Hackers

[shadow_gun_x]

Ok...i dont know if this goes here but...
This guy named Fchacked is advertising a hacking website and is hacking and posting member only levels. he threatens to spam peoples designs so they dont do anything about it. i would like him baned if possible so i can continue playing the game without his designs spammed on every level.

[Skeezix]

It's a rough ol' world, Corky. Wear a helmet.

[Master4902]

Dude, he only posts his designs on the Handling level, nothign else. :P

[rianbay812]

Dude, he only posts his designs on the Handling level, nothign else. :P

BS his designs are everywhere

[shadow_gun_x]

theres like 7 of his designs on each lvl all rated 5 stars

[Shinji.]

yes, he should be baned because he spammed my account with at least 680 designs, or 170 pages.

[zhyrek]

I concur, but only because i found the following:

http://www.fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=11174177

Which was obviously copied from CC10

[lukasran]

this guy posts alot of crap on four balls too. can someone boot him off, it makes the game look derelict.

[Master4902]

Yeah but, the person who spams "Free Custom Levels!" has a username "fchackedads".

[Captain_Sparky]

I brought this to InXile's attention. So they know about it, at least.

[gold shadow]

Shadow gun. You copy famous designs and say they're yours. When people do that, it really get's on my nerves. Oh and yes, I have seen this guy.

[tes753]

Removed his links on the wiki.

[shadow_gun_x]

im srry for doing that stuff. when i did that i was still a little new to fc. i didnt know i had to credit ppl for their stuff. i will take down my copied designs if u want.

[gold shadow]

im srry for doing that stuff. when i did that i was still a little new to fc. i didnt know i had to credit ppl for their stuff. i will take down my copied designs if u want.

Dude, you said "Don't copy unless giving credit to me" on one of your designs a while ago. I'm pretty sure you DO know you have to give credit to the person.

[shadow_gun_x]

Well then ill take it down but thats not the point...
the point is to get this guy baned ASAP.
He gets the support of the new players because theyre lvls that arent supposed to be there.

[rianbay812...2]

someone look on handling. He copied the level and winning design from a competition we had on the forums

On his website he threatens to delete all the designs of anyone who defies him.
This needs to be reported

[Captain_Sparky]

What's his website? I'll check it out.

[IGLima]

What's his website? I'll check it out.

http://fchacked.tablocks.com/

[Captain_Sparky]

Hm, looking at the site: If he only cares about Handling, then it's really not much of a big deal what he does. Just stay away from Handling. You guys have come up with levels many times better than that one anyway :P

In any case, it's troubling that he managed to get around having to pay, and also that he claims to have so much control over design data. I re-brought this up with some other people, and here's what one of our programmers had to say about it:

It looks like all he’s doing is opening an official level, editing the actual XML that gets uploaded, and inserting his own level code, then saving it as a design. Then because it’s a design tied to an official level, the game lets you play it.

FC1 does little if any validation of the input to the server. FC2 is a bit different- The same type of thing could be done, but would be far more difficult and far easier for us to correct.

In other words, his hack works by piggybacking off existing free levels, and is subservient to the database, not the other way around. So his claims of being able to delete designs or alter level ratings are most likely bogus. At best, he has that control only over levels he himself has made. But even then I'm skeptical.

To take action, we could remove everything he's done - but we can't really stop him from starting over. Even banning his account and IP would only stop him from posting new designs to that account from that IP, and if you're clever enough to figure out how to edit poorly obfuscated XML code, you're probably clever enough to use an IP proxy. So any action we take directly at fchacked would be temporary. We could try to fix the actual exploit...but that would require a complete overhaul of the game, and we honestly don't have the time or resources for that at the moment (or rather, we did have the time and resources for that a little while ago...and we used them to make FC2)

[rianbay812...3]

He does have control over other designs used by other people. I posted a design telling him to stop copying levels and designs made by the community of payers, and it was deleted. I made another account fearing a full-fleged delete of all my designs, telling him to stop what he was doing, and I got a 10 paged spam of "shut ups" on the account. I think a temporary ban would be a good enough warning to get him to stop some of what he's doing. If anything, it'll slow him down and worry him a little bit. We can recover from a 'BJ' on the forums, but it'd be nearly impossible to do so in the game itself.

Thanks for your help sparky!