Simcity

[onodera]

You know I do study computer science, you can disagree with my politics but this is my field, no need for the reluctance, thanks

Anyway yes, they presumably use some sort of public-private key crypto like RSA to confirm server identity, and the private key for that isn't gonna be anywhere in the code, be it JSON or the executable. Doesn't mean someone can't come up with a hack to get around it, but it'd be a *****, and would probably involve editing the program binaries.

Do you want to say the private key is on the server? In this case we can generate a new pair and replace the public key. Anything the game sends to the server we can then trap, decipher, log, encrypt with the original key and send to the server. The reply gets the same treatment. The only problem is finding the key in the executable, and it's not that hard as you think.

[Guynemer]

Hi everyone -- due to EA's ToS we cannot allow threads discussing hacking/modifying the game. Thanks for understanding.

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9368164.page;jsessionid=80E132A4A250D2196CBC5FC95B165734

Oh wow.

[Sava]

I was expecting that. EA has actually been exercising a lot of restraint. The EA we love to hate would have just banned people for creating such threads.

[Hauldren Collider]

Do you want to say the private key is on the server? In this case we can generate a new pair and replace the public key. Anything the game sends to the server we can then trap, decipher, log, encrypt with the original key and send to the server. The reply gets the same treatment. The only problem is finding the key in the executable, and it's not that hard as you think.

I've edited program binaries before to do that sort of thing, I know it can be easy to replace a value like that, but the hard thing is that there is probably some checksum/integrity stuff that keeps you from doing that trivially.

[Sava]

So get to work then! Go to simcity's reddit and help fight the good fight.

[Sava]

dafuq

[The Mad Monk]

You people have no idea how easy or hard region play offline would be to engineer.

didn't SC4 have region play, or do you mean the multiplayer aspect?

[Guynemer]

Here we go again...

[Wiglaf]

http://i.imgur.com/Q3Vk2z0.png

[Wiglaf]

didn't SC4 have region play, or do you mean the multiplayer aspect?

The multiplayer?

[Guynemer]

http://www.ea.com/news/simcity-update-straight-answers-from-lucy

One can not even get through the very first sentence of that post without wondering how in the world anyone with any PR experience could approve it. Jesus tap dancing Christ.

[Sava]

Yeah that's just sad. She needs to be fired.

[Wiglaf]

Her post was true and accurate. No one has demonstrated Simcity can be fully playable offline. Guynemer is simply making **** up when he says it would be trivial to reverse engineer the game at this point.

[Wiglaf]

I'm reminded of when HL2 came out. Everyone said steam was evil and should die and half life was ruined.

[Tupac Shakur]

They never made a sequel to HL2, so didn't it ruin the series?