The news on the wire is that some unknown number of hackers gained Immortal privileges and proceeded to wreak havok on many servers in Shadowbane. The second link is slow sorry... it is prolly getting hammered.

ubbforums.ubi.com/showfla...o=&fpart=1 (http://ubbforums.ubi.com/showflat.php?&Board=sb_support_announce&Number=652582&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1)

sb.catacombs.com/forum.cf...BMainForum (http://sb.catacombs.com/forum.cfm?ThreadKey=9719&DefMessage=407311&forum=SBMainForum)

Here is a summary...

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>[A]pparently the carnage (including many less powerful players getting killed) involved "..teleporting people all over the world, teleporting hostile guards into the safe-holds, bringing in hordes of special event monsters, and teleporting everyone to a city at the bottom of the sea."[/quote]

Second link's been slashdotted.

games.slashdot.org/games/...86&tid=209 (http://games.slashdot.org/games/03/05/28/1452201.shtml?tid=127&tid=186&tid=209)

That usually brings any server to its knees.

Yikes!

That really sucks - I'm surprised that someone could do this though. You'd think there'd be better security. Glad I don't play Shadowbane :)

Official word from Ubi:
<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>"We are beginning a massive investigation into the incidents surrounding the Scorn server tonight immeadiately. The Scorn server will most likely be rolled back several hours tonight to a time before these events started occuring. We will be taking the server offline until more information can be gathered. I will update everyone about the server status as more information comes available.

--------------------
- Vosx Temper
Ubi.com Shadowbane"
[/quote]

More info states that the billing info has also been compromised...I guess that means the SB Players will be getting a suprised bill soon from their credit card company.

Wow!

1st, it would be fun! as long as they did a rollback.

2nd. It wasn't a person, it was a guide. Why I think so? Well, if you hack a system, it takes a long time before you would know the tools enought to really start doing damage... OR ... they have been in for weeks.

3rd. Who in their right mind would put billing information on a outside system (1) and the gaming machines (2). This is all internal machines you do this one!

4th.. Some little kids are going to have a rude rude awakening.... People don't hack machines the way they used to. Why? They get caught.. ALWAYS... if the crime they do is big enought and someone wants them caught. They figured out the first person to send a spamming email 4 months after it happened (think about it! 1/10 of the computers on the net had it... and they where able to track it down!). So hackers hack in to systems, use their resources, and get out without doing any real harm... Why? If they do, they will get people to go after them... if not, they wont.

I loved this comment on Slashdot about the incident. =)

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>
Roll back the game 24 hours, harden the servers, and prepare a creative press release -- problem solved.

"High level characters summoned the Cthulu mythos through misintrepreting portions of the Necronomicon. Accordingly, some of the space/time contiunuum in the game world was temporarily disrupted."

"If you see a glowing green orb, please be aware that this is the Locknar and should not be approached. Unpredictable results may occur."

"Unfortunately, in Shadowbane a character named "Sauron" acquired a randomly generated treasure named "The One Ring". We are investigating the probability factor of the random treasure generator and will patch this in release 1.01."

"Our improbability drive is malfunctioning. Please stand by."

Honestly, I'd be more willing to buy this game if I realised they had a sense of humour.[/quote]

He he he

Brings back memories of the time in EQ when a GM flipped out, started summoning folks to VP and binding them there. Then watched them death loop.

Just sounds like idiot kids to me.

They should be punished to the full extent of the law... Most of the laws they broke (especially if they mess with credit card information) will be a Class A/B Felony each INSTANCE...

But who are we kidding, They will probably cry and get 200 hours of community service.

Sad thing is you are probably right Paldor.

I remember back when I was in school (yikes, 25 years ago) when you did something wrong, you got punished. And you got an appropriate punishment for the wrong you did.

Nowadays you do something wrong you get "counseled" or get Ritalin by the bottleful. Or worse, you sue the person you wronged because they caught you and tried to punish you for it.

A small town near here had 4 kids who threatened to blow up the high school (this was right after Columbine). The police investigated and found out who it was and charged them all with various charges (terroristic threat, etc.). The school expelled them 2 weeks before graduation.

Seemed appropriate to me, but the parents filed a civil lawsuit against the school because they said their kids should not have to pay for their mistake for the rest of their lives. Well, maybe they should have thought of that before they made the threats. Eventually all the charges were dropped and the kids graduated. Now what did the kids learn from that?

This weeks U.S. News has an article about parents sueing when their childern get diciplined.

On SB at least they let people decide if they wanted a rollback since some people werent affected. After they did the rollbacks many of the people involved actually seemed to enjoy the excitement of a world gone whacky. It was more exciting than the Newbie kills or Uber guild zone hoggings that EQ calls events. I lost 150,000 gold due to it but in EQ I have lost a lot more to bugs.

www.wired.com/news/games/...4,00.html# (http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,59034,00.html#)

Paldor says: But who are we kidding, They will probably cry and get 200 hours of community service.

Heavens no, temporarily disrupting an online fantasy game should be a capital offense. <img src=http://lag9.com/rolleyes.gif>

Heh, if someone hacked EQ and all hell broke loose, I would probably log in myself just to experience it, as it would be the first bit of entertainment in EQ in a very long time.

Those 30 minutes before UO's daily maintenance were a ton of fun...

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Heh, if someone hacked EQ and all hell broke loose, I would probably log in myself just to experience it, as it would be the first bit of entertainment in EQ in a very long time.
[/quote]

Actually from the description, it sounds like a typical GM event in EQ :)