Alright, after a lot of consideration about how to move forward with this, we've decided to release this information to the public, as well as take further action against those who were deleted earlier this week.

Besides sharing logins with each other, LAE leaders were engaged in a concerted cheating effort across multiple servers involving the countries deleted on Wednesday and Thursday. The leaders involved are Dark Morbid, Ice Man, jagernacht and llaar. This is very unfortunate event, and a black day for the game.

Before I go into the evidence, let me preface it by saying that it was obtained by a third party who I will not name and you can all make your own assumptions about who it was. He asked to remain anonymous, and I'll respect that. He claims the information was provided to him by a source inside of LAE, so of course I viewed the information VERY skeptically. He provided several screenshots of various pages inside the LAE site which showed that there was a secret board to discuss their cheating activities, and DM coded a method of login-sharing and country management into the LAE site to facilitate cheating. I again viewed this skeptically, as it could have been doctored, but another image showed a privileged conversation qz had with DM, in which qz mentioned a few aspects of the game's security, which were accurate and only qz, Slagpit and I could have known at that point. This was posted on a thread so that they offenders could discuss its implications on their cheating.

http://www.boxcarhosting.com/.../viewFile.php?fileID=1549

You can see there that there is a conversation between qz and DM that I edited out, then following it, DM, jagernacht and llaar discuss how they feel they can beat our security.
That pretty much clinched it for me that this information was legitimate, and that is really, really unfortunate. I can't stress how much it upsets us that this has happened.

So this threads discuss an overview of how they cheat and how their site is developed for cheating.

http://www.boxcarhosting.com/.../viewFile.php?fileID=1550
http://www.boxcarhosting.com/.../viewFile.php?fileID=1547

You can see all of them chatting there about it. To be able to effectively play these countries, one of the players, jagernact, bought a proxy service for them so they could have access to a private proxy network which they felt would be able to beat our security.

So, as said above, they had a special "Country Pool" section created for sharing countries, which is shown below (personal information has been removed):
http://www.boxcarhosting.com/.../viewFile.php?fileID=1551

You can see the username, password, a little flag telling you if the country is played or not, strat, email and IP location. We feel this was used to organize the playing of the countries by these 4 players, so that everyone could make sure they are using a proxy in the right location. This functionality was built into the LAE site under the "Secret Stuff" menu at the bottom of the menu bar, under the "Country Pool" link

This is all pretty damning stuff, and we feel we have no decision but to act here. DM has obviously been removed from the staff, after he violated our trust and the game rules. I brought him in there to build the forums, so I will bare the responsibility for that . He never had access to any game data or game code at all. His mod and developer access has been removed. Nukevil joined the staff recently to help with forum development, as I'm sure many of you have likely noticed, and he'll step up to fill that role.

We also feel that since the LAE site was developed to cheat at the game, we will be revoking their API code effective immediately, until such a time that we feel the site will no longer be used to facilitate cheating.

Part of the reason that I am eager to get this information out is that through a conversation with DM recently and through other information that I'm yet to actually confirm, it seems like these players plan to continue cheating and enhancing their cheating efforts. DM actually commented that we need cheaters like him to make sure our mod tools work.... he is wrong. I encourage the community to come together and universally condemn this sort of cheating activity and culture of thinking that breaking the rules is OK. We don't want to start enforcing harsher punishments than deletions, but we're not afraid to walk down that path. I feel the 4 players who were implicated here are good players and generally assets to the community, so I hope you four will listen to me when I tell you that we will NOT tolerate cheating so stop it now.

So let me end by saying this to everyone....
Come on folks... it's a text based online game. Let's get real here... I know we all love it, but we need to all play within the confines of the rules so that we get the most out of it. A lot of the talk around here is always about future growth, getting new players and pushing the game forward. That is our goal, it always has been and always will be. If you all want this game to succeed, everyone has to work together to move toward that goal. When issues like cheating come up, it takes away from our development time while we deal with it. We want to work on pushing the game forward, developing new features and moving the game into new markets and mediums. We can't move forward if we're constantly dealing with unnecessary upkeep because of a few players. So I implore anyone who is cheating right now, whether your have been called out yet for it or not, to really revisit your decisions to cheat.

Thanks,
Dave

The reason we didn't post this sooner was because we're very hesitant to use any admin actions or posts to influence politics on any server. We balanced a number of factors in reaching this decision. Building trust with the community is of paramount importance, and unfortunately we felt that we couldn't settle this matter privately with the involved alliance leaders. Please do not view this as some kind of precedent. The great majority of deletions will be handled privately between in-game moderators and the players who were deleted.

To provide a little bit more background, many of these accounts were suspected a few months ago of sharing logins. Many of them had the same password and there was other suspicious activity. An LaE leader was contacted about this. He said that account sharing wasn't technically listed in the rules, but that they would stop immediately. This was an extremely unsatisfactory explanation, but because this behavior was noticed right around the time of the first FFA set ending, the best course of action seemed to be to monitor the accounts for further suspicious activity.

What we discovered, partially through in-game evidence and partially from information provided by someone with access to lae's site, was that lae had continued sharing accounts. In fact, they used the original discussion we had with them to cheat better. That is why we felt it would be inappropriate to discuss this matter privately with lae.

In regard to the hacking issue: if it can be proven, we will punish the source of the information in the harshest way that we can. Unfortunately, it is impossible for us to tell how screenshots were obtained. All we do is be skeptical and use the information in the best way we can to make the game fair for everyone. Our policy right now is to punish both parties in situations like this.

To the players who had their countries deleted: you are being given one more chance. We've changed all of the passwords on your accounts. In order to get your account username and password reset, please send an email to using your account email. If your have lost access to your account email, please figure out an alternate way to verify your identify or simply create a new account. We are requiring new usernames and passwords in order to prevent anyone who had access to the login list from doing further damage as well as preventing any more immediate account sharing.

We will also be investigating further methods of curtailing these behaviours in the near future.

- qzjul

so LaE is too big to give the death penalty

i understand

is it reasonable to expect hackers and cheaters not to hack and cheat?

Thanks for sharing this guys - it's nice to know the deletions weren't made lightly, and without verifiable evidence. I hope folks will take a note here and back off the mod bashing a bit.

so was it just sharing accounts or did they have extra accounts also?

breakin the law! breakin the law! breakin the law!
fail.

I feel bad for the honest players and leaders in LAE. Especially those who were convinced by the parties involved that LAE was in the right and argued on behalf of their 'friends'. Talk aboot a slap on the other cheek.

Have you no shame?

both.

thank you pang that was the only part that seemed a bit unclear to me

Something that just came to mind...

4 people together cheating.

Create aboot a dozen other accounts....

...and then fake logins, names, posts, maybe contacts and fake convos...to facilitate their ends.

I mean, the people who 'owned' those deleted countries ootside of those 4 are really 1 of those 4!

Wow!

"Many of them had the same password"

That doesn't sound like it agrees with the statement that all passwords are hashed and unable to be viewed by the developers, does it not?

It's interesting that someone logged into llaar's account to take those screenshots though. Very interesting.

Oh yea and I'm pretty saddened by this.

it does suck. everyone who "hacked" should be put out for the public to see. assuming that the whistleblower had to hack into a lae/na head acct to get the info....two wrongs make a ?

The Courage of Integrity

"The highest courage is..........
to dare to be yourself
in the face of adversity.

Choosing right over wrong,
ethics and morality over convenience,
and truth over popularity..
These are the choices that measure your life.

Travel the path of integrity without looking back,
for there is never... a wrong time to
do the right thing."



Pretty much... says it...

QM Diver
NBK VP

Interesting to note that the ToKill series comes up in this tagged SYNxCC. This is the same series used to attack FoCuS and LaE themselves and gave these two alliances reasons to jump on SYN.

There is another tagged SOTAxDC. A spy.

Also I know NBK found a spy in their ranks confirmed by Pang that it was part of the LaE deletions.

that puts things into another perspective

thx

yeah interesting..

but its not the series that killed the stockers, not that I recall atleast, hell the syn ones, were syn's more active countries :o

http://eestats.com/...SxDC&badside[]=SYNxCC

2010-04-10 15:19:55 GS warring to KILL (#1087) ICD tribute to DC (#1254) 3C 0 F


The kill that started it all.

i'm glad to see that the admins posted this information, now there is no room for interpretation.
seeing the people involved victimize themselves, without being able to say something really disgusted me

Awesome work and a big thanks to the Admins.

wow...just wow

well then

that clears it all up. thanks guys


i do have one statment though



you really think that the ppl involved in this sceme would send info like this to the mods? you really think that people not involved had access to this board?

some on, get real. it was a hacker. and while the info he found turned out to be creditable, and usefull to the admins, by not punishing him and outing him, you are promoting firther instances of hacking to find cheaters or what not, and because the mods use the info, its ok?

thats all i have to say about that

as for llaar, ice, DM, and jag

:( im a saaaaaad panda

a very thorough piece of work - many thanks Dave and all
it confirms everything that was already known by the people that know, but not seen, not spoken about - a picture is worth a thousand words

"If you all want this game to succeed, everyone has to work together to move toward that goal."

100% there !

Thank you for this information it was extremely informative. Great job!!

Sorry about anything I may of said to make you sad in the past!

To second BJ's post, thanks for the information.

mrford - the intersting thing about that is, they obviously know the source. He contacted them with the info, and obviously had some levels of discussion with them. He may have done them a favor by getting info they had been looking for for a while....but what he did was still wrong, and just as dirty as what those mentioned above were doing.

I guess it will remain to be seen if they re-inforce the permaban or not. I don't care if the name isn't mentioned publicly....we all know who it was.

Good job admins,

My only outside thought here is that if whoever sent the message shouldnt have had perms to see that stuff inside LAE's site and the admins know who it was so they should know if he would or would not have then it should be rather easily determined that this person used shady tactics as well and should be punished accordingly as should those caught cheating. I see an issue if anyone can just go to the mods and say someone cheated and give them screenshots that they had to inappropriately gain access to given any sort of thought. In this case it seems the LAE heads were very much cheating but to condemn them if the information was gained unlawfully without punishing the "anon" individual would be a bit one sided

i like how all the LaE guys who were all "show me the proof!!!!"
have yet to post lol
PWNED!

GJ admins, you are already > mehul lol

There was no ingame proof -- that is what we were preaching.

Thank you Pang/Slag/QZ -- I have began the cleaning process now, as I believe you should have access to our site to confirm so.

Thank you.

To all of FFA, sorry.

While I can't comment too much on the hacking, it seems like an account with top-level access had a very insecure password, which was easily guessed by the source. I'm sure LAE leaders can confirm that the pw was insecure, and that no brute force password hacking occurred. I verified that none happened in the game or on Boxcar. But that is just about how the user had access to the site, there is still another mess underneath that which we are continuing to investigate.

I can confirm it was an extremely unsecure password and the person using it had no right to be on the site.

But i'm not even LAE anymore so that's about what i'm worth.

as Slagpit posted somewhere up there, we did also have ingame proof, so your (ICe Man) claim that there wasnt any, is incorrect

Thanks for the reply Pang, and I'm pretty sure you understood my point. Hacking or not the individual underhandedly gained access to another persons account and as such should also be discredited in the future. The idiot with an easy password should fix that :P (and quit cheating). I think this goes along well with the admins in general Idea of keeping with the spirit of the game and the security of it anyway.

To popcorn, I dont know who you are specifically referring to but I do believe that anyone using common sense would want proof before hanging someone else. Just put yourself in that position would you like us to string you up before we know the details?

May I see the ingame proof?

I must say, I believe allot of Lae folks have egg on there face here!

To now try and come out crying about how the info was obtained when you were blatantly Cheating in the worse way all while trying to blame another player, I DONT BLAME THAT PLAYER at all for doing what he had to do to clear his name of all your Ferocious attacks against him and his alliance!

To try and be indignant and want his head just shows your lack of humility.

ICE to try and boost that you were cheating so well there was no in game proof? really man?

Your apology means nothing to me at all! I was accused of your acts against focus, That idiot rats claimed he would attack us cause of it, so sorry if i dont care for your apology now.

Please show me where i claimed i would attack you cuase of it, I said we should attack everyone until we figured out who it was. and It would have been legit, I never had any illwill towards dk, but i put my guild and my friends above everyone else in the game, period.

If that makes me an idiot oh wells. PS If i wanted to take DK I would have, and your clan would be dead.

Only if you cheated rats.... oh wait i guess your right


Never said All Lae's members were idiots you were obviously lied to


There fixed

you may not ICe Man, since it would be a violation of the games privacy policy to give out that kind of information.

Your apology means nothing to me at all! I was accused of your acts against focus, That idiot rats (<-- right there dk) claimed he would attack us cause of it, so sorry if i dont care for your apology now.

LAUGHING MY fluffING ASS OFF

HAHAHAHA

You fluffWITS.. Rot in HELL

Rahl, I'd like to point out thatt many of us "defending" LAE had no idea that any of this was going on and were simply asking for proof. Please don't make the blanket assumption that some members (leaders) actions are indicators of every members behavior. I'm as far from saying those who were caught cheating shouldn't be punished as anyone here. I am saying those who went against the goodwill of the game by logging into another player and alliances site and accounts is also against the spirit of the game.

Most of us here can be real asses and really drive those that were cheating into the ground over this, though I'm guessing most of us don't have a lot of room to judge, I know that I have never cheated in earth *did in utopia a few times* and I won't be hanging around in LAE hoping that the leadership will change. I"m all for giving them their licks then moving on.

Gives a little credence back to the theory that they're ok w/ cheating, as long as it serves their purposes...

you really think that the ppl involved in this sceme would send info like this to the mods? you really think that people not involved had access to this board?

some on, get real. it was a hacker. and while the info he found turned out to be creditable, and usefull to the admins, by not punishing him and outing him, you are promoting firther instances of hacking to find cheaters or what not, and because the mods use the info, its ok?

thats all i have to say about that

as for llaar, ice, DM, and jag

:( im a saaaaaad panda [/quote]

Given the history of RD infiltration and other forms of spying on top tier alliances done over the history of this game, im sure im not the only one that can think of ways to get ahold of that type of information without hacking neccessarily. Not that i know the permission make up of the LAE site, or anything like that, the person doing the informing isnt always neccessarily the person obtaining the information, as has been the case in a number of times in the past.

Personally, i dont really care how information like this was gathered, if it helps stop cheating in the game, then its good. I mean, hacking someones site is both illegal and should never be endorced. But ifiltration i.e. grelk style, personally i dont have a problem with when the goal is to rid cheater of the game.

ss, this case is more... a cheater is using forms of cheating to out other cheaters so the first cheater can play again under the radar, just so he can cheat other day

Glad my crooked lazy eye isn't the only one who saw that.

Yeah.. blame the hacker.

LOL..

fluff off and take some responsibility mrford you gutless wonder.

Ford does not need to take responsibility. He is not the one who cheated, I was. So before you run your mouth to ppl get your facts straight.

Anyone that stays in either NA or LaE are just as guilty as the ones doing the cheating..