Where are you seeing these maps?
It’s seems the only solution is to patch the game game client. Otherwise nothing. It will just be a perpetual game of whack a mole.
I was checking SC2Arcade website. I was able to look into who was hosting the maps and see that this guy’s main account has been hosting the lobbies starting 14 days ago.
Seems like the maps and uploader accounts have been actioned against but not this script kiddies main account or any of the ones repeatedly hosting the lobbies.
How do you know which of the many accounts is the perp’s true main account? How do you know it’s not several people working together? The reality is, you can’t really know.
The main perp that people are alleging is the mastermind hasn’t even been online (or in the arcade at least) for two weeks, which is when Bliz did their first big clean up pass. So something appears to have stopped that account.
I watch SC2Arcade as well. Each time a new set of exploited maps appears, it’s a different account that created them.
That’s not remotely true. Accounts are actioned.
However, the perp(s) can create new accounts and use the same SC2 names over and over. That can give the appearance that nothing is happening to them. It’s a common, well known tactic in many games. It happens constantly in WoW.
Because he wasn’t working alone.
IP ban won’t help either ?
If not, the only way is to patch game client by some decent programmers, otherwise this clown fiesta will continue without end.
With DHCP, VPNs, IP spoofing and any other ways to change IPs, IP bans wouldn’t have much effect.
Sounds like it may have happened. Fingers crossed:
welp game might as well be given a kill switch pulled at this point blizzard needs to cut power to the servers ans shut down the game already they wasting microsoft money at this point every one just gona go play stormgate anyway. the game is dead hackers are disabling it just hit the kill switch already … just shut it down…
You may have missed the memo, me thinks.
As I suspected, they are persistent and have begun attacking again, now it will crash your starcraft 2 client after viewing the lobbies tab for a short period of time, with an error report.
The broken lobby has the title “HV(Highvoltage) sends his regards”
zzzzzzzz
What I do know is an individual that has been vocal about his issues with map makers is the one that claimed to be doing this. I can also see that he had a ton of plays on Parasite -Test before doing this just before that dev banned him making it kinda clear its his main account if not one of them. This is the same person that made handle spoofing and a workaround for anti cheatengine crashing. So I am inclinded to believe them as they are always mad at map makers.
I realize that some accounts have been actioned, but account have unique handles that show their play history through Starcraft II’s API directly. When I can open a few of those profiles and see that they have hosted these maps multiple times over a period of 2 weeks… its clear that it is remotely true.
Like I said before though, I know none of this is on you and you are just here doing damage control. But it still doesn’t change that this whole situation is being mishandled completely by Blizzard.
Well according to the most of the people on these forums, they are just “trolls” and shouldn’t be apprehended and charged as cyber criminals.
So the community is getting what is deserves in my opinion.
So, the attacks on the Arcade are back, and this this time, the exploit outright crashes the game upon looking at the lobby list.
Looking at the sc2arcade website, it’s clear the culprit is hosting something called ‘Unknown 357908’, with no thumbnail, and if you try to access it on the website, you get a 404. In the client, accessing Arcade via campaign, and sorting by newest will also cause the game to quit.
My speculation is that this is somehow an invalid map that can be hosted, the game client doesn’t know how handle that, and just falls over and dies. If that’s true, then there shouldn’t be malware, or other consequences for your PC. But still a negative consequence for the game experience of many players.
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Its back, and this time we as modders can’t do anything (no longer uses any formatting tags like imgs). It seems to be related to map name size most likely, that he managed to bypass and patch, and its probably hardcoded whats max limit or something (speculation). In short, blizzard needs to actually change code this time, good luck to us, lol
Edit: confirmed the map name exceeds name limit (most likely buffer overflow that causes instant crash)
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Heh. Good luck to us indeed then.
Did not age well, crashing again.
Really bizarre that the map doesn’t even have to be loaded to crash the game.
Surely blizz has full control over what is happening.
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Just out of curiosity here, but is it also happening in ptr, cause if not then why dont you all go to ptr and host the custom games. just a thought.
Hey all,
The expoiters have switched tactics, so the fixes from the recent patch likely aren’t effective in stopping this new kind of attack.
Thanks for the reports. I passed them to Bliz.
The workaround from the original attacks should hopefully still work.
I’m just echoing Leviathan I realize, but for the sake of those who immediately distrust Customer Support, Blizzard DID patch the original exploit, and so far, it appears to have been successful. No it wasn’t timely, and no there was essentially no communication with players (Leviathan’s been the closest thing we’ve got). But for accuracy and fairness’ sake, the original exploit WAS successfully patched.
The latest exploit is a totally different method, aside from still being deployed through map names/locale strings. The fact that this different exploit is being used heavily suggests that the 5.0.13 patch fixed the original exploit.
But don’t think I’m defending Blizzard’s attention, or the lack thereof, to this issue. It’s easily fixable, as was the original exploit. See my post here for more details, (Request a Human to fix simple bugs - #4 by Seitan-1334) not going to retype it all… but I’m not making baseless assumptions on how easy it is to fix. People have literally already fixed this latest exploit (just their own client obviously). Not Blizzard employees, just players. If Blizzard gave these exploits, as well as monitoring future ones used, if any, even the smallest amount of attention they deserve, it would be a non-issue.
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People stupid enough to do this get caught. Then they get charged and sued, go to jail for a few years, get out and are barred from using a computer for a certain amount of years. Repeat offenses or breaking terms of the parole will lead to them going right back to club fed.
So while they CAN do that, their gravy train is going to come to an end pretty fast and abruptly. This is why any real hacker doesn’t do crap like this once they mature a bit and figure out their priorities a bit more: risk of getting caught…to do what exactly? Spite a map maker who didn’t want them cheating in their map? That’s like burning down your parents place because you didn’t get ice cream for desert. You have to be a total psychopath and really stupid to even consider that course of action.
…I believe the original hacker was HighVoltage, but I was informed he was doxxed and arrested. IF This is true, this is his friends. IF not, then I wish to mention that HighVoltage’es extra accounts aren’t exclusively new ones. They include stolen accounts. This is from experience dealing with him.
Either he has had a myriad of like 20 accounts he abandoned from years ago and can act very thoroughly as a different person, is friends with every single person who he used the account of, or he has stolen accounts. All accounts I’ve seen him use are either abandoned by a minimum of a year or are fresh accounts. No inbetween.
This is a factor I’ve yet to see brought up once. If this was disproven ever, I am willing to hear evidence contrary to it. However, this issue may be slightly underscoped. I havent seen any stolen accounts recently this year, but this guy has been active for a while, crashing games from the inside. I do highlight this info so that there may be more information poured to those who actually have ways to understand the implications of it or the capacity to disprove it.
NOTE: This is NOT meant to fearmonger, merely to highlight this is the THIRD Hacking case involved in this user’s history. Any stolen accounts have been abandoned, meaning he intentionally does not target active users.