cloning, killing, and spoofing Warden.

Botters and other hackers arent a problem in WoW anymore. The only type of bot that is in widespread use are the ones made by people with macro keyboards. And those are only anti-afk bots that let people leech reputation in battlegrounds.

[sparkfizt]

I seriously doubt they are using Sony's rootkit. And, even if they were, Warden would be able to detect the hack just as easily as before. You see, Warden doesn't scan the hard drive for the hack. Warden scans memory space. The Sony rootkit doesnt stop WoW from seeing the hack in memory space. Thus, the rootkit has no effect on WoW.



Exactly :) that's the crux of what bothered me enough to post last nite :P Sony's rootkit has 0 to do with this hack :P

eeeeh, not so sure about Warden doing that though. Programs cant go reading memory nilly willy, they cant read anything out of their own address space assigned by the OS. thus Illegal Access Exceptions when some programmer messes up and manages to accidentally try to read memory not in his sand box. Warden from what i've read doesnt do much more than read what information the OS can give it on currently running proccesses. It takes this information, hashes it, then sends it back to blizzard. With a 1 way hash, it keeps blizzard from getting actual personal information from people. But warden cant do more then act on information that the OS will give up.

[51|RandoM]

I think Blizzard should sue Sony for deliberatly hampering their service. A lot like the one Battle.net wannabe (Forgot the name) where the users used faults in the game to manipulate it. Sony should be held responsible for this.


Oh, and lets sue ford because somebody ran over you with an f-150.

Lets sue Dingo, because somebody kicked you in the face wearing a pair of their boots.

Lets sue Nerf because somebody hit you with a nerf football.

Lets sue Ponds because somebody slapped you when you said this and they had lotion on their hands.

[Thenetcase]

I think you people should consider that the Federal Government has filed suit against Sony for their rootkits. That should tell you something about them.

-TNC-

[Reanimated]

I only knew of 3 states that had filed suit against sony so far. When did the feds get involved?

If true, that's awesome.

[51|RandoM]

I think you people should consider that the Federal Government has filed suit against Sony for their rootkits. That should tell you something about them.

-TNC-

i think you'll find that it isn't the rootkit, but sony's approach towards saddling the consumer with it without any disclosure.

[Speed_D]

While the cheating sucks I think it really only affects the PvP realms as people can easily aquire all the uber gear. I don't think it's so bad in PvE enviroments. I play on RP servers and really haven't seen a problem. I don't think it affects the economy in a negative way. In fact, farming high end weapons will only flood the market with them and send the price down, imho.
Funny it seems the opposite to me. For the most part, the best PvP gear is ... *drumroll* the PvP rewards gear. Which you can't get through farming.

On top of that, a lot of the player community hates farmers. I play on a PvE server and I know I've had farmers try to train mobs onto me and vanish, all the usual b.s. Sometimes after fighting over spawns with a farmer for awhile, I'll sit down with my pvp flag on and start drinking. The typical rogue farmer can't resist the urge to attack. I get a good laugh out of that -- a rogue doesn't last long 1 on 1 vs. my shadow priest.

But on a PvP server, farmers are going to be repeatedly killed. They farm for drops and gold all day. Regular players raid or fight in battlegrounds. Unless the farmers bring far superior numbers, they will die. A lot. Almost makes me wish I had started on a PvP server.