Hackers

RIP Serious Sam Dedicated

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What a Serious Sam 3 Server looks like.

I went through my normal rounds of checking on and restarting my collection of game servers, and when opening up VM3 I noticed a couple Telnet connections that I didn’t authorize from an IP address in The Netherlands. To people that don’t know, Telnet is often used for checking in on another computer on your own network or over the internet. Apparently Telnet is built into the Serious Sam games and can’t really be shut off with any convar or switch. You can get around this by uninstalling Telnet and doing a few other configurations to the VM, but to me the amount of fuss isn’t worth it for a server that only runs in vanilla mode (for some reason Croteam doesn’t allow dedicated servers for the moddable client). If I want to play Serious Sam with a friend my desktop and laptop PC’s are more than powerful as a listen server.

Oh well, while two servers may have to be put out of my misery I still have servers for Garry’s Mod, TF2, Quake III Arena and one each for L4D1 and 2.  This also leaves me room to experiment with other kinds of servers, when I find the time of course. Or even expand on some of the current ones.

How many licks does it take to get to the center of UWP?

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Five, apparently there are five layers that protect a UWP (Universal Windows Platform) application from being tampered with, or that would be the case if it wasn’t finally hacked by a group calling themselves CODEX. In this case they cracked Zoo Tycoon Ultimate Animal Collection, with some interesting instructions and insight.

CODEX says it’s important that the game isn’t allowed to communicate with the Internet so the group advises users to block the game’s executable in their firewall.

While that’s not a particularly unusual instruction, CODEX did reveal that various layers of protection had to be bypassed to make the game work. They’re listed by the group as MSStore, UWP, EAppX, XBLive, and Arxan, the latter being an anti-tamper system

I remember when UWP was first launched… There were hardcore fanboys proclaiming that the days of the exe were numbered. Then the drawbacks were noted, like not being able to mod, run a framerate counter, etc Even if you don’t own all of your games on Steam you could still purchase them from other places and run them via Steam if you wanted to take screenshots or use your Steam Controller. UWP was only designed for the diehard Microsoft user, and it pretty much stayed that way.

Seeing how there are five layers running its no wonder you couldn’t inject overlays or anything into their programs. Their DRM is a fucking onion. I can understand companies wanting to protect their products from theft or tampering, but things like UWP consoltize gaming even moreso. If someone wants to use a frame counter, or their favorite video capture program, or run their favorite controller with a particular program they purchased they should have the right to do so (this excludes cheating of course :trollface: ). This overboard DRM does more harm than good for consumers IMO, and while I won’t pirate the game they mentioned I do hope to hear more about the UWP platform crumbling like bleu cheese. :zorak: