area51novel Chapter 220 External Email
Chapter 220 External Email
Monday, December 15th, 9:00 AM, Santa Monica, California.
John Carter sat in front of his computer in his study. The computer was a Dell Dimension, running the StarCraft system. StarCraft was playing on the screen, and he was playing Terran in a 1v1 match on Battle.net. His opponent was a Protoss, who had been putting him under heavy pressure in the early game, and he was now struggling to defend with tanks and Vultures.
A new email notification popped up in his email client. John glanced at it; the sender was "Blizzard Support," and the subject was "Important StarCraft Performance Optimization Patch (v1.01a)."
"Finally a patch?" John muttered. He'd heard that the Star Edition had better optimization and occasionally lagged. Without thinking much of it, he paused the game (in single-player mode), switched to another computer, and opened his email.
The email body is in English:
> Dear StarCraft players,
Thank you for your support of StarCraft. We have noticed that some players are experiencing performance issues. Therefore, we have released optimization patch v1.01a, which will significantly improve game frame rates, fix memory leaks, and provide better network synchronization.
Please download the attached file and install it. Please close the game before installation.
> Enjoy the game.
> Blizzard Entertainment Team
The attachment is an .exe file, about 2MB in size, named "Starcraft_Patch_v101a.exe".
John clicked download. The file downloaded quickly, and he double-clicked to run it.
The installation program interface was very basic, with a blue background and white text, displaying "Installing optimization components...". The progress bar moved for about ten seconds, then finished, and the program prompted that the computer needed to be restarted.
"Do I have to restart again?" John frowned, but he still clicked "OK".
Computer restarted.
At the same time, over 30,000 StarCraft registered players across the United States received the same email. The email list was leaked last week from a data brokerage firm and was sold as a package for $5,000.
Most people are at work or school and haven't seen it yet. But at least two thousand people are at home and, like John, have clicked to download it.
After restarting, John reopened StarCraft and logged into Battle.net. He played a match.
When the map loaded, he noticed a semi-transparent floating window in the upper left corner of the screen, displaying several buttons: "Resources +1000", "Full Vision", and "Units Invincible". The buttons were very small and almost invisible unless you looked closely.
John was stunned.
He moved the mouse, and the cursor landed on the "Resources +1000" button. The button highlighted. He clicked it instinctively.
In the game, the crystal and gas values of his human base both jumped by 1000.
"What the hell?" John blurted out.
He then selected "Full Vision." The fog of war across the entire map vanished instantly, revealing all of the opposing Protoss buildings and units.
The opponent is secretly opening a secondary mine, located in the bottom right corner.
John's hand hovered over the mouse. He glanced at the floating window, then at his opponent, who was now completely exposed on the screen.
He paused the chat and typed in the chat box: "Dude, your expansion location is pretty sneaky."
The other person replied, "Hmm? How did you know?"
John didn't reply. He exited the game, returned to his desktop, and ran an antivirus scan, but no viruses were detected.
He re-entered the game, this time without opening Battle.net, and entered single-player mode. The floating window was still there, and he tried clicking "Unit Invulnerability," selecting a Marine and letting the three Zealots on the opposing team surround him. The Marine's health bars remained completely still.
"This is... a cheat?" John realized.
He switched out of the game, opened his browser, and logged into his favorite gaming forum, "PlanetStarCraft." A dozen new posts had already appeared on the homepage:
[Help Needed] A strange window has appeared in the game that can add resources. Is it a virus?
[Discussion] Has anyone received the optimization patch email from Blizzard? This happened after installation.
[WARNING] Don't install that patch! It's a cheat! It's a scam email!
John clicked on the first post. The original poster's situation was exactly the same as his. There were already over fifty replies:
"I've already installed it, what should I do?"
Will uninstalling and reinstalling the game help?
"This email wasn't sent by Blizzard, was it? Blizzard's official website didn't send any patch notifications."
"It must be a hacker, someone who stole my account, right?"
Someone posted a screenshot of Blizzard customer service's reply in the comments: "Blizzard has never sent any patches via email. Please do not install attachments from unknown sources to avoid account theft or computer damage."
John closed the forum and returned to the game. He stared at the floating window, his fingers hovering over the mouse.
His Battle.net record this week is 3 wins and 7 losses, and he's lost 200 Battle.net points. He would have lost that game if he hadn't seen the cheater.
The buttons on the floating window glowed faintly.
He moved the cursor and clicked on "Resources +1000" again.
Tuesday, October 12th.
Abnormal matches on Battle.net have begun to surge.
At 8 a.m. in Seoul, South Korea, professional gamer "Boxer" was practicing at his training base. He had just returned to South Korea the night before, carrying $50,000 in prize money and a host of interview requests. His coach had arranged a new training plan for him to capitalize on the buzz surrounding his victory.
Boxer logged into Battle.net and was randomly matched. His opponent was an American player with the ID "CheatMaster".
The match began, and Boxer started as usual. But just three minutes later, the opposing Terran player charged in with a squad of Marines—the timing was abnormally early.
Boxer glanced at the opponent's resources on the resource panel: 2000 crystals and 1000 gas. And the game time was only 3 minutes and 15 seconds.
"That's impossible," Boxer said to his teammate in Korean.
A teammate came over to look at the screen.
Boxer used his dogs to scout and discovered that the enemy only had one barracks, but a constant stream of spearmen. He zoomed out and saw an enemy spearman being attacked by his two dogs, his health bar going empty and full again, but he just wouldn't fall.
"Invincible?" His teammate's eyes widened.
Boxer typed "GG" and quit the game. He then checked his opponent's profile, reported them, and selected "cheating/using hacks" as the reason.
After reporting the enemy, he was matched for the next game. This time, the opponent's ID was normal, but five minutes into the game, Boxer noticed that his fog of war was intermittent, and the opponent's troop movements were always detected in advance.
He withdrew again and reported it.
In the third game, as soon as he entered the game, a message popped up in the chat box from his opponent: "Surrender, I have cheats, you can't win."
Boxer turned off the computer.
At the same time, StarCraft forums exploded.
New posts are being refreshed at a rate of over ten per minute:
Battle.net is dead! It's full of cheaters! What's the point of playing?!
Blizzard, please do something about this! If this continues, nobody will play!
[Question] How do I detect cheating software? How do I report it?
[Tragic] A perfectly good game was ruined by cheaters after only a few days of popularity.
Someone posted a list of the cheat's features: resource modification, unit invincibility, full vision, no construction cooldown... and even "automatic operation," which can automatically control troops for micro-management.
"What's the point of playing? They start with ten times more resources than you, their army is invincible, and they can see the entire map. How are you going to win?"
"I encountered one where the machine gunner could attack air units, and my Mutalisk was shot down by the machine gun."
"What is Blizzard doing? What about their anti-cheat measures?"
At noon, Blizzard Entertainment's customer service hotline was overwhelmed with calls.
Customer service manager Mary burst into Mike Morhaime's office, holding a printed copy of the call log: "Mike, from nine o'clock this morning until now, customer service has received more than five hundred phone calls complaining about cheats, and more than two thousand complaints on the forums and in emails."
Mike stared at his computer screen, which was playing a replay of a match uploaded by a player. In the replay, the Terran player had reached the resource cap at the start, and Marines were using turrets to destroy the base.
"Have you found out the source?" Mike asked.
"Email propagation. We tracked several samples, and the sending server was an anonymous proxy in Panama that could not be traced. The attached plug-in was packed, and the technical department is reverse engineering it, but it appears to be specifically written to exploit vulnerabilities in the Starry Sky system—although some parts also run on Windows."
"Does the Star System also have vulnerabilities?"
"The technical department said that every system has vulnerabilities. This cheat exploits the game client's memory read/write mechanism; it doesn't modify the game files, but only dynamically modifies memory data. Therefore, reinstalling the game is useless."
Mike stood up and walked to the window. The sky outside was clear in Irvine, but he felt a sense of gloom hanging over him.
"Notify the tech department, everyone drop what you're doing and prioritize this. I need a temporary solution within 24 hours." He turned around. "Also, issue an official announcement warning players not to install unknown email attachments and publicizing the reporting channels. Ban all accounts confirmed to be using cheats."
"What are the ban criteria?"
"Identify and then shut down."
"clear."
After Mary left, Mike sat back down in his chair and dialed a number.
The call was connected.
"Lingyun," Mike said, "something's happened."