WARNING for Splatoon players: A player has been spotted who can soft-lock your save

Myria · Oct 4, 2015

FAST6191 said:
Anyway I will join others in remembering the CK stuff from Phantasy Star Online as we await a writeup of the failures that led to this.

I was the person who made the first set of PSO cheat codes. People modified what I had done and found the character overwrite bug to replace people's characters with NPCs from single-player mode, called "NOLing" by the community. ("NOL" was one of the NPCs your character could be overwritten with.) "CK" was an advanced variant of that mean action.

I didn't do that, and in fact I would usually kicked such bad people off by crashing their game (no harm, though, unlike what they did). I had my Dreamcast and later my GameCube hooked up to my PC; I used this to make a proxy server that blocked attempts to crash my game or overwrite my character.

I never did NOLing to anyone, except as a demo to people who asked to see it on a throwaway save file.

ferofax · Oct 5, 2015

gudenaurock said:
I do not know the current one, the one I know is using the client side version. You should always have propper error handling, even when the save data is "secure", because there will always be a way to edit this stuff. (In before Splatton hax for homebrew)

Hacker's problem, not a dev's problem. Devs can always deal with that anyways with a future patch, because they're supposed to be fiddling with this.

The fact that the game "breaks" when hackers try to hack stuff is funny in this case. Unfortunately, the side-effect of ruining other people's saves, is nowhere near funny.

EDIT: What makes it worse is that these people probably knew about the side-effect, but brought that shit online anyways. Like, fuck other people's saves, yeah? This is science! They can just start a new game or whatever. This brazen attitude is exactly what we don't need online, especially on someone with the knowledge to make or break stuff.

gudenau · Oct 5, 2015

ferofax said:
Hacker's problem, not a dev's problem. Devs can always deal with that anyways with a future patch, because they're supposed to be fiddling with this.

The fact that the game "breaks" when hackers try to hack stuff is funny in this case. Unfortunately, the side-effect of ruining other people's saves, is nowhere near funny.

EDIT: What makes it worse is that these people probably knew about the side-effect, but brought that shit online anyways. Like, fuck other people's saves, yeah? This is science! They can just start a new game or whatever. This brazen attitude is exactly what we don't need online, especially on someone with the knowledge to make or break stuff.

Why should developers not use good coding practices and check all data from a disk/socket/input?

The first person to do the save one found the crash, and does not use it anymore.

ferofax · Oct 5, 2015

gudenaurock said:
Why should developers not use good coding practices and check all data from a disk/socket/input?

I mean, if it's not there in the software users have, then I can only assume they take it out. I don't know if we've seen anything yet that we could attribute to coder laziness in the game. Probably a few minor things. I mean, it works perfectly fine so far, right? Plays great even.
In any case, this means if somebody fiddles with a working code and it breaks, game breaks. It is what it is. Makes it so it's annoying to fiddle with and discourages more fiddlers somewhat.

gudenau · Oct 5, 2015

ferofax said:
I mean, if it's not there in the software users have, then I can only assume they take it out. I don't know if we've seen anything yet that we could attribute to coder laziness in the game. Probably a few minor things. I mean, it works perfectly fine so far, right? Plays great even.
In any case, this means if somebody fiddles with a working code and it breaks, game breaks. It is what it is. Makes it so it's annoying to fiddle with and discourages more fiddlers somewhat.

Here is the thing, the code was not modified to allow this; the save files was edited. If I can teigger a crash with a save file the coder(s are/is) at fault.

Do you understand what I am saying?

ferofax · Oct 5, 2015

gudenaurock said:
Here is the thing, the code was not modified to allow this; the save files was edited. If I can teigger a crash with a save file the coder(s are/is) at fault.

Do you understand what I am saying?

Then the game was coded so it cannot accommodate save tampering and will crash?

Sounds like a great defensive strategy to hacking.

FAST6191 · Oct 5, 2015

Thanks for that Myria. I never really went in for PSO hacking and did not know much of the history behind it.

ferofax said:
Then the game was coded so it cannot accommodate save tampering and will crash?

Sounds like a great defensive strategy to hacking.

No. You can do a "useful" hack by means of save editing, however by doing so (and not even in some crazy exploit way that actually sees you running homebrew/hacked versions of the game) it seemingly also allows you to generate a save that will cause trouble to others. It is not a defensive strategy at all, indeed, as gudenaurock was saying, it speaks to the poor coding practices of the dev in question and network based stuff does take a slightly different mindset/approach to security. Game devs that are not world or warcraft or something that wants to be will tend to skimp on this (see the early days of the PS3 hacks and all the COD hacking stuff that went on -- a lot of that was a general lack of security programming on the part of the dev). Relying on the console security is not really an option either, though depending upon what goes and your approach to things (if the console is secure and will be for the next 5 months then you can make all the money you are likely to make and scarper I guess).

ElyosOfTheAbyss · Oct 5, 2015

Was this NWPlayer or someone else?

meinhard · Oct 5, 2015

Vanth88 said:
This reminds me of the Phantasy Star Online glitch where players could force your game to freeze when you joined a lobby/session which resulted in your game losing data (thousands of hours easily gone).

Only the lowest of low would use that glitch. It's one thing to use a hacked character to destroy everyone in PVP, but to erase your entire game data? that's just wrong.

I can still hear the sound of the FSoD in my nightmares...i got a legit heaven punisher (after thousand of hour) and i was forced to play online with shitty weapons, because of that kind of people...there is nothing worst than destroy someone savegame... How the fuck there are not filters for things like this?

Vanth88 · Oct 5, 2015

meinhard said:
I can still hear the sound of the FSoD in my nightmares...i got a legit heaven punisher (after thousand of hour) and i was forced to play online with shitty weapons, because of that kind of people...there is nothing worst than destroy someone savegame... How the fuck there are not filters for things like this?

I remember when I had just got to level 80 and started playing Ultimate for the first time when I got my first FSoD. I was really pissed. I lost all of my friends contacts and all of my items were gone. I started a new game only to get another FSoD... and another... and another... I don't remember if I got any on my the Xbox version but the GC was by far the worst.

Deleted User · Oct 5, 2015

I heard they got the octoling by changing player value or something in save, so i think that they should make a fix so you won't be able to use an save that have been edited in computer.

gudenau · Oct 5, 2015

TheToxicRyu said:
Was this NWPlayer or someone else?

This one was not player.

ElyosOfTheAbyss · Oct 5, 2015

gudenaurock said:
This one was not player.

Oh okay I wasn't sure.

ferofax · Oct 6, 2015

FAST6191 said:
Thanks for that Myria. I never really went in for PSO hacking and did not know much of the history behind it.

No. You can do a "useful" hack by means of save editing, however by doing so (and not even in some crazy exploit way that actually sees you running homebrew/hacked versions of the game) it seemingly also allows you to generate a save that will cause trouble to others. It is not a defensive strategy at all, indeed, as gudenaurock was saying, it speaks to the poor coding practices of the dev in question and network based stuff does take a slightly different mindset/approach to security. Game devs that are not world or warcraft or something that wants to be will tend to skimp on this (see the early days of the PS3 hacks and all the COD hacking stuff that went on -- a lot of that was a general lack of security programming on the part of the dev). Relying on the console security is not really an option either, though depending upon what goes and your approach to things (if the console is secure and will be for the next 5 months then you can make all the money you are likely to make and scarper I guess).

That "defensive quip" of mine was jokingly said. I know, it sounds ridiculous, I'm chuckling as I type this, I can think of nothing better to annoy hackers and would-be code fiddlers than to be confronted with a ridiculously bad code that lacks all the features you'd normally expect from good code.

Like a proper error handling system.

Of course, they could just be bad and this could all be just poor practices from them - but hey, all you're supposed to concern yourself with anyways is that the game works. When all is said and done, the fuck does it matter if this game was made with post-its underneath? If it works great, then it works great, nevermind whether or not the code underneath is prim and proper or a cesspool of hastily-written code.

The only ones pissed off about it really are people who shouldn't be fiddling with the games' innards. *shrugs* I guess they want a game that is coded and functions the way they expect it to be. Well, turns out it isn't. *more shrugs*

Armadillo · Oct 9, 2015

http://squidboards.com/threads/psa-octoling-hacker-kazuki23650214-found-banned.9213/

Found and receieved a console ban apparently.

KingVamp · Oct 10, 2015

Unfortunately/fortunately can't confirm if any of this is even real.

Jayro · Oct 10, 2015

Nintendo is now issuing bans for hackers using unreleased characters and weapons. Good to see they are being proactive about this.

Deleted User · Oct 10, 2015

Jayro said:
Nintendo is now issuing bans for hackers using unreleased characters and weapons. Good to see they are being proactive about this.

The hacker (aka @kazuki23650214) and 2 other people are banned. Maybe more than that, but that's atleast what i know.

Jayro · Oct 10, 2015

I just want this weapon the hacker was using:

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Haaah-hahahaha!

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