EVE Online Endures Downtime Due to Breached Security 69
Gamasutra is reporting that a serious security breach caused the closure of EVE Online this past weekend. A previously-unnoticed anomaly in a database prompted CCP, makers of the game, to close down the game world and their website while the issue was examined. The flaw was rectified, and service restored the same day. No credit card or billing information was exposed in the breach. "Explained [CCP chief of operations Jón Hörðdal], 'What we discovered was an indication that one of our databases was being accessed through a security breach. Our policy in such cases is to mobilize a taskforce of internal and external experts to evaluate the situation.' Hörðdal said that the taskforce concluded that going completely dark so that an exhaustive scan could be performed was the best course of action. 'While some may feel that such a drastic reaction was not warranted, it is always our approach to err on the side of caution in order to protect the players,' he said."
The most amusing thing about this story (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Just guessing, though.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It has always been that only players with active accounts could post on the forums, and in addition on some forums players are forbidden from posting unless they have chosen to make certain information (such as their corporation and alliance affiliation) public.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Alright, Single Sign On (SSO) is a good thing usually. But haven't they ever heard of LDAP before? Why have username/passwords in the database, especially if they s
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The most amusing thing about this story (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, the fact that their forums and web servers all point at the same database as the game itself is astonishing. They've certainly made some weird design decisions through the years, although we're certainly not aware of all the factors that influence those decisions. Why on earth they didn't have a static web server page up within seconds of the downtime is really quite sad.
I was on the irc channels and watched the rumours fly around, it was all the work of a bunch of
But the amazing accomplishments of the eve team shouldn't go unnoticed. A single game world means that people actually gain fame across the entire game, not just their little sharded server. Being able to sell some guy a battleship that then gets used in a pivotal battle involving 100s or 1000s of players is just jaw droppingly cool, in my opinion. The player driven economy, complete with scams, piracy, corporate wars and all, have kept me enthralled and entertained. (zealot mode, deactivated)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There's a reason DB modelers normalize data to store it in only 1 place. And replicating it (Even if it can only be changed in 1 place) in a transactional system partially defeats that purpose.
Plus while you might think rumor control when the Forums is down is bad, the rumors floating around on the forum, while the game is down will be worse. And I'm sure they h
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know for sure, but it's entirely possible that they took down the forums at a precaution, and that while they may hit the same authentication servers for logging in and account maintenance over the web, that the game servers are entirely separate. I know for a fact (I was on them at the time) that the forums came back up a lot sooner than the game itself did.
Re: (Score:2)
Running IIS against the same database that Eve itself runs on quite frankly scares the crap out of me.
Re: (Score:1)
A lot of issues (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, CCP really needs to work on the fleet-battle performance for the game, particularly as they encourage PvP so much. Day-to-day combat is fine, though (say a few ships vs a few ships, strike forces, etc). PvE with player vs a large number of ships runs pretty smooth.
Re: (Score:2)
It's one thing to have that many subscribers. It's another thing entirely when considering the number of players simultaneously on a given server. With Blizzard encouraging casual play, it's possible for people to play 1-2 days a week for a few hours at a time (and even then you encounter queues to login on "full" servers). I dunno what the official stats are, but between 1000 and 3000 to a server at any given time seems standard for most large MMOs.
In any event, I seem to recall that EVE peaks around 30
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's real draw is that it is a space MMO. It has a more difficult learning curve than other MMOs. It has somewhat harsh consequences. It is basically a playground for people who enjoy griefing. The single pl
Re: (Score:2)
Except that really isn't accurate. As soon as a few hundred people get in the same section of the galaxy the servers are unable to handle it. So, it's great that it can have 50k on a shard, but they would be better off having more servers and less people on each so the game would be more playable.
Not *exactly* true. Jita and the other hub systems regularly have hundreds of people in them, without counting the adjoining systems, and it runs fine (though with "traffic advisories" sometimes).
Now, get a few hundred people onscreen from eachother at the same time, that's where EVE falls down (ala fleet engagements). Hopefully that'll get fixed up eventually. It's worth noting that many people will never be in that situation, thought, since they're not part of a huge corp/alliance in 0.0, etc.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Aw shucks. I knew there was a reason I liked it. I'm both. Not.
That said, I did like it, but after my trial elected not to play for 2 reasons:
1) The dev scandal was just unfolding, and I was utterly appalled with it. Not only that they handled it so poorly, but the revelations that they allowed devs to participate at that level at all, nevermind the cheating. GM abusing mechanics is bad in a Pv
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, to be frank, this may very well be one of those cases where the problems seem to be larger than they are, due to the volume level of those posting the news about them.
Disclosure: My char has been alive on EVE since 2005.
Anyway, there was the BoB/devhax thing, which while obviously a serious problem, also only *really* effected a portion of the game that was directly involved in with BoB in some fashion. There's a *lot* of the game that wasn't really materially involved in that particular muckup.
Si
Re: (Score:1)
This particular one is not a big deal. Someone figured out a way to hack the database to get items. The safeguards to notice if something happened worked, they took down the game a little while, and they fixed it. Compare to games that leave major economic loopholes bascially forever. There's really only one big (and very important) black mark against CCP, and that's that employee cheating scandal and t
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, I've never been that obsessed by "progress" relative to whether what I'm actually doing is fun. Case in point, I also play LOTRO some, and I'm still exploring different bits of the relatively low level content a
Re: (Score:2)
I know a few Eve players but I didn't get on board myself. With all the notable controversies I find it astonishing it's still in business. I suppose if the game play is addictive in the flavor that is right for you, you'll put up with a lot.
Oddly enough, I just canceled my account yesterday. Reading that made me think "What button did I press?"
EVE has a great premise and a lot of good work went into putting the whole thing together. The problem, of course, is that it's a MMO and it takes way too much effort to get anywhere serious in the game. You'd have to devote yourself to it like an athlete training for an event. When I compare progress in EVE with progress made in a single player version of a similar genre game, there just really isn't a
Re: (Score:2)
Definitely true, EVE is a huge time sink. I never really minded the mining, to be honest, but it's definitely hard to feel accomplished in the game when playing only an hour here or there.
Re: (Score:2)
Definitely true, EVE is a huge time sink. I never really minded the mining, to be honest, but it's definitely hard to feel accomplished in the game when playing only an hour here or there.
I had a huge time crunch where I wasn't able to play for a few months. I trained my character up to be a killer miner during that time. But ultimately, I didn't have the time to go back and do anything with that. And PVP? Ugh. I never managed to kill anyone there, was just bug-splatted when trying to rat and earn some isk. The loot tables were all screwed up so the rats never dropped anything good.
I have a 360 now and am playing Oblivion. Man, now I know what people were talking about when that bastard cam
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I liked oblivion a lot. it's a lot better with some of the user mods applied to it (PC only). Like the high res textures pack, the anti-checkering mod, the none auto-leveling enemies mod, beautiful people mod etc.. I definitely prefer the PC version.
It all sounds cool. I just don't have the scratch to keep up with the PC gaming. I'll let a few years worth of games build up as a backlog, buy a modest and reasonable system that will r0xx0r the s0xx0r of these older titles and enjoy from there. ;)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is one of the flaws in Eve. It's a PVP game with some PVE grafted onto it. If all you do is missions, it's going to be boring. If you really want to enjoy the game, you need to start working in the player driven areas of the game. Commerce or combat. I played the game for almost 3 years, and spent a lot of that time in the thick of alliance dynamics. The political aspect of Eve never got boring.
I understand what you're saying but it just got too time-consuming. I understand that cooperation with corpmates is what makes the distinction between this game and single-player anything. The problem is that coordinating schedules became quite difficult to do things like a mining op. And because there's such a huge skill and capability imbalance between n00bish characters and veterans, going lowsec was just too risky to be worth it. PVP in EVE is like playing Starcraft against nothing but Korean kids, spa
Re: (Score:2)
You need to find a different (or larger) corporation then. Given there's rarely fewer than 15000 people online at any one time, there are people online from around the world 23/7. You need to find a corporation that's more active during your playtime.
Re: (Score:2)
Ditto, though with any company people have payment problems. I've suspended, left, change cards, etc, without problem. From what I can tell (anecdotally from friends and from browsing forums for a few years now), the GP's post isn't a typical experience.
That's a common racket -- not just EVE (Score:2, Interesting)
The idea is that because you originally consented to charge the card, you can't call in the fraud dept.; since you simply let the account lapse, they can claim plausible error. In circumstances like t
Re: (Score:2)
As for EVE, I'm a customer of CCPs and I have for over a year not provided them with my CC (I did for the first few years, but suspended the account cause of cash problems) and have gone with getting time cards by paying with paypal instead.
Re: (Score:2)
The reason for this is that so if you forget you have the account, it eventually gets closed down due to dormancy -- but your CC still gets charged like clockwork!
""
Actually, you're very very wrong on this one. It's about the separation of duties.
Dealing with a customers account has little to do with money (and has different skill sets). That's why there is a separate department to deal with that. And if you cancel your account without them stopping billing, then you'll be able to get that money back.
And in a few weeks later... (Score:1)