GridStream Productions

It's not just Valor Eternal anymore, it seems. See, I've got this crat, right? She's been a General of the Red-Eyed Militia for a while now... pretty sweet and all, get to raid whenever I want, people bow down and tremble before me, all that stuff. Well, I logged her on last night and noticed a few things.

* Hey wait, I'm missing some stats... did we lose our tower fields?

So I do info on myself to check, and behold: I was no longer in an org.

Yes, you guessed it. Someone hacked the president's account and disbanded the org. Our good neighbours in The Noid went and snatched up the suddenly vacant city spot and handed it back to us, thankfully, but our nice high level buildings are now, like, QL30ish. x.x

I'm starting to sense a pattern here. Regidoc and Ridecalm (prez of REM) have a few things in common, such as being (at the time of the hacks):

* TL7 (210, 220)
* Org Prez
* Clan
* Nanomage

Anyone heard of, say, any neut/omni orgs suffering a similar fate?

Wow! That crazy! Does anyone know WHO is doing this?! Or how?

I wish. I'd like to know *why*, too... and where they live. Maybe someone with a bit more knowledge on how these things are done can shed some light on it, I dunno...

Please keep us informed.

Gms will replace the HQ gridhouse and ECM tower up to the QL that you had. They gave us ql 300 since that's what we had before. other than that, you have to fork over the dough to buy new ones. luckily for us, we had some friends in other orgs donate the ql 300 serum we needed to replace the mining ops and pool we had so we only have to pay for the parts

Yeah, noticed we've got a bunch of high buildings, one 297 and the others 300... funny though, I'm pretty sure we didn't use to have a landing pad...

Firia wrote:Wow! That crazy! Does anyone know WHO is doing this?! Or how?

Yeah... I'd really just like to know how... I doubt either of these people would give out their passwords or even usernames, and I'm not sure about how secure account information is when being sent to the servers.

I got confused since Ridecalm was the one to tell me about the hack... he was never the prez, Mazdoc was.


Upon further inquiries, more similarities have presented themselves: Maz' char was stripped completely. Stuff deleted, IPRs spent and all that. Looks to me like it's the same hacker as in the VE case. An excerpt of the chat I just had with Ride:

To [ridecalm]: Hey... did the hacker do anything other than disband the org? For example... use up your IPR's, delete nodrop items, give your stuff away etc?

ridecalm: it was Maz that was hacked not me
ridecalm: but yes they stripped him completley
ridecalm: reset IP
ridecalm: deleted all gear

To [ridecalm]: Hmm. Mighta been the same guy that hacked Valor Eternal then.

ridecalm: not sure..AoF has had 3 in 4 days
ridecalm: I do know others were targetted as well
ridecalm: was VE disbanded as well ?

To [ridecalm]: Yeah... and the prez' stuff was deleted, IPRs used up and points spent on crap like map nav..

ridecalm: when was this ?

To [ridecalm]: Uhm, week or two before it happened to us I believe
ridecalm: k ty

To [ridecalm]: The other AoF hacks... more REM people, or other AoF orgs?

ridecalm: Aof orgs
ridecalm: VA had some building destryoed some ppl kicked
ridecalm: thier pres was on so could do org kick b4 any major dmg done

To [ridecalm]: They're only targetting people of high rank, I assume? Not applicants etc?

ridecalm: RS toon was hacked and stripped
ridecalm: it seems that way

ridecalm: and ppl who have been "away"for a little while
ridecalm: like on holiday and the like

To [ridecalm]: All of 'em? Hmm...

ridecalm: afaik yes
ridecalm: why AoF is being done over i have no idea
ridecalm: we aren;t the uberst of org or allaince,
ridecalm: so I guessing it players they are going after
ridecalm: i shold be safe lol i got nothing anyone wants
ridecalm: well all they could take is carlo and he is no good to anyone
ridecalm: cost me every penny get buy city plot back, so I broke


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Well, there you have it. Maybe this'll shed some light on things... or raise more uncomfortable questions.

I had heard the hacks might have come from using some damage dumping program. Forget exactly what the name of it was, but was very short, maybe even just 2 letters. Beware maybe all you damage stat junkies out there.

Usually that is the case, some unverified third-party program that people are conned into running without checking the source of the program.

A LOT of hacks occur in larger MMO's like WoW exactly by exactly those means. Hackers integrate key-loggers into otherwise "helpful" third-party programs like stat trackers, then put them up for public download. Then while that program is running, every key you hit is sent back to the hacker, including your username and password if you don't save them in the client.

Two letters... mD maybe? magicDump? Heard a lot of people mention using it and how it was oh so great etc. Me, I don't use damage dump stuff, primarily because I've mostly been playing my doc and I don't need a program to tell me I do the least damage on the team.

I've used the same version of AORC forever and I haven't replaced clicksaver in a LONG time. Those are the only two programs that I use as third-party applications for AO. AORC I got from a link on the hackerquest forums that Vhab runs with Amona and clicksaver...I can't remember where I got it but I thought it was relatively safe. Never used a damage dumper myself but I've heard a lot of rumors for magicdumper and the PvP videos. I'll have to open up Vallicats keylogger program again and run AORC and clicksaver to see if it's being sent into a file somewhere.