MegaManTrigger
Banned
Where did I say this ONLY happens in Pokemon and not other games? All I did was juxtapose Niantic's situation with GameFreak's.
That is insane. Is the market for secondhand accounts that lucrative?
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How hackers broke Pokémon Go's anti-cheat technology in four days
- Thread starter dmr87
- Start date
Where did I say this ONLY happens in Pokemon and not other games? All I did was juxtapose Niantic's situation with GameFreak's.
That is insane. Is the market for secondhand accounts that lucrative?
This was more a concentrated effort by the pokemapping community than botters. Things would not have been cracked so quickly if it wasn't for the fact that people has gotten used to consulting maps as a replacement for the broken "nearby" feature, and the drive to getting maps working again was what made so many people collaborate.
NoblesseOblige
Banned
I don't know, but like most online games the price crashes fast as more people catch wind on how to do it and flood the market with hundreds of accounts. Though it'll instantly shoot back up if/when all those accounts get banned, starting the process over.
You develop where money is if you want to be successful. Niantic found a niche in mobile that wouldn't have been as successful on consoles.
blanket statements like that make you look really stupid and clueless as to what hackers actually do
NoblesseOblige
Banned
Nah. People were hacking the game before the tracking apps were shutdown.
According to them, they were getting so many requests via trackers it was destabilizing the servers
It more than doubled their traffic
BUT, such trackers only existed en mass because Niantic broke their own game by removing the nearby tracking feature
So the community banding together to fix a problem the devs created just created more problems for the devs
To be fair I dont think they expacted half a BILLION installs one month after release
SoRuffShoNuff
Member
The hackers enjoy the thrill of hacking new security features than they do playing the game. They are pretty much salivating at the chance to break whatever new features pop up, you cant win against them.
It's impossible to outright solve it, but there's ways and means to fight and delay.
Including handing out permabans instead of damn softbans.
Lucky Seven
Banned
All I can tell is that you're clearly an asshole and a terrible fan of the game if you're taking that position.
NoblesseOblige
Banned
I bet you there's more money in them softbanning rather than handing out permas.
I dunno. I doubt the people using bots are spending money.
If they took a hard stance with permabans (and advertised that well), I think a lot of would-be cheaters would just play it safe. And if they can't bot to control hella gyms they'd be more apt to spend money.
There's just a lot less customer service to do.
brainchild
Banned
Am I a bad person for being impressed with this hack? The execution, the turnaround time, the dedication... all of it is just fascinating. I feel the same way about thieves that get away with masterfully planned heists.
Please don't judge me
Raging Spaniard
If they are Dutch, upright and breathing they are more racist than your favorite player
This game more than any other in recent memory has me facepalmig at the fan and community reaction. Not just the incredibly asinine armchair developer problem but lack of empathy at a small developer, people making up facts and incredibly short fuses for anything that goes wrong.
Making games is hard, people, really hard. Nothing in a game is easy to do! A month after release for a live game is usually incredibly hectic even for unsuccesful games, but the biggest app of all time? Its impossible for shit to not go wrong. Impossible.
Making games is hard, people, really hard. Nothing in a game is easy to do! A month after release for a live game is usually incredibly hectic even for unsuccesful games, but the biggest app of all time? Its impossible for shit to not go wrong. Impossible.
Dagobert Duck
Member
Yeah it looks like most people seem to forget that this app is only out a month in the wild. yet it is basically online almost everywhere over the world with millions of people playing it...and we arent talking about a developer with 500 devs or whatever...of course the hacker community is in advantage right now...
They're obviously referring to the type of hacker that ruins the fun in competitive games for other people by doing shit like this.
Of course there's also the good kind of hacker, and that's without downplaying the incredible thing these guys have achieved by hacking this, they're really smart guys. Just smart dicks.
It's fine, I'm impressed too. Kinda wish they weren't wasting their efforts on something this pointless and just downright bad for the game's community (basically everyone).
Unknown Soldier
Member
Someone should tell Niantic that you can't beat the hackers this way unless you want to dedicate all your time to new hacking prevention systems instead of developing the actual game.
Instead of constantly trying to disable the 3rd party trackers, they should be trying to make the game more playable so legit players don't need the trackers.
Also right now the game has literally nothing of value for hackers, there aren't any meaningful win conditions and therefore there's nothing to buy. It's not like an MMO where selling gold is a profitable activity, the game doesn't even have Pokemon trading right now!
Focus on making the game better Niantic. There's no financial gain from hacking Pokemon Go so they'll get bored and stop when you stop giving them reasons to hack.
Instead of constantly trying to disable the 3rd party trackers, they should be trying to make the game more playable so legit players don't need the trackers.
Also right now the game has literally nothing of value for hackers, there aren't any meaningful win conditions and therefore there's nothing to buy. It's not like an MMO where selling gold is a profitable activity, the game doesn't even have Pokemon trading right now!
Focus on making the game better Niantic. There's no financial gain from hacking Pokemon Go so they'll get bored and stop when you stop giving them reasons to hack.
NoblesseOblige
Banned
As I mentioned previously, there are people farming/selling accounts for monetary gains. They only make a couple bucks an account, but you can literally bot hundreds at a time if you know what you're doing. Of course now the market is saturated, which is why sniping (teleporting to known rare pokeman spawns to catch them) is becoming popular because you can sell them for more.
I think with a game this popular it wouldn't even matter if it was easy to play without hacking, also given the game's hook being having to move your fat ass, people will always try to find a way to avoid doing that
Unknown Soldier
Member
Account selling is in like every online game ever. It cannot ever be totally stamped out and really it's pointless to try.
It's important to realize that Ingress and Pokemon Go are a lot like MMOs which take place in the real world. Much like an MMO, there will be botting, there will be hacking, there will be account selling. This is especially problematic in F2P MMOs, because you can just create new accounts to keep doing it.
NoblesseOblige
Banned
The point isn't to 'stamp' it out. It's to minimize it by making it more risky so fewer people are willing to buy accounts (since any day they could be found out and banned). This has the side effect of making the account prices higher so even fewer people are willing to throw money at new accounts. And with that smaller demand comes the inevitable smaller supply. This is exactly how SquareEnix kept account selling down in FFXI when I played it. Yes it still happened, but the accounts were hundreds to thousands of dollars because of the vigilance in banning people. And the bulk of those accounts were being purchased by those who were banned before. So it's nice to keep having the cheater-addicts throw their money away account after account.
brainchild
Banned
I agree. But what do you think they should be doing? Homebrew hacking? Cyber security?
Yes this is the only reason people are hacking. Also people pirate stuff only to try it out and then immediately buy it.
Yes because legit players see a Gym taken over by cheaters stacked with Snorlaxes and Dragonites and think oh boy I should try just a little bit harder.
They cannot implement some of the highly requested features such as trading while hacking runs rampant. Since they are resorting to encrypted hashing, it means Niantic still hasn't swallowed the hard pill of online game development: clients should not be trusted and all business logic must be done server-side. They need to assume clients can call any API endpoint at any time, as often as they wish and with whatever parameters they fancy and only then they'll have the right mindset to harden their game against hackers.
Also, the idea that people hack solely for "gold farming" is naive at best. Any and every multiplayer game where there's even the slight form of competition between players and/or some sort of grind is a target for people who want to cheat their way over others.
The issue is that for an AR game, you can't have a server-authoritative positioning system.
A needed step would be to prevent all emulators access, but that's going to be tricky.
Niantic or the hackers?
Allforce
Member
Honestly had no idea this was a thing, as someone who played for like 2 days when it came out and then dropped it I sort of want to use this to see the rest of the Pokemon available.
My kids took my phone out the other day for the first time and just found more Ratatas to add to the dozens I already had.
My kids took my phone out the other day for the first time and just found more Ratatas to add to the dozens I already had.
Sniping people from distance is a challenge, too -- doesn't mean you should do it. I'm tired of the whole blame the victims mentality. It's sickening. The hackers shouldn't be doing what they're doing - it's ethically and legally wrong.
Of course Niantic should take better precautions -- but let's not improperly shift the blame. I should have good locks on my home's doors, but, if I didn't, it doesn't absolve the thieves who robbed me simply because I had poor security ... I was stupid, but they still deserve to go to jail.
The hacker may be from a jurisdiction where those things aren't even illegal, or even if they are, they aren't prosecuted.
And unless we give up any sort of anonymity on the internet, law isn't going to be catching up to these things any time soon.