Account Lost and Recovered

[ono]

But glossing over motive is bad sauce. You can't wave your hands and say "who knows?", it's a very important piece. He's already destroyed divisor's credibility, what is the point of punking the members of the LS that he left? Seriously? At the very least you could find links on their forum where they are bad-mouthing Taj.

In our forum, in the public sub-forum, there was a thread where people, several non-Ultima members, were talking at length about the wiki drama and what happened to Kalia, and that they did not condone what was done. Some in that thread did approve the activities. It was a public thread, and that sub-forum gets a fair bit of traffic from non-Ultima members who attended the public Dynamis runs.

But who is going to know who is an Ultima member and who is not, if they are not knowledgeable of the server population? It probably looks all the same to a visitor to the forum.

Anyways, the forum is down for now.

[Sasarai]

If Taj did it, he'd brag about it rather than leaving thinly veiled hints.

Quoted for unquestionable truth.

@Mahal, stop posting, this forum doesn't need any more of your special brand of retarded.

[Shuvo]

He only played on xbox so 1) is invalid

You all are getting the names mixed up.

My mistake. 6AM here, haven't slept yet and gotta get up for work in 1hr 30min. :3

(I need to start sleeping properly)

[ono]

My mistake. 6AM here, haven't slept yet and gotta get up for work in 1hr 30min. :3

(I need to start sleeping properly)

No worries.

[Rammses]

To the person who did this u cant cripple us u cant bring us down.If anything you have just made us stronger as a core.We are rallying, we will show that this is a sad attempt at takeing us down.

Pride and Honor
Friendship and Respect
Live it Learn it Love it

FFXI is serious business.

[Khamsin]

I am curious, though, what the application procedure is to Radiance. lol

How long did fake Ryko/possessed Garret have to wait from when he applied on your forums to when he was approved for trial with pearl?

[Liselle]

It doesn't matter who was 360 and who was PC. The point I was trying to make is that people are lying idiots. We've already seen on this forum recently:

- divisor getting pantsed partly because of his lazy password habits.
- Ganiman getting exposed as a lying scumbag because he kept records of his two-faced activities, see also above password idiocy.
- and now, people sending account details through a forum PM system.

I could also tack on removing the DVSParse source/binaries in the "people being petty" department.

Anyway, given all this, I think it's hilariously naive of people to assume the best of people just because they got their accounts ganked from underneath them. You have to be pretty negligent to have this happen to you in the first place, after all, so I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that there are yet-unmentioned half-truths and/or boneheaded manuevers that haven't yet come to light in this thread. People are applying Occam's (poorly) and pointing the finger at Taj, but I think some people here are missing the blindingly obvious.

[kareface]

See if your web host logs IP access to your database. Most webhosts have dedicated sql servers independent of the physical server where your files are hosted. Depending on how your host is setup, they can log IP activity on your database. Contact them and find out who all accessed your database in the last few weeks and compare the IP's to the people who should be able to access it.

[Eticket]

People should get their facts straight or you just muddy the analytic waters.

1) THE NAME IS G A R R E T
2) PC only, no PS2/XBox360, Windower 3.24, no other 3rd party software
3) PoL PW has been the same up to the incident for a long time
4) PoL ID/PW were PM'd within the last few weeks, prior to this only 1 person had my info, which was possibly sent through PM over a year ago
5) Kalia/DT did not have full admin capacity, he had mod/admin capacity to a specific subforum
6) Of the accounts stolen there is no single person who had ALL their information
7) Someone asked about how someone would know I would not be online, depending on the culprit it is relatively common knowledge within our LS, and to at least part of the server that I am in law school and that I have typically only been logging on recently when I run Dynamis. As far as I can tell my account was stolen in the hours after I finished Dynamis on Sunday, that could be either coincidence or that the culprit knew I would probably not log on again for a few days. I did not actually even know my account was compromised until Tuesday afternoon.

To the "If you give out your PW then you deserve whatever happens" crowd I would comment with this. There is a large difference between giving your information to someone who turns out to be untrustworthy and then screws you over by dumping your items, deleting your account, etc and having your account info ripped out of a private forum database through some form of illicit means, whether compromised admin passwords, bruteforce attacks, or whatever the hell actually happened. That is a significant difference in the mode the account was compromised. Let's use another example

You occasionally play FFXI at a friend's house, you installed a copy of it on his computer and happened to accidentally leave your manual and information on his computer. One day someone breaks into his house, robs him blind, and happens to snag your manual while they are at it. They happen to be a big FFXI fan and decide to hijack your shit.

In this case you have given out your information, but it's been compromised in a way that is clearly far outside the realm of foreseeability. Now, conversely, had your friend decided to take over your account, steal your gil, items, etc in the same scenario you could easily say that you risked your account being compromised. The two are incredibly different occurences and what happened here is much more similar to the scenario above than just having a buddy screw you, which is the general manner accounts end up being ripped off in.

Sorry, but if you think those two are essentially the same then you are flat out retarded. Excuse me for apparently not correctly analyzing the security weaknesses of a privately hosted forum, which is not hosted on site in someone's house, and not properly expecting what was likely a very illegal manner of accessing that information. My bad yo.


Edit for new posts: I personally find it unlikely that Taj did it. Like or dislike Taj he is usually quite vocal in what he does, and if he had done this I think he would be more than happy to say so. That doesn't mean he didn't do it, but evidence is murky at best that he did it outside of the fact that he is probably capable of doing.

Well said.

Now get back to throwing lawyerspeak at SE reps. We'd prefer you guys back sooner rather then later.

[Oxx]

accounts are lost and will never be recovered unless they people(person) responsible do it

and if it was taj, not saying it was, he certainly would not brag about it so the people crying about lost aegis' and what not could go to fbi.gov and report him with 'evidence'

i would however i just have a big mouth i dont think taj has a big mouth not like me at least

blacksole,lushangs,gtfo,ipban,etc

[Excalin Garisk]

I can not say if Taj did it or not. I do think he is suspect number 1. Honestly I do not trust the guy. He has openly hacked people on two occasions. Most people cheered him on, but we have no clue what he has done before and after those attacks. I think it maybe safe to say that even if Taj was not the one behind the attack...he may have still been very much a catalyst with everyone that cheered it on.

To me Lying, Stealing, and Cheating have a habit of going together. I am sure many people would stand up to say Taj is a honest person or what not, but out of those people who knew of his taste for hacking before these hackings on BG?

[Liselle]

Excuse me for apparently not correctly analyzing the security weaknesses of a privately hosted forum, which is not hosted on site in someone's house, and not properly expecting what was likely a very illegal manner of accessing that information. My bad yo.

I sympathize with you and everyone else who got punked, I certainly don't think you deserved it (on the face of things), and I hope that SE is struck by the clue bat and moves everyone back to your home server, as well as persuing the original account thief vigorously.

But there's a reason why "Three can keep a secret if two are dead" is such a famous quote. It has nothing to do with analyzing the security weaknesses of a privately hosted forum. Nada.

[Shuvo]

For everyone who is so eager to profile Taj and say it's not his style to do this, and that it is obviously DT... the logic can be applied both ways. DT doesn't seem like the sort of person who's fuck over all of his friends just to get revenge, while Taj could just be playing an elaborate prank for shits and giggles. I'm not saying this is what I think happened, just saying that both scenarios are equally likely.

[Tarnak]

Honestly. This back and forth bickering wont result in any conclusion. PlayerA has said opinion and PlayerB has opposing opinion. Both are steadfast in what they believe the truth to be. However neither could be right.

Any gaming company whether it is Blizzard,EA games, NC Soft, or even Square-Enix will tell the players the same thing. They can't pursue a hacked account until the authorities Federal/police are notified. They WILL comply when there is a case number and the authorities contact them. I have seen hacks happen in all of these companies happen.

However, it seems like people are underestimating Aangelicous. From what I know of him. No undoubtedly, he has been tirelessly working on the forums ever since the incident.

It's easy to discredit a great deal of comments so far. Like the seemingly loved "it has to be an insider job since they knew who was in power in the LS" Honestly, I know most people in power in the linkshell im not part of the shell. This doesn't mean anything if you knew the server players for a while or went to dynamis for a decent period of time. Yes it is well known "don't trust others with ones account" Over time ive seen who is trustworthy and known those that you cant cout on no matter how trustworthy they seem. Garret and most of the others affected are very nice people and have always been helpful to everyone possible.

Personally my advice would be all of them file a report. Enough accounts were affected that it will draw attention. And preferably restored back to where things used to be.

[Araius]

But glossing over motive is bad sauce. You can't wave your hands and say "who knows?", it's a very important piece. He's already destroyed divisor's credibility, what is the point of punking the members of the LS that he left? Seriously? At the very least you could find links on their forum where they are bad-mouthing Taj.

In our forum, in the public sub-forum, there was a thread where people, several non-Ultima members, were talking at length about the wiki drama and what happened to Kalia, and that they did not condone what was done. Some in that thread did approve the activities. It was a public thread, and that sub-forum gets a fair bit of traffic from non-Ultima members who attended the public Dynamis runs.

But who is going to know who is an Ultima member and who is not, if they are not knowledgeable of the server population? It probably looks all the same to a visitor to the forum.

Anyways, the forum is down for now.

Until about 24 hours before Aang took the forums down completely, the thread that showed the list of active members of Ultima was in plain sight to anyone registered, I believe. It seems doubtful that I could see that but others couldn't, even though I did apply to the LS myself and had access to a couple other subforums (SOAP, etc).

And Freak never once badmouthed Taj in that thread, didn't even make a post at all, but he was also never one to keep his PW entirely to himself (not judging him there - I never have been either). It's probably safe to assume that at some point, he PM'd his login information on Ultima's site. He also wasn't in any kind of "leadership" position as far as Ultima and sackholders were concerned, so unless the hacking of his account was supposed to be some kind of red herring, it seems less likely that it was an "insider" job - not that I ever believed it was in the first place.

[Croaker]

Giving a linkshell to a transfer PLD with no application to your linkshell is extremely fishy. Also giving a pearl to a mule of that character is far beyond fishy.

Regarding the last comment I highlighted, from what I understand it was another member of the LS, independent of Taj, that gave the fake Rykoshet a pearl (wish I had the name, but I'm posting between classes and don't have the time to look it up) . Unless again one of Taj's former LS mates comes out and denies this I don't see how this puts any suspicion on Taj.

I see only 2 possibilites.

1) Taj is guilty. Means: Has record of being a hacker. Motive: Lets not forget good old greed or revenge. Opportunity: Has already been busted hacking other forums recently while looking for information on Kalia.

1) Taj is being framed. The person framing him got amazingly lucky with the sacks of Radiance being so generous with their pearls and Taj being so willing to do him favors.

[defiant]

memberlisting was removed and forum memberlist disabled.

freak, jasmin & koul had all use PM to pass on their info at some point. you only have to ask them.

[ono]

I sympathize with you and everyone else who got punked, I certainly don't think you deserved it (on the face of things), and I hope that SE is struck by the clue bat and moves everyone back to your home server, as well as persuing the original account thief vigorously.

But there's a reason why "Three can keep a secret if two are dead" is such a famous quote. It has nothing to do with analyzing the security weaknesses of a privately hosted forum. Nada.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if someone on BG (lurker or otherwise) read this, took it to heart, found an exploit and worked us over. Bad personal practice with PM'ing account info among several people, act of dominance and we're collateral damage in the game.

[Liselle]

i·ron'i·cal·ly adv., i·ron'i·cal·ness n.

Usage Note: The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply "coincidental" or "improbable,"

Is this some kind of joke post? That's a USAGE NOTE, and you didn't even quote the part of it that refutes your entire post. Here's the whole thing!

Usage Note: The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply "coincidental" or "improbable," in that they suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly. Thus 78 percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of ironically in the sentence In 1969 Susie moved from Ithaca to California where she met her husband-to-be, who, ironically, also came from upstate New York. Some Panelists noted that this particular usage might be acceptable if Susie had in fact moved to California in order to find a husband, in which case the story could be taken as exemplifying the folly of supposing that we can know what fate has in store for us. By contrast, 73 percent accepted the sentence Ironically, even as the government was fulminating against American policy, American jeans and videocassettes were the hottest items in the stalls of the market, where the incongruity can be seen as an example of human inconsistency.

You should have read the whole thing! The Usage Panel clearly rejects the use of "ironically" as simply meaning "coincidental".

[Excalin Garisk]

No one ever said it was just one person in on this either