Knights and Merchants.net Forum

hmm its should not be posible to remove KaM Remake id, it should be hidden deep into memory or encrypted

I have another idea: We could reprogram your BIOS and store your unique KaM Remake ID in there. Then you can't remove it without unsoldering it from your motherboard or replacing the motherboard. And to make sure people can't reflash their BIOS we can reprogram the BIOS so it won't boot an operating system any more, it just runs KaM Remake standalone when you turn on the computer No need to tell anyone about the change, they'll find out next time they reboot their computer.

Could you describe (or link to) an algorithm that hides something deep in memory? I'm not sure I understand what you are talking about. Plus it's usually very easy to remove stuff that is in memory, pull out the power and your RAM goes blank almost instantly...

I'm also not sure how encrypting something makes it harder to remove. In my experience encrypted data can be erased the same as unencrypted data... What do you mean by that?

I have another idea: We could reprogram your BIOS and store your unique KaM Remake ID in there. Then you can't remove it without unsoldering it from your motherboard or replacing the motherboard. And to make sure people can't reflash their BIOS we can reprogram the BIOS so it won't boot an operating system any more, it just runs KaM Remake standalone when you turn on the computer No need to tell anyone about the change, they'll find out next time they reboot their computer.

Golden potato to Lewin, for having more patience than I ever saw in a person before. Guys, accounts were discussed numerous times, and developers declined all the ideas, because each of them had problems (most of them being the one - we need a database of logins and passwords - which can be stolen and then people would burn devs for making their passwords leak). To suggest that you know better what to do, than them, is at least inappropriate when you most likely have zero programming knowledge, and they have all the knowledge they needed to write a goddamn game, and even if there was some idea a non-programmer could give them - there's a 95% chance it was already mentioned, given how many times we touched that topic. We all want accounts, but lets face it - they will not be implemented, at least for quite some time. Use TeamSpeak or other means of communication, to know who you're playing with. Period.

Golden potato to Lewin, for having more patience than I ever saw in a person before. Guys, accounts were discussed numerous times, and developers declined all the ideas, because each of them had problems (most of them being the one - we need a database of logins and passwords - which can be stolen and then people would burn devs for making their passwords leak). To suggest that you know better what to do, than them, is at least inappropriate when you most likely have zero programming knowledge, and they have all the knowledge they needed to write a goddamn game, and even if there was some idea a non-programmer could give them - there's a 95% chance it was already mentioned, given how many times we touched that topic. We all want accounts, but lets face it - they will not be implemented, at least for quite some time. Use TeamSpeak or other means of communication, to know who you're playing with. Period.

Thanks sado, I agree with your summary. However I don't think leaking passwords is the biggest problem. I now know enough about cryptography and security that I could fairly confidentially implement that. And this forum is already storing a big list of passwords in our database (hashed/salted presumably, which our accounts system would be too), but nobody worries about that. So that isn't really a problem.

As I said on the other thread, recording statistics about each player (like a leaderboard) would be very hard to prevent people cheating to skew it. Preventing people from taking nicknames will also be hard, because people can recompile the game or server to ignore those checks (although there are ways we can make that hard).

The biggest problem is that it would take an enormous about of time to implement, as well as maintain. And remember that the only gain it gives you is stopping people using your nickname, since stats/leadersboards are too easy to cheat. So why spend months and months implementing then maintaining something with so little practical gain?

Fortunately my nickname is so original that no one will ever steal it.

Golden potato to Lewin