Wasnt sure of to which topic i should post this so it goes here.
I know in the past that eve got “hacked” multiple ocasions from damage hacks to other various exploits\intrusions. Im not here to debate that eve is hackable. I know it is.
The following is all hypothetical and totally not based on a lot of weird things hapenning in eve without most of us knowing about it.
What i want to talk about in this topic is pretty simple. Can we ask the server for information that otherwise not available to us without the necessary tools required to ask such information.
Think about this as how Wallhack works in FPS games where you can get the location information of other players from the memory. Since the server needs to communicate with you where everyone else is so they can appear on your client.
Could something like that be acessed either thru the memory of whats being communicated from the server to the user. Or by asking the server for information with a fake request.
Now before we get into this im not trying to cheat in any way shape or form or try to suggest that anyone should try and do it. Im interested in the possibility of such. TOTALLY not based on anything weird happening in eve for a long time.
You think it is possible to send the server a fake request with the specifics of combat probes scanning a location that have been previously harvested from memory to instantaneously return a scanned signature of a ship and make it warpable in the probe window?
step would be to harvest location data from the memory if its shared.
step to send a request to the serve as if you would have a pinpoint formation on that harvested location with 0,5 au range probes and get a return as a 100% scanned signature
Or you dont even need the request but can generate a bookmark based on location data harvested.
I know what this sounds like. No i didnt get dropped or caught. I played this game for a while tho and i know ppl who got banned for hacking into eve. There are jsut some things that you experience or look at and cant find a reasonable explanation and think. Could this be someone actually cheating?
I know it is fairly easy to do in an FPS game and virtually undetectable unless manually reviewed and i dont really see why it would be different here.
I heard that once upon a time the server did sent some information about cloaked ships to the client, which then could be exploited.
But as long as the server is set up correctly, verifies input and only sends information that the client should know these ‘wall hacks’ would not be possible.
And who knows how many are still there nobody knows about, especially not FCCCP, with a few exceptions might be players who exploit them without anyone else knowing.
I can think of multitude of ways that give you an advantage in eve and would be hard or impossible to detect.
Imagine if you could see whats fitted on someones ship.
If you could acess information about a cargohold or a container.
Suddenly you think about all the HS ganks that seem a bit sus. Did they use a cargo scanner? Was it randomly shot because its a squishy target? Or did the attacker see whats in the cargo using information harvested from thegame?
What I think is possible is to abuse the fact that FCCP has surely tried to save data when synchronizing the game over multiple clients by allowing some steps that have zero impact on other players being done by your client locally.
So first you need to log in with a manipulated client (which isn’t that easy, because many companies check the client softwares integrity in some way on login).
Second you need to hold that connection stable (which isn’t that easy either because the moment the server notices anything coming from your client that seems to violate limits or restrictions may result in a connection loss and or an internal alert, resulting in an automatic temporary or permanent account ban).
THEN it completely depends on the coherence checks the server software does, or if it largely relies on the integrity of the client. For example at the moment you click “Analyze” in your probe window, the server does the calculation (where are the probes, do they need to warp, what are the results…). But it surely doesn’t need 5, 6 or 7 seconds, whatever your scan speed is. It waits until your client tells him “analyze-animation completed” and then sends the result.
Now if this analyze-animation is only played client-side and not cross-checked if it is coherent with your current fit and skills on every click, you could theoretically set the animation time to 1 second. or even 0. Which would mean you get the result of your scan almost instantly, like on Dscan.
You could also try to manipulate scan strength or deviation values, because we don’t know if the server checkes these values every scan based on your fit, or caches them until you change something in the fitting. And even if you refit your ship, we don’t know if the client checks the fitting restrictions or if the server does. Because all that is information other players don’t need, they only need the final values so there is a chance FCCP has limited the data-transfer to “values only” and it’s the client that prevents you from fitting 20 Scan Arrays on your CovOps. Which you could break if you can manipulate the client.
The possibilities are endless, but its all pure speculation since we don’t know what part is coded and doublechecked by the serve on which event.
From my personal experience, I do scan a lot and I do get scanned a lot. I never had the impression people would “magically” find me faster or with higher precision than would be explainable by good equipment or skill. And I have never been found while being cloaked or warping around in a fast ship for example.
But that is only true if you are “injecting” into it. If information is shared to the client such as location data or any other information about a ship you might need instantly on ur client then it will be in the memory of the client or pass throu it. This doesnt need a modified client and you just snoop in the memory for data.
But yes it depends on how much ccp needs to share.
And again all i can go on is based on existing methods used in other games. So at best guess.
In Tarkov you can see what an enemy PMC wears. Whats in their bags or pockets. You can see inside containers. And it is all harvested from the memory.
You open a bag and you need to know how many and wahts inside or the game starts to be extremely laggy if it needs to communicate back to the server everything when the client wants to know something. So a lot of data is sent in advance and stored.
I doubt they are that stupid, at least when it comes to player ship locations. It’s the most obvious attack poing in any attempt to sniff data. And especially after the linked incident, I’ll bet this hole has been closed.
Sometimes its not about if they tought about not sharing that but they must share that in order for it to function properly.
But yeah i dont know. Just tought this is worth thinking about sometimes.
There are definiately things in eve you think about and ask these questions. And im fairly sure there are ppl out there doing morethan thinking about it.
Don’t you think if such “hacks” would exist, before anyone else, the big wormhole groups would have noticed? They bascially rely most of their combat on scanning signatures and ships while hunting. I doubt anyone would be able to keep it secret if their members detect strange “coincidences” over and over again.
I think that comes down to the fact that some of us have 20 years invested in eve. No one wants to get banned at that point.
When someone in ur group says they managed to find the enemy and hold it. The frist thing you think about is a juicy kill not how they did it. Also smaller groups usually are okay with one of their members cheating since it benefits them as well. And yes there are a lot of “Valid” excuses to hide cheating. As mentioned before. Some ppl blow up ships for just the lol of it. Some ppl blow up ship types. Like T2 scanners get blown up because they might have been scanning. You cant really differentiate between that and someone knowing which ships got valuables because they have information they sohuldnt. That is why its near impossible to detect.
Or think about the massive Botting goups. Everyone knows they are botting. But the usualy thing is “Report it to CCP we are not here to enforce it”. So even ifyou suspect something all you can do is make a report and CCP be like “What?”
And when yo uare on the recieving end of it then its “Skill issue” “Did you check for probes” yada yada the usual comments. Might have been skill issue. You might have missed the probes. But what if you didnt. Its just a loss and you move on.
Well, if a single individual constantly finds targets a lot faster and more reliable than others of a similar skill level, especially if these ships are cloaked, that would raise an eyebrow. You know, where I live people (even opponents) know each other. The victim would open a convo with our FC and tell him he was caught cloaked on a safespot and suddenly decloaked by a Dictor that warped right on top of him… Now on the first occasion that would count for nothing, we would probably say “you just messed up”, or believe his client was buggy, showing the cloak as active while he was not.
But the moment such situations occur in numbers, that would be noticed. There would be talks on leadership level, even among enemies, what these strange kills are about. And since most FCs use their own cloaky scanners, the moment it happens to one of them, the rabbit is out of the bag.
What? Maybe you play with the wrong people then. In no group where I ever played cheating in any way or form would be tolerated. The guy caught would be killed on the spot, expelled from the corp, blacklisted with all his alts and wherever he wants to join in, that leadership would be informed.
That might be true for large Nullsec groups. I didn’t mention these. In most wormhole groups, if you bot and someone notices it, you are dead meat. And these people would find out if someone does “magic kills” a lot, as explained above. You can’t hide that for long if you live among professionals.
But again: if its one individual doing it, his impact on the game is totally neglectible. Mass usage of such cheats (by spreading some tool that can do it) would definitely be noticed.
I doubt people could keep something like scanning hacks for instant combat probes quiet or unnoticed for all those years. Something this impactful would quickly be well-known knowledge, just like similar hacks are common knowledge in other games when they exist.
In EVE it’s well known that bots exist, or that input broadcasting is possible even if illegal.
In EVE I’ve never heard of such client-side scanning hacks. While not 100% proof, it’s a big sign to me that such a thing doesn’t exist at the moment.
Yeah i get that but there is a significant difference between 15 year old hackers in Counter Strike and somone who played Eve for 15+ years. At least you would expect there to be.
