Hacking a mud.

Posted by Rex_Tybal on Thu 19 Feb 2004 09:08 AM — 14 posts, 64,582 views.

#0
I want to hack into a mud,in anyway possible.
If someone is the "master" at this kind of stuff.
Give me an email ( [email address deleted] )
Make sure you tell me specificly what to do, thanks.
USA #1
Here's exactly what to do:

Step 1
Get into a car

Step 2
Find a lake

Step 3
Jump into it


You've got a lot of nerve to come out and ask a question like that on a forum like this! >:/
Amended on Thu 19 Feb 2004 10:22 AM by David Haley
Australia #2
I have done this before when i was like 6, i sujest going to papua new guinee, it rains a lot there, then all you need to do is find some dirt and wait till it rains, you will have all the mud you need, get some of the said mud and put it in your mouth and spit it out. There you have some mud hacking. G/L
Romania #3
I posted something like that on that forum some time ago. Nobody posted a reply, and I was asked pertinet questions: IF is possibile to hack it, coz in 2 of the muds where I was playin` was the same situation. Some players having some huge advantages even from the begginig, those players were acting like newbies - like asking stupid questions, and shit like this.
Let me explain more specific.
1. Zone Runner [tdome.net:6969]
Max stat is 20 for a mortal, but 20 is really hard to get. Also only one biotype can know the personal stats. So, some day I found some players wandering into the desert, without need of food/water, killing all they could see. And that desert is dangerous for any mortal.
2. Warcraft
All is about quest points. With quest points you can buy items, items who can be upgraded to stats_boosters. But when you find a level 2 cleric who wear full_quest_gear (boots, helm, shield, sword, armor, gloves, etc) you are starting to ask yourself if you are playing in the right way. More than that, when you are lookin` at you gear - only a quest sword and you are level 34.... hmm

In both cases Imms said they have no connections with those facts, they know nothing and shit. My personal guess is YES, it is possible to hack a mud without Imms to find out. Also, my personal guess is: very bad ideea to post that on this forum, lol.
Rjak
United Kingdom #4
Some people manage (no idea how, so dont ask) to break thru some shells and (with some know how) rework their encrypted pfile to their tastes. Of course this leaves no record. Other ways where logging in AS imms and doing it but some commands maybe be logged and traced (I caught someone this way once) Unfortuatly its nearly impossible to stop shell hacks (as its the hosters problem to protect your mud :( )
But on the mud its diffrent, you can log important commands, you can even set up scripts to check files for 'diffrences' i.e. mods (using perl like a friend of mine did for their mud)

There are loads of ways to STOP hacks. But why oh why would you come to a forum that wants muds to thrive and spread and ask a question like that?

Oh well i guess theirs a foll in every bunch and i think we just found this one!

Rash

(btw if your after my mates perl script forget it iv asked n he wont give it out.)
Canada #5
Why do people assume that when advanced players have certain advantages that they do not that the advanced people are cheating? Many, many muds have certain advantages for people that deserve it. For example, I have the eating/drinking code in my SWR, but I disabled it so droids don't have to eat or drink. About a month later I had a flame of emails, spim, and screaming newbie on my mud because someone was cheating cause their character didn't have to eat or drink. If a big shot lawyer drives around in a limo, does this mean that he's cheating(ok, bad example)?

The point is that whats often perceived as cheating is a lack of knowloedge on the games attributes and functionality by the accusee.

P.S. Why would you possibly care enough about a game that costs you nothing to play to want to go to the effort to hack into it?

P.P.S If you are having a problem that someone has taken over your shell on a remote system, then you need to contact your system admins, they can help you.
Amended on Thu 19 Feb 2004 06:38 PM by Greven
USA #6
Hes obviously got some beef against the imms or something. He asked for any way possible to do it, which meant he just wants to cause trouble. Not withstanding that hacking a mud is dumb to begin with, no matter what your reasons.

Rex, If I were you, Id take Ksilyans adivce. Robert has some good suggestions too.
Amended on Thu 19 Feb 2004 07:34 PM by Flannel
Australia Forum Administrator #7
I think the problem here is that you are on the wrong forum, Rex.

You want a forum dedicated to bringing MUDs down, rather than helping them. Offhand I can't think of such a one. :P

Put it like this, you may as well go into a police station and ask for advice about how to burgle a house - they would know, they just won't tell you. Plus, you might be arrested.
Australia #8
For a change i went and played a God Wars mud, i have nevber played G/W's befor and it was a heck of a lot of fun.

Its way different to anything i have played befor and i got a lot of ideas for things i would like to do to my own mud.

Now befor long i had obtained mastery, maxed stats and trained everything in sight, has 20K hp mana and move, had mastered all the super stances and was elevated to the level of Vetran.

As anyone who knows G/W's its totally PK and here was me a pretty buff Vetran who couldnt kill a Cadet thats 2 levels lower than me, not only couldnt i kill him i couldnt even hit him 1 time in the fight.

Now i dont CRY LIKE A BABY and want to hack them, i ask for their SECRETS and low and behold i learned how to play a better G/W's.

Created a new Char followed my new found instrustions and went on a PK rampage and well, im not much for PK but i was win/loss 50% and could hit the said cadet now.

As for a level 2 with full quest eq, I ALWAYS QUEST THE MOST WHEN LEVELS 1-10, why because you only ever go to the BLOODY NEWBIE ACADAMY, its super easy. 1 mud even went to the trouble of only allowing low levels 10 quests per level because i was level 2 and had 100K QP

All muds have holes in them, not holes for hacking but ones to exploit to make you the best char in the game, you need to play a codebase and learn how the thing works, and use this to your advantage, THE SMART PLAYER WINS THE GAME. Just dont exploit things that are against the rules and if in doubt ASK AND IMM FOR HELP AND POINTERS they are generally a friendly bunch. And if the imms suck or have given their friends all the buffest equips then go and find a mud that dont suck.

#9
Well from my perspective muds are kool for these reasons:
reading
programming scripts
chatting
PK
(maybe other stuff too)

Anyway with all the programming stuff like triggers, alias and other things its rather awesome. So I can see why someone would want to hack into it however not why they would mess with it. I have no clue really probably to get back what they lost because of admin whom are jerks and sterotypicalize roleplaying.

I've had a few questions regarding mud security though. I've taken a few networking classes and well telnet doesn't use encryption so basically anyone can sniff out a packet to see what is going on and spoof it. What protects muds from that, perhaps some sort of authentication process?
USA #10
Well hacking a mud would be fun to screw with people... cause on one i got shrubbed (deleted) for breaking the rules, but because it might LOOK like I was.
USA #11
Kind of the wrong forum, but I think we all know where one might want to. Thought has crossed my mind a time or two about a mud (not giving any names here...) who did have assholes for imms. Lost an av char and a full set of gear I did, and they wouldn't do a damn thing, so what have I been doing? Slowly going on with my life and creating a mud myself to then start to make things right in one place at least.

As for security, I think using something that is a net host (Apache and Samba come to mind, but those might just be for web pages or something), and rework a little of the source to close up some holes they may have and to make it not as obvious where to go through. Someone who knows what they are doing will have probably gone through and looked the code over themselves just to see where it could be buggy.

Just an idea
#12
lol wow I stumbled upon this same discussion yet again. But I had a very odd problem with a mud once. A friend whom was new to mud games asked if I could help them setup their skills, in game aliases, and write them a description. Me being the nice guy I am I said sure. What was strange though is when I went to login I entered their name and waited to enter the password while still messenging them on AIM. It showed everything they saw while I was not yet logged in. Just goes to show how shitty telnet is. Why do you guys not use something like Open SSH for connections!?
USA #13
That has nothing to do with telnet and everything to do with a very silly implementation on the MUD server. It looks like it sends data to a character who started the login process but isn't done yet; really a pretty silly thing to do. Using OpenSSH wouldn't help you at all in this case.