Zezamo krizu / I fought the law and the law won

Day 544, 13:28 Published in Serbia Serbia by Nemanja Ciric

Za one koji ne znaju sinoć sam dobio trajnu blokadu naloga za igru. Srećom ta odluka administartora je bila preuranjena. Ono što se desilo je da je moja šifra bila provaljena od strane nepoznatih počinioca (da znam koliko često ljudi krive hakere, ali stvarno je to bio slučaj). Krivim ponajviše sebe, pošto sam koristio preterano jednostavnu šifru koju bi većina bruteforce napada provalila, da zadovoljim znatiželjne šifra je bila: "lozinka" 🙂.

Dobivši pristup mom nalogu, upadice su zloupotrebile grešku u igri koja omogućava kloniranje. Stvorili su obscene količine mađarskih forinti i preplavili monetarno tržište njima (napad po metodi sličan ali po intezitetu mnogo slabiji od onog na našu valutu). Zlato koje je dobijeno za lažne forinte je donirano zajedno sa još nekim lažnim forinitama takozvanim Beta Bebama - igračima koji su tu još od početka eRepa.

Imao sam sreće da su me večito budni članovi vlade probudili pozivom na mobilni (ovo sve se dešava oko 1 ujutro) i obavestili o nesvakidašnjim aktivnostima sa mog naloga. Ja sam brže bolje promenio šifru, ali pošto je počinilac još uvek bio ulogovan (što bi se moglo smatrati bezbedonosnim propustom, ali dobro de) to nije mnogo pomoglo. Prijavio sam samog sebe adminima i zatražio privremenu zabranu na nalog. Da bi stvar bila dramatičnija neko drugi me je prijavio pa sam dobio trajnu zabranu na nalog pre nego što sam zavšrio podnošenje prijave.

Usledilo je otvoreno pismo na forumu koje je rezultovalo skidanjem zabrane sa mog naloga u rekordnom vremenu (sat vremena od zabrane). Ovom prilikom bih hteo da se zahvalim zajednici na podršci, članovima vlade koji su munjevito brzo reagovali kao i administartorima na brzoj reakciji što sigurno nije bilo lako s obzirom na to kako su haotični zadjnih par dana. Dobio sam mnogo podrške pre svega na četu od ljudi iz više eDržava i shvatiću to kao znak da sam svoj eŽivot živeo kvalitetno. Hvala vam svima.

Osećam potrebu da kažem nešto u vezi bagova i počinioca. Pripišite to mojem optimiznu ili naivnosti ili sreći zbog toga što sem gubitka nešto pravih para ali mislim da napadač nije imao zle namere. Vrlo je lako optužiti jedan od susednih nam Atlantis naroda, busati se u grudi, izreći po koji poklič i ostaviti stvari na tome. Način na koji je ovo izvedeno je vrlo vidljiv i vrlo upadljiv. Cela mađarska a bogami i PEACE su primetili "moje" akcije i trebalo je malo vremena da se situacija smiri. Ovo sam koristio kao glavni argument u pismu administratorima u kojem sam se branio.

Da je neko hteo da uništi mene, sasvim sigurno bi postupio drugačije. Vršim relativno značajnu funkciju unutar eSrbije nju mogu da vršim i banovan preko ORG, a u vojnom smislu sam tek marinac. Jeste da eSrbija nema jaku vojsku i da sam ja trenutno u elitnoj jedinici, ali u globalnom planu gubitak mog lika ne bi značajnije potresao ni eSrbiju a kamoli PEACE tako da mislim da sam ja izabran kako bi se privukla pažnja a ne kako bi se PEACE oštetio mojim banovanjem.

Imam teoriju da je ovo izveo neki Atlantis građanin koji je frustriran, ne porazima skorijeg datuma koje je taj savez pretrpeo već onime što oni (diskutabilno u kojoj meri) doživljavaju kao uzrok tom porazu - brojne propuste u samoj igri koji omogućavaju sticanje nefer prednosti. Izabran sam ja kao neko ko će sigurno biti primećen, napad na mađarski MM je izveden na krajnje vidljiv način, donacije su pravljene igračima koji su iz oba saveza (što je meni poslužilo kao argument u korist dokazivanje moje nevinosti) koji imaju dovoljno veliku reputaciju u igri da ne budu banovani zbog primanja lažnog novca.

Šteta jeste napravljena ali ne toliko velika kao našem MM (što je opet verovatno rezultat našeg brzog reagovanja) a siguran sam da ta osoba ili te osobe misle da su i oni pretrpeli veliku štetu u doskorašnjim ratovima. Iskoristimo ovu priliku ne da upiremo prstom jedni u druge ili u developere i admine već da se složimo sa hipotetičkom porukom ove akcije: greške u igri moraju biti ispravljene pošto je ovo veliki problem koji smeta mnogim ljudima i koji će uništiti igru ako se uskoro ne sanira.

Za one koji čitaju na preskok: Nisam varao ja lično, niti znam kako da varam, niti bih to ikada uradio. Prestanite da tražite da vam lažan gold ili huf, pošto ga nemam a i time bi vam učinio medveđu uslugu pošto biste sigurno bili banovani, ili bi vam te pare bile oduzete. Igrajmo pošteno.
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For those of you who do not know, I received a permanent ban yesterday night. Luckily the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. What happened was that my password was cracked by unknown attackers. I know a lot of people blame hackers, but this time it really is the case. I mostly blame myself, since I used an overlysimplistic password which is very voulnarable to most bruteforce attacks. For those of you that are currious: the password was "lozinka" which is the Serbian word for password.

Having gained access to my account, the intruders abused the game bug which allows cloning. They created obscene amounts of HUF and overwhelmed the monetary market with them. This is similar in fashion but smaller in intensity then the attack on the RSD. The gold they bought with the fake HUF was then donated alongside with the fake HUF to the so called Beta Babies - the players who were here from the begining of eRepublik.

I was fortunate enough to have the ever vigilant members of the Serbian government wake me up by calling me on my mobile phone (remember this was all hapening at 1 in the morning (in our timezone which is CET)). They notified me that suspicious activity was going on from my account and that i should investigate. I promptly changed the password but seeing as how the intruders were still logged on (which some would consider a security hole), that didn't do a whole lot of good. I reported myself to the admins and asked for a temp-ban to be issued to my account. To add more drama to the story, someone reported me for what was being done in the MM and I got a permanent ban around the time I finished my report of myself.


What followed was an open letter to the admins in the forum, which resulted in the lifting of the ban on my account in record time (within a hour of me getting banned). I would like to take this opportunity to thank the community on their spport, the members of our government for their lightning fast reaction, as well as the administartors for their expeditious handling of the matter which is really impressive given how chaotic tha past few days were. I received a lot of support, mostly on IRC from citizens of various eCountries and I will take this a sign that I led a descent and respectful e-life. Thank you all.


I feel the need to say something about the bugs and purportraders. Notch it up to my naivety or optimism or joy that the ban was short lived, but I don't think that the guilty party had evil intentions. It is very easy to accuse one of the neighbouring nations (ie Croatia or Romania) and shout out some patriotic/nationalistic paroles and leave it at that. But the way in which this attack was cerried out was highly visible and noticable. Whole of Hungary and PEACE noticed "my" actions and it took some time to explain things. I asued this as my main argument in the open letter (the visibility of the attack).

If someone wantd to destroy me personally, they would surely take different steps. I do perform a relatively important function in eSerbia's governemt (MoFA), but I could continue to perform it from the ORG even if banned and militarily speaking I'm just a marine. Serbia doesn't have a strong army, and even as a marine I am in the elite unit, but in the grand scheme of things, the loss of my account wouldn't represent a serious loss to my country, let alone to PEACE. I am of the opinion that I was chosen because destructive action action from my account would generate a lot of attention, and not to damage PEACE with my banning.

I suspect that this was carried out by an Atlantis citizen frustrated not with the results of rescent battles but with what they perceive to be the fraudulant nature of those results. They feel that the numerous bugs allowing an unfair advantage are they key to the PEACE victories and while I, as a PEACE inteligence officer and advisor can state that this wasn't done in an organised manner at the top, the fact remains that with the sheer number of abuse on both sides, it is impossible for anyone to claim they won fair and square. I was chosen as a person who would get noticed, and the attack on the hungarian MM was carried out in a high-profile way, the donations were made to players with enough respectability that they wouldn't get banned for owning fake money. The manner in which the action was carried out was such that it was easy to prove hackers were involved and that noone would get banned permanently.

The damage has been done to the Hungarian economy, but not as much as to the Serbian MM and economy (which again, can be credited to the speady reaction of our government and the admins). I am sure that the infiltrators feel that great damage has been done to their country and alliance with these same bugs and that they were just trying to get this point across. Lets take this opportunity not to argue and point fingers but to agree with what I see as the point of the whole thing: the bugs MUST be corrected because this is a HUGE problem that affects us all and annoys a lot of people - This bug can and will destroy the game if not fixed soon.

For those of you who just skimp over articles: I didn't cheat, I don't know how to cheat, nor would I ever cheat in the first place. Stop asking me to give you fake gold or HUF, becasue I have none and I wouldn't dou you any favours by giving it to you if I did have it: you would SURELY be banned or in the very least the money would be taken away from you. Let's keep the game clean and fair!