How is cheating possible?
 

This is not a troll. I think it's important to discover how the recently-discovered cheating was perpetrated. Early in Stormbinder's thread, now closed, I speculated about the possibility of hacking the 2h file, to which Zen responded:

So how was it done?

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

well, personally i've suspected for a while that esben's security had been compromised. Other than that, I have no idea how he accomplished it, other than through using a hex editor http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Early on Norfleet spoke of some skill with hex editing. I doubt that discussions along those lines will occur outside of the dominions beta forum at most.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Well, so long as it happens somewhere, that's good. It's not a comfortable feeling to think that there's another Norfleet out there waiting to happen, or even Norfleet himself, under a new name tomorrow.

Kudos to Stormbinder, BTW, for his achievement. It took a lot of hard work and a thick skin to the jibes of Norfleet's supporters to pull this off. The end result is an invaluable service to the Dominions community and I, for one, would like to express my gratitude. Thanks, Stormbinder.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Thank you for your kind words, Zapmeister. I really appreciate it.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Yes Sir. Well worth the effort. Cleaning house is good for everyone.

RE: Zap and the topic heading...

I believe that we would all like to know how it was done. I recognize that Gandalf said it would be kept out of public eyes; I'm not sure I want to go wandering into the alley where I will find that answer.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

I guess hexedit the 2h file so that your commanders have iligal orders. Would work, if they aren't checked on server

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Sure. But finding that answer is a pre-requisite for closing the vulnerability. And after that vulnerability is closed, it no longer matters if everyone knows the details.

But I have no problem with this happening behind closed doors, if that's the way the Powers That Be want it.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Two problems:

1) The 2h file is encrypted and checksummed;
2) The format of the 2h file prior to encryption is not public knowledge.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

While I'm not a cryptanalyst, http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I suggest you search the net for "chosen plaintext attack".

Apologies to the Moderators if mentioning this is a no-no.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

I won't do this, but I will take your word for it that the encryption can be defeated with an appropriate tool.

That being the case, there's no defense short of server checking, and there's a lot of checking to do. The type and quantity of every asset a player apparently holds (gems, items, units etc) in the incoming 2h file has to be reconciled against the ftherlnd file, and that's not easy.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

I'm not sure it's so bad. I think all the server needs to remember is how much stuff each player started with at the beginning of a turn, and then get a list of new stuff each player's moves created. If a list cost more than that player had, something's gone wrong. Alchemy makes the problem a bit harder, but I don't think dramatically so.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Well the developers have a way to dismantle a players file and do the comparison. So that information should make us all feel more relaxed. Deep discussion on how the cheating can be accomplished would serve questionable purposes.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

You do not attack the cryptography in a suitaion like this. The client has to be able to read the .2h files it has to be able to checksum ( hash ) them. Thus the key and the salt for the checksum ( hash ) are in the executable this is where you look.

The developers can do a little to make it hard to find the keys, but in the end a determined attacker will find them.

Not really. The server should do all of the checking that the UI does. And this more than likely is the problem. IW has code which does validation in the UI for some operations ( let's say alchemy ) and they do not validate on the server.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

I have to say that I disagree with this. *if* there is cheating going on then it is best to have the methods in the open thus everyone knows what can happen and they look for evidence. Further it stimulates patches.

Although *if* there is cheating *and* it is caused by most of the checking being done by the UI and not by the server then that could mean a lot of work for IW.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

I must wonder, are you Norfleet under an alias? I mean, *if* there is cheating? I know you read the other post about cheating because you replied in there. I am sure that you therfore must have read the post from Kris about all the stuff Norfleet had in that game by turn 23. Even if you totally ignore Storm because of supposed sour grapes, you still cannot discount Kris. 18 hammers? 46 dusk elders in addition to many more summoned commanders? Two queen of airs? 35 clams? Wow, even. That is not even remotely feasible.

Come on, Huzurdaddi, *if* he was cheating? Of course he was! It looks to me like, on average per turn, he *gave* himself some 200 gems of mixed types and at least 500 gold above what he leagally earned.

That is cheating in my book, no matter how he acomplished it. He even mostly admitted to it in those Last two puzzling Posts before he claimed he was gone forever.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Coincidentally, this was the exact question I asked myself (fruitlessly trying to get more information by looking at their profiles) when Huzurdaddi defended Norfleet, rather lamely I thought, in Stormbinder's original thread.

But as has been discussed before, it's not something that can ever be proved either way, so speculation will always be unproductive and frustrating.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Greetings.

I am not sure how the actual cheating was accomplished. As for game-engine effects, from spending a lot of time analyzing Norfeet's file, it seems to me that the main focus of his cheating was to keep adding about 200 gems to any magic schools when he needed it. Or maybe reseting all magic schools gems to 200. Than he could just used and convert these gems in whatever he wanted to. He must have did it many times thoughout the game, based upon final gem count. Most of his magic gems in the treasury very quite close to 200, except those that he had been using heavely (like fire and death gems). He even had 200 bloodslaves http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif (for whom he had no use though and of course being Ermor he didn't really hunt these slave)

Other game mechanisms appeared to be intact, meaning spells were working the way they supposed to work, items were forged according to the specifications, etc. Whenever Norfleet needed something specific he just used his unlimited amount of gems to empower some of his Elders to do the job, like empowering and boosting 1 elder to Air 5 from air 1, to geting him one of 2 AQ that he summoned during the current turn. Or empowering Elders in Earth to forge him his 19 Dwarven Hammers, etc.

Basicly it seems that it all comes to being able to modify ammount of gems in the treasury on whimp. Or at least this is the feeling feeling I got from studing his file.


As for actual technical details of how the hack was accomplished - I simply don't know. I can make several guesses, but they would be just that - guesses.

I have some slight suspicions, however. You see, I remember hearing some time ago (from Norfleet himself) that he got access to scripts writen and used by Mose to run his server. If I remember correctly, he said that Mose gave them himself to Norfleet after Norf asked him to, claiming he, Norfleet, is going to create another public server similar to Mose's for Dom2 players, and run it together with his "clan" (most likely he was reffering to his other alter-egos http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ).

Norfleet also said he and his clan was going to modify these scripts to make them "better". He didn't give anymore details, at least I don't remeber it. It all was pretty long time ago, about 4 monthes ago I think.

If Norfleet was telling the truth, that he got access to these scripts that Mose wrote for his server, than maybe it is possible that Norfleet was able to use Moses' scripts, directly or indirectly, against Mose's server itself to compromise its security.

He would still need to be able to do certain things with Illwinter files as well, that you can not normally do, but the above process could be part of the global picture, assuming Norf was telling the truth about having accsess to these files. He (or somebody else who was doing the actula hacking for him) was likely to be messing with their files encription, because, according to Sheap, he set off cheat alarm in some other game of his, from which he immideatly withdrew.


As I said, it is just a suspicios however, I don't have any prood on this matter. I've writen this all to KristofferO, in case if there is a chance that it may be able to help them to track and close whatever loophole Norf was using.

Just my two cents.

Regards,
Stormbinder

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Wow. Well mark me up as always on the side counter to you from now on that's for sure. You could have cleared it up by looking at posting history, but I *really* doubt that you are at all concerned with the truth.

The truth is that Norfleet consistantly kicked your *** and you whined and whined about it and now that you *think* that you know something you scream it at the top of your lungs.

Quite pathetic, honestly.

All I know for 100% certian from the Posts is that:

1) stormwhiner attempted to setup Norfleet in a game where he had allied before the game started with all of the other players. A clear indiction of a pathetic coward.

2) Norfleet had an insane number of gems in the game in question. I have no idea how he got them.

3) you are someone who has gotten beaten consistently by Norfleet as evideniced by your "no norfleet" games and have a vendeta again him.

4) someone who made entertaining Posts, who was insightful about the game, and who shared *some* of his knowledge about the game is probably gone from the community due to a vendeta.

The programming facts are that assuming that IW did their job correctly then the only real way to hack the game ( which is supposed to be the topic you started ) is through access to the files on the server. However it is possible that they made some mistakes as I covered above.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

I think the only useful response I can make to this rant is that I have, in fact, never played Norfleet. I Banned him from my games because of his earlier unethical behaviour, and only recently lifted that ban.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

ROFL. Small tip Huzzur, why don't you at least use "IMHO" word instead of "I know for 100% certain", when you make such a statements? Trust me, it will make you look better at the end.

FYI I didn't even know any of the players before the game, except Cohen. Which is not suprising considering the fact that for all of them it was the first MP game. I never spoke to any of them about any in game alliances before the game. And I din't even send any in game message to any of them until about turn 10, when I got the message from Arco (or Jotuns, don't remeber) asking me if I want to ally with him against Ermor, since Ermor was starting to grow very powerfull by than, based upon graphs that were visible to everybody. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif


You can go and ask any of these peoples yourself if you want to, they all are forum members.


So unless you intend to accurse all 5 of us of lying, I suggest you take your words back and next time try to think, before you post anything "with 100% certainty" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Stormbinder

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

I'm thinking that Huzurdaddi didn't pay enough attention to who he was replying to here.

Even if this is true (I do not think there has been real evidence or anyone that admitted to this) the thread is about Norfleet, not Stormbinder.

I think the means is pretty apparent.

So you are saying that Norfleet's admittedly helpful forum postings justify his cheating? I don't think you can argue in this case that you have to take the bad with the good. No one has a responsibility to be helpful and answer questions, but everyone has a responsibility to not cheat. There are other people that know the rules and tactics and I expect they will help out.

And I think that Norfleet left because he was caught cheating, not because of a vendetta.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

This makes a lot of sense based on what I have read so far. Even though I am a rank newbie, I ought to be able to win against anybody with infinite gems available to me.

As for the money to build his 20+ castles, Norfleet could always change fire or earth gems to gold any time he wanted to erect another expensive castle. He would not have to muck with anything else AT ALL other than to reset all of his gem counts to 200 each and every turn.

Plus, doing this would be very hard to catch after about 60 turns or so, as having about 200 gems of each type in the lab would not be quite as noticable on turn 60 as turn 20. Thus, I also think it quite likely that he got nailed because it was only turn 22. Storm knew enough about the game to notice the excess gem spending early on.

But I wonder how long Norfleet has been doing this in other games. If he had not gone so insane with spending his free gems so much in this particular instance, it would have been far harder to catch.

So, having everybody allied against him at the beginning of that game meant he had to use his free gems both ruthlessly and properly in order to win, which was one of the reasons he was caught. And Norfleet is obviously a good enough player to do this. I doubt I could have pulled it off in a 1 on 6 even with unlimited gems.

Cheers

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Man, this is sad. A few points:

• Thank you Stormbinder! And apologies for not wanting to believe you :-( Also thanks to Kristoffer for the official backing, and for the unpleasant work.
• The sources to the game pages are publicly available in a somewhat old Version, under GPLv2, in the LINKS section of my pages. I am occasionally contacted by individuals who wants to set up an identical server, though none of them have yet done so.
• I find it unlikely but possible that my server as such has been compromised. If so, the attacker has been quite skilled. To be safer, I have started the process of upgrading all software on the server. This will undoubtedly cause crashes at some point.
• For those that care, the game itself and my own, simple analysis of the situation is here: Norfleet analysis
• As to how, I would guess hacking the nation.trn and or .2h file is the best bet. I agree with Stormbinder as to the nature of the cheat: Gain gems, possibly resetting the number of gems to a certain value.
• The dominions II game was obviously not written with security as a priority. To do it right, you have to let the server execute and check on all movements the client submits. This is just like writing a web page: All data sent should be regarded as suspicious (Perl: tainted). Care should be made to track this tainted data and untaint it by careful checking. On the other side, no data should be transferred to the client which the client does not need.
• All the big internet game houses have had problems with cheating. It is not trivial to get right, and the above is just an observation, no a criticism.
• I would have Banned Norfleet from the server, but I see no point, especially now.

I'll shut up now. Hopefully, this particular hole will be plugged soon.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

This is sad.
Since I had no idea that there was a cheat at all (I had to search with "Norfleet" in the subject title to find that thread, and just read it, boy is it long), I had never really thought it possible. I am not personally worried since I don't play competetively nor with people I could ever imagine even wanting to cheat, but I still think that measures should be undertaken to ensure that "hacks" or whatever you call them are as difficult to do as possible. I have no idea about computers or hacking, but I imagine that nothing is completely safe.
In any case, I think the original question is a good one, and if it won't be answered here, it should at least be not-answered by means of an assurance that smart people are working on a cheat protection.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Greetings

This may be a little late, but, it was sugeseted (not for the first time) that Stormbinder allied with the other players before the game started (as if that would make a big difference to the fact that Norfleet was cheating...).
Well, I was playing Pythium and I didn't even knew who Stormbinder was. Actually, by turn 4 or 5 I made a non-agression pact with Norfleet!! And Storm contacted me, as he said, by turn 10 or maybe even later.
I cannot talk for the other players, but if you go to the Battlefield forum you can see that we were all (with the exception of Cohen) newbies (actually, this was my 5th MP game), so very unlikely to be allied with Storm from the beginning. Forget about the conspiration theory.

Stormbinder made a big favor to the Dom2 community and everyone should be grateful to him
Thank you

Regards.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

My reply here was deleted?

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

man this is sad . i didn't know that cheating is possible in dominions 2 too . i read the other post too and thought wow how can you get all this stuff with ermor at turn 22 but i believed that it was perhaps really luck .
thnx for revealing this stormbinder .

hopefully it gets fixed soon because otherwise even if you ban norfleet how can you assure that he doesn't join each time under a new nick ?

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

BIG Thx to Stormbinder to finding out of cheater


I had game Vs norfleet in Battlefield tourney 1

I thought game was in my hands i had like 13+ lands and he had only 3. Turn was like 15-18. Then he attack me super comm + his god. They had hydra armors + realy good other items in turn 15-18. i thought it was skill to build all most full best items to turn 15-18 to 2 unit

i hope he didnt drop me in tourney by using cheat

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Correct master password is cohennap.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Stormbinder,

As another who thought of you in terms of Stormwhiner, please accept both my thanks and apologies. Norfleet is a better propagandist than you, but you had right on your side, as well as the will to follow what you knew was right. May you always stick to your convictions and may you have better success in getting others to support you.

On a related topic, does this revelation put all of the debates about balance into a new perspective? Norfleet's favorite strategies, the VQ and Mad Castling, look less strong when you realize how he really did it. He was fond of saying the strategies were not that overwhelming, he knew lots of people who could not make them work. I, for one, could never get the resources to spam castles across the landscape or get the VQ fully decked out so early. Now I know why he was so much better at it than I.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Fixed. Thanks!

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

yeah i thought some days ago i have improved my dominionskills from newbie to an already quite good player . then i read the thread what norfleet had at turn 23 with ermor and only thought : WOW i have so much still to learn . i have never tried e.g. the raven feast because i remembered how small the gains are . now i thought perhaps i was wrong .
so thnx for revealing this stormbinder .
about 30h ago when norfleet was still defending i almost believed him that he was really lucky and got this through lots of good events ... .
it was still a bit unbelievable but i thought well norfleet is known as probably the best dominionsplayer so it can be possible .

now after revealing his cheating i still miss his funny or informative Posts . i think norfleet deserves a new chance because he is a loss not for the game probably because he cheated there but for the community .
he always gave good advice and his view of the world was bizarre but funny to read .

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Pfft...
I was at stormbinder's side all along (even though thats not that long =P).
Usually the guys accused of cheating that try and weasel their way out of it with (albeit minor) flames and vague explanations are actually cheating.
This reminds me of a guy in another forum I was in, only he was a much better propagandist (or had more alter egoes) since the community was split roughly in the middle, with half of it cheering for the flaming beast and the other half was recieving flames and acting quite sedate.
He was caught in the act of hacking (with screenshots) and tried to get away with it accusing other people of hacking and other stuff like that.
Only he kept trolling the Boards (in a much more sedate fashion) and ended up as a forum joke.
Although... There was another cheater that was also caught in the act which accused his brother of hacking his heroes...
And another guy which was caught hacking and ended up reformed and cheat-free AFAIK.

Anyway, Im opposed to cheating, yet I do believe you can change your cheaty ways.
When I was younger I cheated all the time (and never played MP) but after I grew a bit older I realized (with help from my brother) that cheating isnt fun, and Im cheat-free-clean ever since (unless in very specific games under very specific conditions, only SP, only FPS games and only after I finished the game atleast once).

BTW, check out the second mod in my signature, its SO COOL!
And it takes seconds to realize why, all you need to do is create a new pretender!

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

oh and i think norfleet almost didn't need that cheating because he already had lots of wisdom in dominions .
so even without he would probably have won the majority of his games .

perhaps he was forced to cheating though :
i speculate a bit now because i only own dominions since 2 months so i have no knowledge about the time before but here my guess lol :

norfleet was good in the beginning and always won without cheating . then because the community is so small in the new games everybody allied secretly against him and he had no chance to win against others because even the best player can't win against 3-4 others in no game if the others are not complete noobs .
so the community forced him to either play under different nicks each time or to his solution : "cheating" .

perhaps he found now a new game and got really tired from dominions and so he chose that in his eyes "funny" way to say adios .

although i don't know norfleet personally i still have a kinda high opinion of him and he is a loss for the board .

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

that's exactly my viewpoint too . no cheating in mp .
i even don't cheat normally in sp only rarely for fun after i completed the game already or if a bug doesn't allow you to continue normal .

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

no. even the earliest games w/ norfleet, other than his initial "map of the world campaigns", which I wasn't in, had him demolishing alliances made of everyone else. These alliances were in no way secret, or set up beforehand, but emerged naturally because he was so dominating, and able to put up castle/temple/labs every turn in every new territory. This was months ago.

And a number of players in those games, who were pretty good and were initially enthusiastic about the game, just left the scene. Perhaps they would have left anyways, or perhaps the impossibility and frustration, and the seeming refusal by the old guard to take their concerns seriously, encouraged them to give up on Dominions.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

I find it ... implausible that you can come up to this conclusion ("He gave himself 200 gems every turn") when you have _ONE_ turn file to examine.

Unless of you you know the exact nature of the cheat that was used?

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

That wasn't what he said. He was saying that Norfleet seems to have been resetting the value of his gem stockpiles to 200 whenever he needed to, since most of the gem types he didn't have much use for were sitting at about 200 in the turn file. This seems pretty reasonable, since it sounds like about the simplest kind of edit possible.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

I agree with a lot of what Boron says. I will miss Norfleet as a member of this forum, since he was both very helpful in many contexts (not just in giving out advice which may or may not now be judged in retrospect as bogus) as well as often entertaining. Additionally, he was often the instigator of (productive) conflict, and (productive) conflict is vital and good for any discourse context. I am sure the Boards will suffer from his absence.
It is a crying shame that this has turned out this way. I had never ever considered Norfleet a cheater, and really couldn't even imagine it.
Of course hat's off to Stormbinder for sticking to his guns and being stubborn in this respect.
No one can expect Norfleet to be able to show his virtual face here again, but I would welcome a "new and cheat-free" Norfleet back as a forum member willingly, and propose that if Norfleet (surely under a different nickname or sig) were to come back perhaps in a few weeks or months and should he have foresworn cheating (and perhaps even help in preventing it in the future by yielding up his computer knowledge), that no attempt be made to shoo him off despite hard feelings.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Beautiful. This is just the way to draw more people into a game that is hard to easily get into but needs more blood to keep the games fresh.

Yes, I'm sure that people cheating, or even power gaming in general is the way to bring new blood into the wonderful game that is Dominions.

If it isn't absolutely, positively clear already, let me make it clear: I'm not blaming Stormbinder for that, just the morons who need to damage the integrity of the game, and in front of first time players no less. For a game like Dominions, which needs to intrigue and entice all of the new players it can because it is a niche game and the pool of players will naturally shrink over time, this is defenseless.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

It is obvious Norfleet was cheating if you look at Norfleets Posts and his sg empire in the game provided.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Now you're being silly. Stormbinder was just proposing possibilties, even founding them to some degree. And he states this clearly in his post; and even if he did it would be obvious from the content.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

There's a website that provindes infos about cheats ... but not any link to download them.

However so on, my search (with google) lead me to cheats for Dom2 able to gives you unlimited pretender points, gold, and "resources" ... dunno if this means gems or resources for common troop production.

I've only read the text files describing that stuff ... I never tried so I can't say more.
Since the previous post where I said that disappeared from this thread, now I'll give the link to infos only to who PM or mail me, so he can see with his own eyes there're already cheats for Dom2 ...

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

i believe those are old single player cheats. I very much doubt any of them would work in MP.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

That's what I don't get either. I'd like to think there was more to it than just simple cheating (especially after reading some of his final comments here), but I don't know. Norfleet was pretty eccentric and maybe I can't / don't want to understand him.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Greetings.

I would like to thank you all for your kind words, they are very much appreciated. Also I would like to say special thanks to Mose, for him believing me in the begining, for his support on board, for spending his valuable time analizing Ermor's file, and for making Norfeet's Ermor file available for download on his server, where it can be accessed by anybody who would like to see it himself.

Thank you guys! Your words tell me that all the time and efforts dedicated to bringing this sad matter to the concluion were well spend and appreciated.

Regards,
Stormbinder

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Add me to the list of people in your debt, sir! Very well done indeed.

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

You are absolutely right Sly Frog. Cheating can easely turn off new players from any MP game, especially from such a long and complex game as Dom2.

Fortunately these particular three new players were not turned off by these events. Once we established contact in the game I've created mailing list for them, that we used to communicate with each other, and I've send several dozens of emails to them, (probably 20K-30K text total http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif ) giving them a lot of advice amd tips on what are the effecitve tactics for their nation to do in our game, as well as general game tips and advice, and answering their questions. From the personal game-wining point of view that was probably not the best course for me to do, as Norfeet wrote in our Ermor's game thread, if he would be me "he would wipe them all from the map immideatly, and wash his shoes after it". However I didn't want to go this road, and instead chosen to cooperate with them and educate them. During the game and especially after the game was finished, they all send me a lot of emails, saying how gratefull they are for all advice they got, how much they learned about about this game and how excited they were to participate in the alliance against Undead Legions. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif One even said he is saving all my emails for personal archive for studing and references later on during his future Dom2 games. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

All three of them are registrated forum members now, and you may already seen some of their Posts in this and in other threads. They are starting a new game now, and all are very excited about Dom2 as far as I can tell. So I am glad to say that at least these three people were not turned off from Dom2 because of the blatant cheating that they were unlucky to encounter in their first game.

Regards,
Stormbinder

Re: How is cheating possible?
 

Are those my Posts in the strategy newsgroup? Sure sounds like all the areas I covered. Of course that was why a "Cheat Prevention" now shows up on the new-game menu. It was alot more fun before you had to actually hit that switch and turn off cheat checking to make them work.