Bug Leaderboard exploit discussion

[Jeff Strong]

I edited the thread title.

 

[MontanaFrank]

Thanks Jeff - The new title sounds a lot better.

 

[smbhax]

Wasn't it more of an exploit than a hack though?

 

[Jeff Strong]

Wasn't it more of an exploit than a hack though?

Let's not split hairs. It's common to refer to the fishy scores as "hacked" scores.

Edit: ehhhh, alright...I'll change it again.

 

[smbhax]

Yeah, but actually all the talk about "hack" got kind of a witch-hunt going during this where people became paranoid because they thought it meant "hackers" had developed tools that completely laid the game bare to evil machinations, when nothing like that was actually the case. It is a bit semantic, yes, but as a former game developer, I know from experience that the difference can be very important.

 

[9u1d0]

That was not the way I accidentally transposed my score from CCanyon to SpShuttle in the tournament before last. I hope they fixed the way I did it.

The tournament bug is different than the way Luobo described indeed. That bug only worked on the tournament (not in regular play). Not sure if they fixed that.

And probably people not having updated to the the lastest TPA will still be able to use the bug Luobo described.
The Leaderboard should not accept scores from older versions of game.

 

[neglectoid]

why, how and what gets you off by posting bogus scores? pathetic.

ya I still stand by my quote... it is pathetic that "YOU" post bogus scores.

what and why does that get you off?

I wanna know.

 

[StarDust4Ever]

After the latest update I can no longer abuse the bug.



Cat's officially out of the bag then I guess, and we're free to discuss how the bug actually worked. All it took was the press of a single button (1!) while the game was loading to totally mess up the leader board of every table in the game.

Since the menu system is so clumsy - you can't simply tap the table you want to play, you must scroll through the list of tables until the one you want to play appears in the center, and then tap it - I'm surprised not everyone ended up discovering the bug after accidentally loading the wrong table and immediately pressing the back button.

The bug had two major "benefits": 1) You could load up AFM, cancel, go to another table, which would make AFM start, but with the logo and scoring going towards the last selected table, for easy high scores. You'd get the HofF-points as well.

2) Or you could go to a table you hadn't purchased (shown below, I didn't own WH20), and play it for basically as long as you wanted without having to worry about hitting the scoring limit.

I love how those "wrong table" screen grabs are totally FUBARed!

 

[Jeff Strong]

Yeah, but actually all the talk about "hack" got kind of a witch-hunt going during this where people became paranoid because they thought it meant "hackers" had developed tools that completely laid the game bare to evil machinations, when nothing like that was actually the case.

I must have missed that, but I edited the title to "exploit", so you can rest easy now

 

[Korven]

Well this admin somthing guy posted a bunch of "clean" scores; like:666,666,666 must have been a real "hack"?

 

[Jeff Strong]

Well this admin somthing guy posted a bunch of "clean" scores; like:666,666,666 must have been a real "hack"?

Yeah, that sort of stuff is what Gord brought up on the first page of this thread:

I think the scores are usually referred to as hacks here because there are tools for iOS that can be used to "hack" and submit fake scores....

 

[Korven]

Maybe I should read the whole thread carefully before posting in the future...

Anyway this database_error account seems suspicious too, comming out of nowhere and currently sitting at 12th place in
the hall of fame.

 

[Jeff Strong]

Maybe I should read the whole thread carefully before posting in the future...

Nah, don't worry. I post all the time without reading whole threads.

I only posted Gord's quote to confirm what you were saying.

 

[iCheat]

Speaking of which. In the latest newsletter, they've announced the winners of the most recent tournament. With the rampant score faking, I wonder how FS filtered out the badguys.

They didn't, they can only filter out the bad guys with obvious fake scores like the 38 billion top score on Dr. Dude.

 

[sotie]

They didn't, they can only filter out the bad guys with obvious fake scores like the 38 billion top score on Dr. Dude.

Is your screen name supposed to let us know that you are posting fake scores on iOS TPA?

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

They didn't, they can only filter out the bad guys with obvious fake scores like the 38 billion top score on Dr. Dude.

You've been banned three times now. It's time to give it up and go find somewhere else to plague.

 

[Fungi]

Whoa! Was that "dumbass"? It's kinda like whack-a-mole.

 

[sotie]

Whoa! Was that "dumbass"? It's kinda like whack-a-mole.

Funny.

 

[Fungi]

Has anybody looked at the ridiculous number 1 scores on Central Park, Space Shuttle, Taxi, Whirlwind, Firepower, and ToTAN?

 

[MadScience2006]

Whoa! Was that "dumbass"? It's kinda like whack-a-mole.

More like whack-a-troll.