After 14 years, a gamer used AI to hack a Star Wars Galaxies fan server to get revenge on his offenders
The conflict had been ongoing since 2012, and AI capabilities allowed the gamer to gain access to encrypted project files that they were unwilling to share.
Recently, a real drama unfolded in the modding scene. After 14 years, one gamer was able to get revenge on his offenders using modern technologies.
The moderator of the "r/swg" subreddit, under the nickname levarrishawk, admitted that he carried out an attack using AI tools to gain access to the files of the fan project SWG Legends, dedicated to the revival of Star Wars Galaxies.
The developers confirmed the attack and said that levarrishawk was able to gain access to game assets:
This gave him access to the assets of all our custom content: items, quest storylines, and even Bespin. We know that he has been actively offering these files to other servers, and while we cannot confirm if he has already found buyers, if you start seeing content exclusive to Legends in other projects — it was most likely taken from us.
The authors of SWG Legends clarified that players' personal data was not affected:
We want to emphasize: no player data was affected. No personal data, no account data, and nothing related to anyone's identity. This is exclusively about client files of game assets. Of course, this concerns us, but there is little we can do other than be frank with you and continue to focus on what makes Legends great — the community!
Soon, levarrishawk himself spoke out and explained that the reason for the attack was a long-standing conflict that has been going on since 2012. He explained that he participated in ProjectSWG — an earlier project to recreate Star Wars Galaxies. He accused the developers, who later created SWG Legends, of undermining the development of ProjectSWG.
According to levarrishawk, they received materials from a former Sony Online Entertainment employee and decided to appropriate them, did not share them with the rest of the team, and eventually created a new project:
The SWG Legends team built their server and operates on materials from Sony Online Entertainment developers that were made before them — [modders] stole the code to create the so-called "Omega Server." They did not spend countless hours reverse-engineering, writing code, and trying to figure out how to build everything from scratch. They just found it — like an empty building they decided to occupy: they just had to figure out where to turn on the lights, figuratively speaking.
As a result, explains levarrishawk, they built their project on ready-made "stolen" materials from Sony developers, and also encrypted project files and refused to share them with other modders. With his attack, he wanted to punish the modders and show them their hypocrisy:
For a team that is entirely built on stolen goods, to be so outraged and offended by the leak of files that they themselves encrypted to prevent others from stealing, is both ridiculous and extremely hypocritical. Which, in fact, brings us to why I did it. Hypocrisy at its finest: I held up a mirror to them so they could look at themselves. You cannot steal someone else's house, change the locks, and expect to be safe when someone comes with the ability to break or even destroy that lock. This was never your home, it never belonged to you. I suppose nothing particularly significant will happen, except that I seriously hurt the feelings of some people on the Legends team — and that was my only goal. I am sure the community will continue to play there or wherever they wish: play where you want. In the meantime, I will leave all this here, in the public domain, for anyone who needs it.
Комментарии