A Note to the Players of the Forsaken Lands

[Volgathras]

Ladies and gentlemen of Aabahran, I'd like to take this moment to announce the unanimous decision on the part of the FL administration to collectively step down and abdicate our positions as your managers. The consistent attacks by the DDoS assailant have caused us to see the errors of our ways, and we can no longer in good conscience claim to be leading you in to a better future. Thank you for your - a screw it...

PSYCH!

I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. I mean, this ball of nutbag messing with our game has to hope for that result, right? Sorry, Tina, just had to rile you up some. Who's Tina you ask? I'll get to that.

I'm writing this post to discuss the recent troubles our game has faced and the results thereof. In part, this is to keep your the players updated on the goings-on, but also it's to lay the groundwork for the good long look we take at ourselves in just a minute. If you're looking for the tl;dr, just skip on down to the dancing M&Ms :danceparty:

Not long ago we suffered a catastrophic forum failure which left us without any form of OOC communication. Players couldn't talk to each other, the staff couldn't keep in touch. It was like being stranded on some terrible digital island, awash in a sea of disjointed hate-rants and viagra advertisements. We were woefully unprepared, but soldiered on to create a temporary forum to ensure communication. It was then that we were rescued from our ourselves and our Wilsons (get it, Cast-Away joke? From the digital island.. oh come, that was funny) by a member of our community who just plum wanted his gosh-darned forums back! And so it was.

We were heading back up. Word was getting out, and the staff was fired up from new hires and a desire to make up for the downtime. We had a nice bounce in our step, a tune on our lips, and all in all it was like 1920's USA up in this house.

Enter Tina

Pictured here after being told she could only have seven popsicles for desert

Because our amateur hacker friend has deigned not to grace us with their true identity (although we totally know they read the forums, so here's lookin' at you, kid!) I've taken to calling him Tina the Maladjusted Compu-Hobo - out of necessity, of course. And they've been naughty! Through illegally abusing computers like mine and yours infected with harmful code, they've flooded our server with information to lag it out and shut it down.

Now, again, I don't know who Tina is, but I think I can take a pretty good guess at what they want. Through some imagined - or well-deserved judging by the reaction - slight Tina has taken it upon themselves to rid the world of the evil that is FL Imms and, failing that, just downright nuking the game altogether. This is the equivalent of being told you can't play with someone's ball on the playground and subsequently taking a **** right in the middle of the boxball square. So let's amend this title here; Tina the Maladjusted Incontinent Compu-Hobo Playground ****ter. Man, someone roll up THAT combo!

Now I'm not gunna spend any more time here on this because we all know what's going on. I could curse and through threats around, but I won't for two reason. One, I'm a short slightly pudgy dude who giggles at scrolling text in my free time. Who's gunna give a flying crap if I make threats over the internet? It's like howling obscenities at the rain clouds, or the deaf old lady in apartment C who keeps doing naked aerobics with her front door open. Best I could do is muster a feeble belly-flop if I found this person somewhere, and only then if they were within arms reach and I had some caffeine. And that makes Tina a dude who spends their free time taking a dump on some short fat guy and his friends because damnit, I know computers!

The second reason, and here's the important part, is...

:danceparty:

This string of unfortunate events has lit a fire under staff and player *** like you would not believe! I mean holy crap, the outpouring of support from you guys has been so flippin AMAZING! The posts, the messages in game, the donations... it shows that not only is Tina laughably ineffectual in their crusade, but may have in fact made us a better family for it.

And the staffers have been like crack monkeys at a banana convention, pulling massively long shifts until all hours of the morning, combing through code, and working on projects - some working on two or THREE projects simultaneously - because goddamnit if you guys are THIS FRIGGIN awesome, we're gunna do our best at the expense of our sanity and family lives to give you what you deserve.

So this post is for you, my community, my family and my friends, saying thank you for your faith, trust and support.

Except for Tina, seriously **** that guy...

[Atticus]

the crack monkeys at a banana convention made me spew beer through my nose. thank you volg- for now, I have foam and nose rot all over my screen.

Worth it- HELL YA

:frantic:

[Dale]

Hell Yeah! Well put. Btw, that totally looks like my daughter... Oddly like her.

[Dead Voodoo Doll]

you guys are awesome

but I would laugh my *** off if I saw some kid take a **** in the middle of the playground, no lie

[Celerity]

Was the forum failure also a consequence of the DDoS attacks or was it unrelated?

If this brings around a staff rally and major code update, I wish they had struck sooner!!

[Iyorvin]

For now, there ARE options for us to set up certain, very restricting, IP policies that will allow the game to go on. I was talking to a network engineer friend. I don't fully understand it, but it sounded like we would have to register our IP with FL, FL would then allow the IP to connect to the game, and we could continue on. It would prevent all new IP's from joining(new players etc), but for the time being it may allow us to play.

What baffles me is how some one could attack the hosting company without easily being identified. Is there any possibility that the attacks are a bug in the code, and we are causing this ourselves? Maybe a new check implemented that is spamming a 'check' on the game. As more players log on, each character is doing it? I'm spitballing here.

Having said that..............if this truly is the result of attacks, we clearly have a case of SPS. Seeing as I am sexist, I don't believe the woman of FL would ever attack the game. I've never talked to a woman in FL who was like '^&** FL. BURN IT TO THE GROUND!'. Guys however, get much more heated. Being emotionally tied is the cause of most wars in this world, and FL is a prized object. So prized that the many wonders in the real world are soon forgotten in place of this wonderful synergy of text and color. Now, if I were banned, scolded, punished, on one of my characters for a stupid mistake, or I don't like the direction of the game, I, myself, would simply take a break as I have done in recent years, but that was not always the case. There were times I were so in love with the game I would rage like a teenager who had been cut off from WoW, apart from the remote up the bum(

), although I have tried easier objects. As a person ages though, they realize they can simply leave the house, head to the bar, buy some shots and get lucky. Some get luckier than others, and I imagine the beast this man woke up to was more mystical than those he was slaying in FL. As he tried to squeeze out from under the gargantuan squid, I imagine she woke up. The smile on her face creating a moment a sitcom crowd would be queued to laugh at, while adding to the hilarity is the painful grimace on his face, yet he stood there petrified, and he begged to wonder how his superb intelligence and mental rolls had failed against this overweight medusa. That's when she laughed.

"You sir, have the cutest little pecker I've ever seen. It's like a furry toothpick."

Yeah, a toothpick for a behemoth like you, he thought, as he stormed out of her apartment crying, and not just the light tears of a child with a scratched knee. No these were full on sobs from a hopeless little man who realized he had no where left to turn. His parents couldn't even look at him anymore, so embarrassed they were responsible for raising this 'man'. He's never had a girlfriend, and his only escape has been taken away from him because he couldn't keep the pathetic real life separate from the text he had previously enjoyed hiding his mental and emotional issues in, as he took up the command of a demon dark knight, wiping the entire player base, but of course, even that, he failed at. He'd never had a quest class, race, or anything like it, not even a description dragon, despite the one week had spent rerolling and reusing descriptions hoping to catch an IMM in a good mood. I guess he didn't know they were aware of his ploy and laughing in the heavens at how desperate he is.

It's important that we all pity this man. It isn't his fault that he is doing what he is doing. He's lashing out the only way he knows how. He can't get a job because he's too socially inept, his parents probably abused him in one way or another, and all he has left is sitting on welfare and playing FL. But FL isn't keeping up to his standards, and since he has no life outside of FL, it soon becomes apparent to him that he can do it so much better. Since his penis is too small to just move on, as any one else would, he's created an internet persona that he likes to believe is him. This cool, badass man. Girls want him. But sadly, at the end of the night this man has to go to sleep, and the dreams are so friendly. He will awake reminded again of how pathetic his life is, ask himself in the mirror if it's worth living, then take up the welfare check, buy his microwave food, and once again take up his internet persona. It's a sad life, and I for one won't try to demonize him. He needs our support and love, and since he reads the forums, perhaps he will read this. I am here for you man. I have a spare bedroom, more than enough food, and I can get you a job. But one step at a time, I'm here if you need to talk. We can fix this, there is hope for you. And if there isn't hope, well I would only suggest that you use your great talent toward the betterment of the human race, and start attacking corporations and governments who are destroying the Earth with their ethical filth, but please leave out maple syrup and beer companies. I wouldn't want to think what kind of internet crazy I might turn into if those were taken away from me.

[Enethier]

If I could "like" Iyorvin's post...

[Serinkane]

****in right!

[Celerity]

I was thinking about the situation with the attacks as I walked the streets of Kuala Lumpur today..

I don't think that they are politically-motivated. Specifically, I don't think they are trying to get the staff to 'abdicate' or anything like that. If the attacks were motivated like that, it would be cyber-terrorism, and the attacker would have issued a demand or other justification (grievance) for the attacks.

It is just like in the physical world. A terrorist blows something up (or threatens to) and gives a list of demands to the authorities. Terrorists don't want random destruction as that tends to turn whatever outside support the terrorist had (e.g. populist/public, whatever) against the terrorist and doesn't end up with whatever end goal the terrorist wanted. If you want to end a police state, you don't blow up a random sidewalk and hope the police will loosen up--you target the police station and issue demands.

Random destruction actually strengthens the claim that authorities have, allowing them to motivate their people against whatever external threat is causing them damage--just like in FL's case.

If it isn't cyber-terrorism, then what? The other two common options would be that we have a general griefer (someone pissed off/mentally unstable) who is lashing out or the authorities (the staff) do it for whatever motivational purposes (false-flag). I think the argument that FL's staff caused these troubles is ridiculous, as there wasn't any (evident) threat to their running the game that they needed to drum up support against.

It is much more likely that somebody is just pissed off or doesn't really understand what or why they are doing it. The method used doesn't speak of a great amount of foresight, or even general intelligence, as the attacker didn't understand how this would 'politically' unify the staff and players.

I highly doubt, however, that they have the political goal of getting the staff to quit. There needs to be a claim for something like that to be reasonable, and as far as I know, nobody has taken credit or given demands.

Let's not overestimate this attacker.

[Anume]

There is a large amount of money put into this attack, as most likely netbots are involved / hired. The attack far exceeds what a usual DDoS attack would throw out at anyone, basically with the aim to get the server to collapse with ALL the games that are currently hosted on it, thus forcing the server to block fl (to allow the other games to run again). The attacker also reacts dynamically to any mitigating techniques the (new) server is using.

The attack is aimed directly against us, as they tried the forum first (which was successfully mitigated) then moved to the game, following us when we switched ips and even servers.

So, I'd say, this is a very serious issue.

[Dead Voodoo Doll]

government involvement next?

[Erelei]

Just a thought, to everyone whose curious. The guy doing it knows what he's doing. But Celerity is correct - there's been no demands, no one's taken the helm and claimed the attack. Why would someone do this? We could speculate forever. At this point, however, all we know is that he's using a botnet of 3,000 random IP addresses and using methods to get around the mitigation of our new server. He's sending smaller packets of data with a significantly larger botnet than before so that the server's scrubbers won't deal with it. The traffic looks like regular UDP port traffic. Think of it like 3000 people suddenly trying to connect to our game at once, then disconnecting, then re-connecting, over and over and over.

So who would go through all that trouble to keep a FREE game, down, at the expense of other people's fun and gaming time?

[Iyorvin]

Can we not set up an IP check for now? You see all of our IP's at login anyway. Have your core players login via IP and any unregistered IP's be blocked until approved? You may need do an account login prior to the connection page also. Username/password and type in the random text. Or use the forum as a base for registration and go from there.

There has to be something we are missing. A game this size is not attacked like this. There is no logic in it. The ONLY way I could ever see this happening is if a copy of FL was created, improved upon, and players were being recruited away, and I'm sure if that were the case we would of heard something. Either way, the IP registration thing should work because you are then only allowing those you want to play and only from their registered IPs. So if some one were to want to attack it with an approved IP they would just be giving themselves away.

You also referenced that the server blocked us? Which would mean we can't have access to the game even if we fixed it right now?

[Erelei]

A lot of our IPs are dynamic and change. We can't do that from the mud level unless we had our own server (which we might have to resort to if this doesn't get fixed).

[Dead Voodoo Doll]

Simplest answers are usually true, i.e. it’s not some random cracker in a third world country.

Some things we know:

1) Must have technical knowledge

2) Unconcerned with being caught or believes he is too smart to be caught

3) Takes enjoyment in the control or manipulation of others

4) Has a motive

Things we can then figure out:

1) Educational background or self taught? Age range? Likely to have some education and between 15-35. Women don’t normally operate in such a manner so he is probably male.

2) Never a good thing to think you can’t be caught. He has a superiority complex. This helps with #3 and #4.

3) This ties in with #4 above and the memory of the Staff is key here. The Staff needs to take some time to review the last year of their lives involving the game and the forums. Can you whittle down a few persons who fit the mold? A player who enjoyed giving others a hard time, was argumentative, displayed a tendency to “lord it over others?” Someone who possibly whined and pleaded to get back in your good graces so that he could play again? Keep in mind begging to do something is just another form of manipulation and control.

4) He attacked the Forums first. This means there is some serious emotional involvement with the people on the Forums. Why didn’t he attack the game first? Did he not know how? Did he plan to all along? Did he first want to disorganize us? I think he planned to hit the Forums first all along. I also tend to believe he planned to take the game down sooner than he did, probably while the Forums were down and we were disorganized and without communication. Not that it helps us at all but this implies a lack of or limit to his resources or knowledge.

In conjunction with Celerity’s post, there is no political motivation. He knows after all of this he will never be forgiven and earn a spot back. This is solely to keep all of us from playing and to one-up the Staff, thus giving him control and allowing him the victory of manipulation.

If any of the above is true then he is one of us and someone who has a monster grudge against us and the Staff. I doubt it will be possible for the Staff to pinpoint anyone they’ve disciplined over the last year and this guy has obviously taken measures to protect himself. What can we do other than have the Host contact the FBI since they are an officially licensed business operating on US soil that is being attacked in a destructive manner by a person who is violating several major laws.

[Enethier]

Should be able to open an entire range of ports to listen on for game traffic. Then it would just be a matter of assigning each forum handle its own port via prayer forum. Then the attacker would need to either split up his zombies to search for other open ports, giving us a playable game while working on further security measures, or use the port associated with him/her or an accomplice, narrowing down the possible suspects a great degree

[Dale]

Is it possible to make it so perhaps no IP can disconnect then reconnect without maybe waiting a minute or two? I mean, we aren't supposed to be able to log off one character then onto another without waiting anyway. Or perhaps limit the possible # of Ips that can connect at once?

At the most I've seen around 16 people on as of late, and we all question who would attack a free game with such a small pbase, the most famous ddos attacks affected big games like minecraft, or big companies. So we all have in mind that it is a current/banned player because they are butt hurt. And if that's the case then it's someone that one of us knows on a basic level. I will tell you now that if I find out who it is then not having his qrace/class will be the last of his problems while he is eating through a straw.

[Anume]

This would not help as he got just too freaking many ips.

We're currently looking into possible solutions.

[Trick]

This is insane..

[P_body]

It's only been...three days? And yet I'm starting to go crazy too...

blah.

[miskahn]

im truly going insane, I hope this guy gets what is coming to him I have played this game for a long time and have never held a grudge i am pretty terrible when it comes to anything other than normal race/class so i just play what I can and enjoy it to the full extent this douche just needs to get a life and move on, what happened in the mud it is after all just a game and shouldn't let it get to you THAT much!

I hope that this can, and does get resolved soon mud is pretty much the only thing that calms me down after a 12 hour shift at work

[the_nightmare]

Anume this is what happens when you reject applications