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New dev blog: The FW Exploit 2012 (or: How I learned about FOREX)

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Vimsy Vortis
Shoulda Checked Local
Break-A-Wish Foundation
#41 - 2012-06-28 16:21:43 UTC
Manipulating market prices = Exploiting.

There literally is no sandbox anymore.
Mynas Atoch
Eternity INC.
Goonswarm Federation
#42 - 2012-06-28 16:22:02 UTC  |  Edited by: Mynas Atoch
Sreegs,

as long as you have isk to lp or lp to isk its still exploitable.

where a nominal value for an item is fixed on a time period orders of magnitude higher than the separation in time between trades or trade modifications, its still exploitable.

you can minimize these windows in two ways

a) exclude cargo from the value of the ship loss - in faction warfare in eve, REAL cargoes are going to be on a neutral alt anyway this removes most opportunities to use "sticky" valuations in a fast moving market

b) don't use the the ISK value as your basis for the LP reward .. use a log(ISK value) to smooth out distortions from very high value items
corestwo
Goonfleet Investment Banking
#43 - 2012-06-28 16:23:58 UTC
Apparent Decadence wrote:
Market manipulation is par for the course for Eve. No one seems to be bothered about the other side of this scheme - pre-arranged PVP kills.

In most PVP games, this is punishable. In Eve, it's not usually worthwhile. Here it was. Should it be punished?


Eve is not "most PVP games" and CCP is mot the developer of most CCP games. The fact that we're here, posting, instead of having been banned on the spot with no questions asked is proof of that, and the game is better for it.


And look it at as a roleplay move. Think about the inferno trailer movie - "For the right price, I'll set the universe on fire." You'd have to be crazy to think that if immortal spaceship pilots found out that they could make money by blowing up their friends, repeatedly, they'd do it in a heartbeat.

This post was crafted by a member of the GoonSwarm Federation Economic Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.

fofofo
Querns
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#44 - 2012-06-28 16:25:07 UTC
Aryth wrote:
That graph is a thing of beauty. I like it how it has 5 points too, with one little baby point down at the bottom. That was probably querns. You can just hear the glass shattering!

All my kills were on the 10th :colbert:

This post was crafted by the wormhole expert of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.
CCP Sreegs
CCP Retirement Home
#45 - 2012-06-28 16:26:17 UTC
Swearte Widfarend wrote:
Weaselior wrote:
Is it an exploit to take advantage of a naturally occuring disparity between market price and average price? In essence, can I farm this system if I didn't tamper with the average price in any way?


Aryth wrote:
Other posts bring up a intersting point though. If in the future, after the system is fixed/revamped whatever. If this becomes slightly possible again but not to the degree shown here, would that be legal? I am not trying to words lawyer, just trying to see where the boundary is.

Once something is reported, and time gone by to remediate, does anything after that pass muster?


Sreegs - if we do not manipulate prices but do research to take advantage of existing market values, is this still exploiting? Your blog seems to hint that it is.


I'm going to pass this point around internally. I'm not really comfortable answering this Maverick-Style.

"Sreegs has juuust edged out Soundwave as my favourite dev." - Meita Way 2012
Lili Lu
#46 - 2012-06-28 16:27:03 UTC
See and here's the key part:

CCP Sreegs wrote:
I wrote a blog on "Responsible Disclosures" a year or so ago. In that blog I mention that telling us about something after you've used the heck out of it isn't what we consider to be responsible. We do our best to be lenient in cases such as this but we want this to serve as a notice to the community that the proper time to alert us to the issue was before actually using the system.


Now the real improtant question is what if the actions had occurred after notification, due to inaction on CCP's part. Because I could see that happening. The future awaits P
Aryth
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#47 - 2012-06-28 16:29:35 UTC
Squizz Caphinator wrote:
Aryth wrote:

Highest Kill Value ever in EVE? http://imgur.com/1fSsT


API or GTFO :)

(no really, I'd love to see that on eve-kill as API verified)


http://eve-kill.net/?a=pilot_detail&view=kills&plt_id=1372523&m=6&y=2012

That is one char. EVE Kill doesn't seem to use CCP values though. But even with EVE Central prices the 160b freighter kill will stand etc.

Leader of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal.

Creator of Burn Jita

Vile Rat: You're the greatest sociopath that has ever played eve.
CCP GingerDude
#48 - 2012-06-28 16:32:41 UTC
Kismeteer wrote:
What sort of metrics does CCP watch for to catch these kinds of exploits? And what sort of systems can be put in place to understand why LP is coming from nothing, similar to how tech was coming from nothing under the previous silo duplication exploit?


This did also show up as a statistical anomaly in our player event metrics although it took a while for it to properly register. I.e. we noticed and would've taken action regardless of snitching.

Senior Server Programmer
Atomic Option
NO Tax FAT Stacks
#49 - 2012-06-28 16:32:54 UTC
I'm not sure I agree with rolling back their gains--although I'd definitely zero out their LP--but I'm not bent out of shape over it. At least the one guy got a free plex. That's pretty cool.
Zloco Crendraven
BALKAN EXPRESS
Shadow Cartel
#50 - 2012-06-28 16:33:03 UTC
This act i d call like:

Getting advantage of fully functional in game mechanics in a non fair way.

Thats like a worst thing i can say bout this act and it is a bit of CCPs fault too so...
LORE mention pls

BALEX, bringing piracy on a whole new level.
CCP Sreegs
CCP Retirement Home
#51 - 2012-06-28 16:33:28 UTC
Vimsy Vortis wrote:
Manipulating market prices = Exploiting.

There literally is no sandbox anymore.


Nobody ever said anything about manipulating the market prices. What we said was that this could be done in such a way that lead to an artificial disparity (albeit one created by our own systems) between the real value of an item and the number we were calculating value based upon to magically die over and over again to gain another currency.

That's not "Market Manipulation" that's blowing someone up over and over again to magically get more money out of the same item.

Nowhere has anyone said Manipulating Market Prices is exploiting. Ever. At all.

"Sreegs has juuust edged out Soundwave as my favourite dev." - Meita Way 2012
CCP Sreegs
CCP Retirement Home
#52 - 2012-06-28 16:34:35 UTC
Atomic Option wrote:
I'm not sure I agree with rolling back their gains--although I'd definitely zero out their LP--but I'm not bent out of shape over it. At least the one guy got a free plex. That's pretty cool.


PLEX reward scales with the severity of the exploitable condition so it'll be more than one.

"Sreegs has juuust edged out Soundwave as my favourite dev." - Meita Way 2012
Querns
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#53 - 2012-06-28 16:37:00 UTC
So this has been a pretty wild ride, but I still have one more question -- when spitballing FW Forex, I thought of a crucial limitation to the whole shebang, and perhaps, in the spirit of amusement, one of you lovely CCP types could verify this for me. Is the column in the database tasked with storing a player's LP a signed 32-bit integer? I was legitimately worried that if we breached 2.1 billion LP, it would wrap around to a negative value.

This post was crafted by the wormhole expert of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.
corestwo
Goonfleet Investment Banking
#54 - 2012-06-28 16:38:22 UTC  |  Edited by: corestwo
Querns wrote:
So this has been a pretty wild ride, but I still have one more question -- when spitballing FW Forex, I thought of a crucial limitation to the whole shebang, and perhaps, in the spirit of amusement, one of you lovely CCP types could verify this for me. Is the column in the database tasked with storing a player's LP a signed 32-bit integer? I was legitimately worried that if we breached 2.1 billion LP, it would wrap around to a negative value.


Also curious about this. We all assumed that it wasn't a signed 32-bit integer, because wallets aren't, but we definitely joked about it happening, and about what an entertaining petition it would make.

This post was crafted by a member of the GoonSwarm Federation Economic Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.

fofofo
Querns
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#55 - 2012-06-28 16:39:24 UTC
corestwo wrote:
Querns wrote:
So this has been a pretty wild ride, but I still have one more question -- when spitballing FW Forex, I thought of a crucial limitation to the whole shebang, and perhaps, in the spirit of amusement, one of you lovely CCP types could verify this for me. Is the column in the database tasked with storing a player's LP a signed 32-bit integer? I was legitimately worried that if we breached 2.1 billion LP, it would wrap around to a negative value.


Also curious about this. We all assumed that it wasn't a signed 32-bit integer, because wallets aren't, but we definitely joked about it happening, and about what an entertaining petition it would make.

Yeah, that would have probably been the best petition ever. "My Tribal Liberation Front LP is negative!!!!!"

This post was crafted by the wormhole expert of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.
CCP Sreegs
CCP Retirement Home
#56 - 2012-06-28 16:40:21 UTC
corestwo wrote:
Querns wrote:
So this has been a pretty wild ride, but I still have one more question -- when spitballing FW Forex, I thought of a crucial limitation to the whole shebang, and perhaps, in the spirit of amusement, one of you lovely CCP types could verify this for me. Is the column in the database tasked with storing a player's LP a signed 32-bit integer? I was legitimately worried that if we breached 2.1 billion LP, it would wrap around to a negative value.


Also curious about this. We all assumed that it wasn't a signed 32-bit integer, because wallets aren't, but we definitely joked about it happening, and about what an entertaining petition it would make.


I'll ask internally but I'm not sure I'd tell you either way. To my knowledge we don't really give out that level of detail about our DB structure.

"Sreegs has juuust edged out Soundwave as my favourite dev." - Meita Way 2012
Salpun
Global Telstar Federation Offices
Masters of Flying Objects
#57 - 2012-06-28 16:44:43 UTC
Will the LP dumped into the FW system states be reversed as well?

If i dont know something about EVE. I check https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/ISK_The_Guide

See you around the universe.
corestwo
Goonfleet Investment Banking
#58 - 2012-06-28 16:45:45 UTC  |  Edited by: corestwo
Salpun wrote:
Will the LP dumped into the FW system states be reversed as well?



Seeing as Minmatar were down to something like 160 points the other day, Amarr is doing a fine job of reversing the LP dumped on their own. What?

e: To clarify, Minmatar had Tier 4 before we came in. At most, the effect of our actions on the course of the war was that they were able to hold onto tier 4 longer than they may have on their own. Fweddit seems to be a force to be reckoned with.

This post was crafted by a member of the GoonSwarm Federation Economic Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.

fofofo
Mara Tessidar
Perkone
Caldari State
#59 - 2012-06-28 16:46:59 UTC
Well, Sreegs, what harm could come of it? Clearly nobody will ever be smarter than CCP ever again and you won't have to worry about players reaching that level of LP.
Nagapito
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#60 - 2012-06-28 16:47:57 UTC
CCP Sreegs wrote:

Nobody ever said anything about manipulating the market prices. What we said was that this could be done in such a way that lead to an artificial disparity (albeit one created by our own systems) between the real value of an item and the number we were calculating value based upon to magically die over and over again to gain another currency.

That's not "Market Manipulation" that's blowing someone up over and over again to magically get more money out of the same item.


So... This means that insurance fraud is actually an exploit?
If, somehow, mineral prices hit the ground tomorrow and we start building and blowing ships for the insurance ISK, we are exploiting?