09 Jan, 2009, zordrac2 wrote in the 1st comment:
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Hi.

I posted on The Mud Connector about my experience with a cheater, basically just because I was feeling pretty shitty about it. I had actually thought that the bug that I found was well known to most people, and I was just stupid for not realising it earlier. Nonetheless, based on comments on TMC, it seems that few people are aware of it. Furthermore, it appears that the bug may exist not only in Rom, but also in Merc and possibly even Diku, and all of their derivatives (although I am not sure about this).

The bug is not easy to detect, because the command works perfectly for all *NORMAL* uses of the command. You have to do something really weird to trigger it. Even if someone does it, you will think that it is an optical illusion.

In reality, though, it is giving the player who abuses this bug TWICE AS MANY ATTACKS PER ROUND. Not such a big deal for mages who only get 1 hit per round and who have spells that would do more damage, but a hugely big deal for warrior-types (or whatever equivalent you have on your mud).

Apparently there is a group called RAM who are based on MudBytes that I was told to contact about this.

I am not willing to post this publicly, as I do not want to stuff up 3/4 of the muds in existence, however, if someone from RAM wants to contact me (or someone from Rom, etc) then I will gladly give details of the bug, and my own 2 line solution.
09 Jan, 2009, Chris Bailey wrote in the 2nd comment:
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Thank you very much for helping out, Welcome to Mudbytes! =)
09 Jan, 2009, Mister wrote in the 3rd comment:
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Maybe I know this one. I don't want to divulge details, so I'll *bleep* the actual command :tongue:

Is the one where you can *bleep* a player that is fighting, even though the command only makes sense if the player is being attacked? Every time you *bleep* the player, it can get an extra round of attacks. You can do it with pets, too, just ordering them to *bleep* you.

I think that bug goes back to merc.
09 Jan, 2009, tphegley wrote in the 4th comment:
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Is this bug in smaugfuss or envy?

and if it is a bug that is this big of an advantage in a mud I think it should probably be brought to the open so that admins know what to do and can change it.
09 Jan, 2009, Chris Bailey wrote in the 5th comment:
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The problem with just announcing exactly what it is Tphegley is that players will then be aware of and able to abuse the bug until it is fixed. And Admins that don't read these boards would have no idea what was going on! =)
09 Jan, 2009, Sandi wrote in the 6th comment:
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But…. do we have any players here?
09 Jan, 2009, Chris Bailey wrote in the 7th comment:
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We might not have a lot of players that are signed up, but who knows who reads the forum? If you ask him to email you the bug, I'm sure he would.
09 Jan, 2009, Hades_Kane wrote in the 8th comment:
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I sent Sandi most of the content of the email I got from Zordrac.

Mister: Yeah, that one :p
09 Jan, 2009, zordrac2 wrote in the 9th comment:
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Mister should probably edit his post further, as this is a major bug, and it needs to be fixed in about 400 running muds as well as all relevant code bases before we can put it up in public.

This bug is confirmed to be in the following code bases:
* All stock versions of Rom.
* All stock versions of Merc.
* All stock versions of Circle.
* TbaMUD stock code.

This bug is probably in the following code bases:
* RaM.

This bug is probably not in the following related code bases:
* Stock Diku (basically because they didn't have the command in their code base, as far as I am aware)
* Smaug

You can add/subtract code bases as relevant.

Of course, individual coders may have coincidentally changed the relevant command in their code, which fixed this bug anyway, without realising that the bug is there.

This bug is most useful for warriors, or classes which have multiple attacks and hit hard with physical attacks. It is unlikely to be useful to a mage-type at all.

The result of this bug is that, in every single attack round, they get double the attacks that they would otherwise get.
They can use this bug in every single attack round of every fight for the entire game.

There is a particular bug message that you will see in your code which will indicate that someone is in there abusing this bug (for people that want to catch cheaters ahead of getting rid of this code).

On your own, this bug is very, very, difficult to notice.

Normal use of the command *DOES NOT* trigger off the bug. You need to do something quite unusual, that you wouldn't normally do and would never genuinely do.

Even if you see a play abuse this bug right in front of you, you won't necessarily realise that that is what they are doing.
09 Jan, 2009, zordrac2 wrote in the 10th comment:
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For the record, I have used Mudbytes before. I just forgot what account I used. Mostly I used this for code snippets.
09 Jan, 2009, Skol wrote in the 11th comment:
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Honestly, I think only mud admins, builders/coders use the forum. But can you please PM me or email me the bug? You do know that 'rom bug fixes' is a downloadable file on most mud resources though right? Was it one that was listed in there?
Anyhoo, email me please, someone, anyone.
zivilyn_at_ansalonmud.com
09 Jan, 2009, Omega wrote in the 12th comment:
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The bug is briefly talked about in here, there are afew posts.

Its near the bottom, this was talked about, obviously, in 2002 on the romlists.

Rom24 mailiing list - 2002

They don't fix the issue, but its a very good indicator as to the whole problem, as it has multiple uses. some good, some bad.
09 Jan, 2009, Guest wrote in the 13th comment:
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Post moved to the coding forum - the "Bugs" forum it was posted in pertains to the site itself.

Also if you could please PM Kayle or myself the details of the problem we can determine if the bug still exists in SmaugFUSS as well since you mention it affecting Merc, which Smaug is based on.
09 Jan, 2009, Zeno wrote in the 14th comment:
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It would help to know what this is. :P

I don't own a Rom MUD, but I code for one. Not really efficient to go around PMing everyone who wants to know.
09 Jan, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 15th comment:
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This is one of those black hat/white hat arguments. :) Once a bug is discovered, what damage can its abuse cause? If the damage is minimal (IE: faster leveling, pvp wins), letting everyone know about it will tend to get it fixed faster, since admins who have active player bases that start abusing it will get whined at. If you keep it a secret, the handful who figure it out will continue to abuse it.

If it were a bug that would corrupt databases or otherwise allow people to destroy people's work, then yes, keeping it quiet until a fix is posted is the best course.

In this case, it sounds like a fix already exists, so there's no point NOT disclosing both.

*shrug*
09 Jan, 2009, Chris Bailey wrote in the 16th comment:
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Well, when you put it that way, I think you are right. =)
09 Jan, 2009, Guest wrote in the 17th comment:
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Well it's also not wise to post the details of exactly how to do it for everyone to see since I am sure there are players who visit from time to time and once it's picked up it could be widely exploited.

However, since the issue was at least hinted at in the link Darien gave, I'll leave it up to the OP to decide if it should be more openly publicized.

The contents of that mailing list really should have been archived better, what a mess of mail headers and stuff!
09 Jan, 2009, Hades_Kane wrote in the 18th comment:
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Either through PM or emails, I've sent it to Sandi, Kayle, Zeno, and Skol.

Anyone else requesting the information? If you send me a PM with your email address, or just want me to copy/paste it in a PM, I'll have no problem. PMing me would probably be the best way to get my attention though, in case I miss some posts here.

I personally don't see the harm in just posting it myself, but I can understand the concern and since Zordrac brought it to my attention, out of respect for his wishes, I'll not post it.
09 Jan, 2009, Fizban wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Mister said:
Maybe I know this one. I don't want to divulge details, so I'll *bleep* the actual command :tongue:

Is the one where you can *bleep* a player that is fighting, even though the command only makes sense if the player is being attacked? Every time you *bleep* the player, it can get an extra round of attacks. You can do it with pets, too, just ordering them to *bleep* you.

I think that bug goes back to merc.


Yeah that, and it seems to date back to DIKU, not Merc. It's in Circle anyway.
09 Jan, 2009, Kayle wrote in the 20th comment:
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Well, Got HK's email, and the bug is already fixed in SmaugFUSS, SWFotEFUSS, and SWRFUSS. So, no work for me. :P
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