Manfred ASSOCIATED_WITH Defcon
Manfred first presented this research in a talk at Defcon.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 7 Details
“He first spoke about this at Defcon”
Person
person:manfred
Also: Phuckchop
Pseudonymous MMORPG player and researcher who reverse-engineers online games and discovers exploits.
Pseudonymous MMORPG player and researcher who reverse-engineers online games and discovers exploits.
“This is a story from a guy named Manfred.”
“Originally my name wasn’t Manfred. It was Phuckchop.”
Guest who describes exploiting online games and selling virtual goods.
“In this episode we pick back up with Manfred.”
| Direction | Predicate | Other entity | Origin | EP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| outgoing | ASSOCIATED_WITH | Defcon | Explicit | 7 |
| outgoing | USES | Reverse engineering | Explicit | 7 |
| outgoing | USES | Packet injection | Explicit | 7 |
| outgoing | USES | Man-in-the-middle | Derived | 7 |
| outgoing | EXPLOITS | Integer overflow | Explicit | 7 |
| outgoing | EXPLOITS | Integer overflow | Explicit | 8 |
| outgoing | EXPLOITS | Integer overflow | Explicit | 8 |
| outgoing | USES | Game protocol | Explicit | 7 |
| outgoing | USES | Debug packets | Explicit | 7 |
| outgoing | USES | IRC | Explicit | 7 |
| outgoing | ASSOCIATED_WITH | Anarchy Online | Explicit | 7 |
| outgoing | ASSOCIATED_WITH | Shadowbane | Explicit | 7 |
| outgoing | ASSOCIATED_WITH | World of Warcraft | Explicit | 7 |
| outgoing | ASSOCIATED_WITH | Ultima Online | Explicit | 7 |
| outgoing | USES | hex editor | Explicit | 8 |
| outgoing | USES | Sim City | Explicit | 8 |
| outgoing | USES | online-game client reverse engineering | Explicit | 8 |
| outgoing | USES | packet manipulation | Explicit | 8 |
| outgoing | USES | house deletion exploit | Explicit | 8 |
| outgoing | USES | eBay | Explicit | 8 |
| outgoing | USES | Dark Age of Camelot | Explicit | 8 |
| outgoing | USES | character duplication exploit | Explicit | 8 |
| outgoing | USES | ige.com | Explicit | 8 |
| outgoing | USES | vendor item-ID manipulation | Explicit | 8 |
| outgoing | USES | instance-crash duplication exploit | Explicit | 8 |
| outgoing | USES | auction-bid arithmetic overflow | Explicit | 8 |
| outgoing | USES | in-app purchases | Explicit | 8 |
| outgoing | ASSOCIATED_WITH | SQL injection | Explicit | 8 |
| incoming | ASSOCIATED_WITH | Elder Scrolls Online | Explicit | 7 |
| incoming | ASSOCIATED_WITH | WildStar Online | Explicit | 7 |
Manfred ASSOCIATED_WITH Defcon
Manfred first presented this research in a talk at Defcon.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 7 Details
“He first spoke about this at Defcon”
Manfred USES Reverse engineering
Manfred says he reverse-engineers games and their client-server protocols.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Manfred EP 7 Details
“For fun I reverse-engineer games and I reverse-engineer how the protocol talks to the server”
Manfred USES Packet injection
Manfred captures packets, changes their values, and sends them to the server.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 7 Details
“He’ll injects his own data into packets and see how the game responds.”
“he captures it, changes some values, and sends it off”
Manfred USES Man-in-the-middle
Jack characterizes Manfred’s packet-level manipulation as being similar to a man-in-the-middle technique.
Derived Confidence 92% · Jack Rhysider EP 7 Details
“He’s doing this at the packet level, sort of like a man-in-the-middle.”
Manfred EXPLOITS Integer overflow
Jack says the exploit Manfred finds in almost every game is an integer overflow.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 7 Details
“The exploit he finds in almost every game is an integer overflow.”
Manfred USES Game protocol
Manfred says he and his group used the game protocol and game logic against themselves by finding unattended protocol features.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Manfred EP 7 Details
“we were just using the game protocol and the game logic against itself”
Manfred USES Debug packets
Manfred analyzed debug packets that were enabled on production servers.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 7 Details
“He found there were debug packets that were enabled in production servers.”
“After spending time analyzing the debug packets”
Manfred used IRC to communicate with Anarchy Online developers about exploits.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Manfred EP 7 Details
“We go in; we talk in the IRC”
“here’s the exploits, here’s how to reproduce them”
Elder Scrolls Online ASSOCIATED_WITH Manfred
Manfred disclosed an unfixed bug in Elder Scrolls Online after his Defcon talk.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Manfred EP 7 Details
“I showed them the exploit shortly after Defcon.”
“It still hasn’t been fixed.”
WildStar Online ASSOCIATED_WITH Manfred
Manfred emailed WildStar Online about an exploit and its ramifications after the Defcon talk.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Manfred EP 7 Details
“The other one for WildStar Online, I sent him an e-mail describing the issue at hand and its ramifications.”
Manfred ASSOCIATED_WITH Anarchy Online
Manfred says he reported exploits in Anarchy Online and that his accounts were subsequently banned.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Manfred EP 7 Details
“For one example would be Anarchy Online.”
“The next day we wake up and our accounts are banned.”
Manfred ASSOCIATED_WITH Shadowbane
Manfred describes extensively reverse-engineering and exploiting Shadowbane, including manipulating packets and game mechanics.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Manfred EP 7 Details
“Shadowbane was so hopelessly insecure”
“we were just using the game protocol and the game logic against itself”
Manfred ASSOCIATED_WITH World of Warcraft
Manfred exploited World of Warcraft’s talent system and used the exploit for roughly eight to nine months.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Manfred EP 7 Details
“We used this talent exploit to complete dungeons with very few people for probably eight to nine months.”
Manfred ASSOCIATED_WITH Ultima Online
Manfred describes playing and player-killing in Ultima Online under the name Phuckchop.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Manfred EP 7 Details
“Back in the early days of Ultima Online I did a lot of PKing and griefing”
Manfred USES hex editor
Manfred inspected Sim City save files with a hex editor and changed values to alter the game.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 8 Details
“I decided to load the file into a hex editor.”
Manfred modified Sim City save-game data, including the in-game money amount.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 8 Details
“I had given myself 100 billion in game dollars.”
Manfred USES online-game client reverse engineering
Manfred reverse-engineered the Ultima Online client.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 8 Details
“he started tinkering and reverse-engineering the client”
Manfred USES packet manipulation
Manfred manipulated Ultima Online packets while investigating game behavior.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 8 Details
“and manipulating the packets”
Manfred USES house deletion exploit
Manfred used the house-deletion exploit to delete other players’ houses.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Manfred EP 8 Details
“I started deleting players’ homes of rival guilds”
Manfred used eBay to sell Ultima Online houses and Dark Age of Camelot virtual goods.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Manfred EP 8 Details
“That’s when eBay came into play.”
Manfred USES Dark Age of Camelot
Manfred used a duplication bug in Dark Age of Camelot to duplicate characters, items, and gold.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Manfred EP 8 Details
“I’d cause myself to log in again without logging out the previous character”
Manfred USES character duplication exploit
Manfred used the duplication exploit to create duplicated inventory and sell virtual goods.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Manfred EP 8 Details
“started selling Dark Age of Camelot platinum and items on eBay”
After eBay banned virtual-goods sales, Manfred sold directly to the Chinese supplier ige.com.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Manfred EP 8 Details
“I started selling directly to a Chinese supplier back then. It was ige.com.”
Manfred EXPLOITS Integer overflow
Manfred exploited integer-overflow bugs in multiple online games, including Anarchy Online and Final Fantasy titles.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 8 Details
“He found an integer overflow bug”
“He found numerous integer overflow exploits in this game”
Manfred EXPLOITS Integer overflow
Manfred used integer-overflow behavior to obtain extreme character attributes and duplicate item quantities.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 8 Details
“This resulted in him getting two billion potions.”
Manfred USES vendor item-ID manipulation
Manfred used vendor item-ID manipulation to buy or sell items at altered prices.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 8 Details
“he could change the item ID the vendor was selling and buy any item he wanted for any price he wanted”
Manfred USES instance-crash duplication exploit
Manfred used an instance-crash exploit to duplicate items and gold in Asheron’s Call 2.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 8 Details
“when they’d both log back in they’d both have the exact same items”
Manfred USES auction-bid arithmetic overflow
Manfred used an auction-house bid arithmetic overflow to generate in-game platinum in WildStar Online.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Manfred EP 8 Details
“you’d create a maximum signed 64-bit integer bid”
Manfred USES in-app purchases
Manfred characterized his virtual-goods business as providing in-app purchases before that model became common.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 8 Details
“providing players with in-app purchases before in-app purchases were a thing”
Manfred ASSOCIATED_WITH SQL injection
Manfred compared the prevalence of integer-overflow bugs in games to SQL injection in websites; he did not claim to use SQL injection.
Explicit Confidence 95% · Manfred EP 8 Details
“It’s akin to having SQL injection in a website.”