So I was exploring around in Insmother in my Astero, and came into a ratting-system. One guy in local posted my name, the a link with Chinese text. Out of curiosity, i pressed the link, and it was a link with my ship, and all my fittings.
I haven’t lost any ships with this fitting before, and i cloaked up immediately after jump on every gate prior, so i found it weird that he knew my fitting this fast.
I decided to investigate this further, so i sent my alt to the same system. To make sure not to be scanned, i went with an instantly warping interceptor. This way there’s no chance for anyone to get a lock and scan off when i’m at the. Even if theres a bot doing it. And what happened?
Now we have had allot of bot’s over the years, and while i hate them, and wish ccp would do more to beat them, they are still just automations of regular game mechanics.
This however is a game-changer, if someone can extract the fitting of you’r ship as soon as you enter a system, PvP is as good as dead.
It’s lucky that the bot was programmed to post this in local, instead of any other channel, so it could be detected. But if people are using this kind of software, i might aswel find another game to play.
If true, excellent find! You should send all this info to Eve and report it, and then, perhaps more importantly, post the entire thing to Reddit.
If everything is true as you say, it seems to be some kind of exploit, and CCP has been careless by transmitting information to a game client before it should have or know that information.
I’m no programmer, but as far as i understand the game-mechanics, getting this information should be impossible. The player posting in local was also in a VNI over 1000 km off the gate, so how he could get a ships-can off is beyond me.
While this sounds all very interesting do I wonder if this really is what you think it is.
It could be it’s just some game link such as <url=showinfo:587>This is Rifter</url> which then shows you your own fitting, and only makes you think they know what you’ve fitted.
Secondly, if it really was as you say, why would a bot link this openly into local and not use a private chat instead?
Not saying it is, but they could just be f’cking with you.
I have no clue why they would use local instead of any other channel, maybe other bot’s need to have local open, or just to show that “i see you, not worth trying”
If they are still there after downtime, i will try jumping in with two characters, and see if i can get the fitting from one character via local to anther.
Please create a Support ticket and forward all of the information you have gathered to GM’s. I Also recommend you forward a Mail to security@ccpgames.com so that The Security Team can also look into this. Inform them of the ticket number so they can pull it and work on it.
I will go ahead and close this, as this content is not welcome on the forums as it discusses Illegal Botting and a possible Exploit. ( That being linking your fitting when they obviously should not be able too. )
