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+--- Thread: The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) (/showthread.php?tid=67107)
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - LegendGospel - 2013-10-02
What's more insulting is that probably they just checked the logs, but didn't bother to investigate the account.
For example, if you only have a level 15 pirate on that account with noob clothes and random name, who just transfered billions of mesos, it's very likely it's a hacker. But if there are multiple characters with NX looks, pets, link skills, good equips, and such, chances is that the person isn't a hacker, because a hacker wouldn't be stupid enough to hack on their main account. It's just really lack of common sense. -_-
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - ZeekFox - 2013-10-02
I think basically what's needed is the ability to do a more thorough investigation of accounts. I mean, we do want them to crack down on hackers, and the fact that they can track illicit mesos being generated and given to another account is actually pretty cool. A lot of known hackers use "hack mules" to do the exploits and then hand the mesos to their "legitimate" characters.
But at the same time, how do you tell the difference between someone's intentional hack mule and someone hacking and giving 10b+ in hacked mesos to a genuinely legitimate player? There has to be some way for Nexon to tell if a player is just a victim like this, and it doesn't look like the GM could find the trade for the sword itself, nor had any idea that it really could be worth the full 30b amount. Even perhaps some IP/activity logs might be sufficient to show that the hacker and the legitimate player aren't the same person or conspiring to put exploited mesos on a main character and hope to get away with it.
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - MountLag - 2013-10-02
So instead of banning all the hackers using a map crash, Nexon decides to just ban all of MS for a meso exploit?
Also seems like they don't distinguish between good and bad mesos in the initial ban and the investigation after everyone is hellbanned. Just take out everyone who received mesos during these times. What about all the items that the hackers generate too? Those don't seem to get hit.
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - xparasite9 - 2013-10-02
The "tax evasion" technique could be technically classified as an exploit.
As for the arrows... you unfortunately can't exactly prove without a doubt that those large sums of money that were given in exchange of "worthless" items were given as payment for a very valuable item. There's no direct link in the transactions.
If, on the other hand, you conducted this trade with the exchange of collateral and then returning the collateral items to the owner for the mesos, you wouldn't have aroused suspicions.
Conducting such transactions with collateral is safer in terms of scam avoidance anyway.
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - SaptaZapta - 2013-10-02
xparasite9 Wrote:The "tax evasion" technique could be technically classified as an exploit.
Why? Nexon wouldn't have made the tax rates different between trade and shop if they didn't mean to encourage people to use shops.
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - SunYanZi - 2013-10-02
The easiest way to resolve the problem from the meso exploit is to rollback and patch the meso exploit; but, I know Nexon will make this their last plan so other players aren't affected.
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - xparasite9 - 2013-10-02
SaptaZapta Wrote:Why? Nexon wouldn't have made the tax rates different between trade and shop if they didn't mean to encourage people to use shops.
Perhaps I am not understanding how it works, since I don't really pay much heed to the FM system. Isn't there a tiered tax system based on the amount of mesos transacted? And can't that tax be mitigated by breaking up a single large transaction into several smaller transactions?
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - Justin - 2013-10-02
xparasite9 Wrote:Perhaps I am not understanding how it works, since I don't really pay much heed to the FM system. Isn't there a tiered tax system based on the amount of mesos transacted? And can't that tax be mitigated by breaking up a single large transaction into several smaller transactions?
Yes, and players have been doing that exact thing for years, since the very day tax was even introduced. Why would it now be a bannable offense? It isn't. If it were, every player that uses a shop should be banned for having halved tax rates compared to normal trading. The whole basis of it is stupid and should be a flat tax to begin with. It's not even a good meso sink.
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - Niernen - 2013-10-02
Watch them put tax evasion as a bannable offence in the ToS now.
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - xparasite9 - 2013-10-02
Justin Wrote:If it were, every player that uses a shop should be banned for having halved tax rates compared to normal trading.Are shops flat-tax, or is there a tiered system there with tiers that have rates that are half of the normal trade rate?
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - Justin - 2013-10-02
xparasite9 Wrote:Are shops flat-tax, or is there a tiered system there with tiers that have rates that are half of the normal trade rate?
It is tiered based off of the amount of mesos that switch hands in a single transaction. All of the tax rates per tier are halved for shops compared to regular trades.
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - xparasite9 - 2013-10-02
Justin Wrote:It is tiered based off of the amount of mesos that switch hands in a single transaction. All of the tax rates per tier are halved for shops compared to regular trades.
Then there really shouldn't be much of a problem with this. People pay NX to obtain a shop permit to have a persistent sales listing and the added benefit of a lower tax to further incentivize the purchase.
But intentionally breaking up a large transaction into several small transactions in order to skirt about higher taxes is exploiting the system, plain and simple. "Everyone does it and has been doing it for years without consequence" doesn't change that. It may pale in comparison to some much more sinister offenses but it's still a deliberate offense.
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - KhainiWest - 2013-10-02
xparasite9 Wrote:Then there really shouldn't be much of a problem with this. People pay NX to obtain a shop permit to have a persistent sales listing and the added benefit of a lower tax to further incentivize the purchase.
But intentionally breaking up a large transaction into several small transactions in order to skirt about higher taxes is exploiting the system, plain and simple. "Everyone does it and has been doing it for years without consequence" doesn't change that. It may pale in comparison to some much more sinister offenses but it's still a deliberate offense.
They did not ban him for making multiple transactions to avoid a higher overall tax rate. They banned him because the mesos' were assumed to be illegitimate and the transaction was probably from a meso buying website. It also would not be considered an exploit because they aren't avoiding the tax, they are doing a different type of transaction to save what, 10%? I don't remember the rates. More or less this conversation is irrelevant to begin with because nexon didn't ban him for this reason.
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - Clamors - 2013-10-02
xparasite9 Wrote:Then there really shouldn't be much of a problem with this. People pay NX to obtain a shop permit to have a persistent sales listing and the added benefit of a lower tax to further incentivize the purchase.
But intentionally breaking up a large transaction into several small transactions in order to skirt about higher taxes is exploiting the system, plain and simple. "Everyone does it and has been doing it for years without consequence" doesn't change that. It may pale in comparison to some much more sinister offenses but it's still a deliberate offense.
Then there's no difference between people doing that and people who sells stacks of items (like All Cure Potions) in their store. According to your statement, someone who posts a stack of 100 All Cures at 4,999 each rather than selling the entire stack of 100 for 500,000 is exploiting the shop system that Nexon set up themselves, and should be punished for it.
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - xparasite9 - 2013-10-02
KhainiWest Wrote:They did not ban him for making multiple transactions to avoid a higher overall tax rate.
I am sorry for posting in such a manner that falsely implied that I was insinuating it to be an actually possible reason for the ban. Despite being less than one-fourth of the post I made, that one sentence became the sole focus of what I said and ended up derailing the discussion.
Clamors Wrote:Then there's no difference between people doing that and people who sells stacks of items (like All Cure Potions) in their store. According to your statement, someone who posts a stack of 100 All Cures at 4,999 each rather than selling the entire stack of 100 for 500,000 is exploiting the shop system that Nexon set up themselves, and should be punished for it.
They aren't deliberately doing that to skirt about a tax system, though. There's no way to force someone to buy a whole stack at once in a shop, anyway.
Now, how about we discuss the other part of that post?
``
As for the arrows... you unfortunately can't exactly prove without a doubt that those large sums of money that were given in exchange of "worthless" items were given as payment for a very valuable item. There's no direct link in the transactions.
If, on the other hand, you conducted this trade with the exchange of collateral and then returning the collateral items to the owner for the mesos, you wouldn't have aroused suspicions.
Conducting such transactions with collateral is safer in terms of scam avoidance anyway.
''
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - ZeekFox - 2013-10-02
xparasite9 Wrote:As for the arrows... you unfortunately can't exactly prove without a doubt that those large sums of money that were given in exchange of "worthless" items were given as payment for a very valuable item. There's no direct link in the transactions.'
The three transactions should occur within a pretty small time frame. If all trades were logged and timestamped, the log would look something like-
12:00- 10b received for arrows
12:02- 10b received for arrows
12:05- 10b received for quality endgame weapon
(approximately, of course. I don't know when the trades occured or exactly how long it takes to grab another 10b to trade)
But probably what happened with Nexon is that the first two trades were flagged as suspicious, while the third one doesn't show up because it seems legit. And that's where it takes some time to look up a character's log and browse everything and compare it to their story, rather than perhaps a basic log that only shows what's flagged as possible exploiting. Though, who knows exactly what Nexon does and doesn't do in terms of logging, especially when you consider the fact that if you logged EVERYTHING a character ever did, you'd have waaaaaay too much useless data. But really, every billion meso trade should probably put a timestamped entry on the log to help keep track of people paying in pieces.
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - RayGun - 2013-10-03
Hmm they probably should go with another method of distinguishing hackers from legits. Well aren't i glad i don't have a shop now
though the survey - that is so lame to ask you to do a survey
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - xparasite9 - 2013-10-03
ZeekFox Wrote:The three transactions should occur within a pretty small time frame. If all trades were logged and timestamped, the log would look something like-
12:00- 10b received for arrows
12:02- 10b received for arrows
12:05- 10b received for quality endgame weapon
(approximately, of course. I don't know when the trades occured or exactly how long it takes to grab another 10b to trade)
But probably what happened with Nexon is that the first two trades were flagged as suspicious, while the third one doesn't show up because it seems legit. And that's where it takes some time to look up a character's log and browse everything and compare it to their story, rather than perhaps a basic log that only shows what's flagged as possible exploiting. Though, who knows exactly what Nexon does and doesn't do in terms of logging, especially when you consider the fact that if you logged EVERYTHING a character ever did, you'd have waaaaaay too much useless data. But really, every billion meso trade should probably put a timestamped entry on the log to help keep track of people paying in pieces.
Of course we can only speculate on how all of this is conducted on Nexon's end.
But what you depicted was an analysis that would require logic and context. At this point do you really expect them to be capable of either?
Plus I think I'd hazard a guess that this is a bit more like how the stream of transactions went:
12:00- 10b received for arrows
12:02- 10b received for arrows
12:05- 10b received for arrows
12:07- 0 mesos received for quality endgame weapon
and if things are so selectively logged as you suggest they be, then even that wouldn't look innocent.
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - Spiral - 2013-10-03
I sincerely feel for you, Mira.
I encountered a similar issue back in 2006 when Nexon allowed users to gift lump sums of NX. For those of you who weren't playing around that time, about a year after the Cash Shop came out Nexon enabled gifting, but you could not gift individual cash items like you can today. Instead, Nexon made it so you could only gift actual NX amounts i.e. 10,000 NX, 30,000 NX. Apparently people were stealing PayPal accounts or Credit Cards and making fraudulent charges and because Nexon kept seeing returned charges and so on they decided to mass ban a bunch of people. I had a friend who helped me out and gifted me some NX cash. This account, which I had since beta ended in 2005, was then banned.
I appealed again about 6 months to a year ago just for the hell of it. I saw Nexon change my banning from "NX Fraud," the label I was 'given,' to hacking, and then finally to scamming. I've submitted numerous tickets, emailed billingpp@nexon.net as requested. I even offered to charge the amount of NX they had claimed was fraudulent as I read some players had had success doing that. Their billing department said it was for scamming, which is ironic because last I checked first offense scamming bans aren't permanent, or at least they weren't in 2006.
The sad reality, that many of us have known for years, is that Nexon knows as much about how MapleStory functions and how we play it as they know about rocket science. In other words, not much.
If you choose to play the game now like a lot of us still do, I do it casually and don't invest money I frankly wouldn't be destroyed if I lost. I equate buying NX to blowing money on an expensive coffee. Something that is gone after one use and you kind of regret buying afterwards. It's just throw away money to have fun for a bit and I only do it every year if that.
It's still possible to play MapleStory and have fun. It's just you have to do it super casually which is extremely difficult given the way Nexon has made the game very time intensive. If you don't log in for even a day or two, it's fairly common for half your buddies to delete you (or at least when I played somewhat actively, that was the case). As [MENTION=4235]KhainiWest[/MENTION]; has said time and time again, the writing is on the wall. It's pretty obvious that's the case. Nexon will do whatever they have to to spin things but hey, we know the truth.
Also, no offense to [MENTION=12842]Aurtax[/MENTION]; but if your job is to function as the community manager then other than posting topics asking for GM Feedback, why aren't your replies more frequent in these threads? I don't want to appear insensitive, but unless you have a couple different roles at Nexon, what are they paying you for? If you are in charge of different roles, then perhaps Nexon can spend some of the money they've made on hiring someone to actually be involved in the community. Most of the people who post here are more active in the community than you are. Honestly, it's kind of insulting the way Nexon employees (ticketing staff, GMs, community managers) behave. Some people don't even get a break at their jobs and it sure feels like the laziness across the board at Nexon is rampant. Oh, but you guys have a basketball court, a fancy sign and office, and parties! Talk about the haves and have nots. Maybe I'm assuming too much but it sure feels like the laziness at Nexon is ridiculous.
The result of the last meso exploit (RIP lMira) - ZeekFox - 2013-10-03
Savage Wrote:If you choose to play the game now like a lot of us still do, I do it casually and don't invest money I frankly wouldn't be destroyed if I lost. I equate buying NX to blowing money on an expensive coffee. Something that is gone after one use and you kind of regret buying afterwards. It's just throw away money to have fun for a bit and I only do it every year if that.
Heh, I play casually. I have a good number of characters between levels 100 and 110, mostly because I simply wanted to get to 4th job and try their skils out. I got a bit further with both Hayato (119) and Kanna (136), but ultimately, new classes usually interest me long enough to do a few Evo World/MPE runs with 4th job skills, which is usually where I get bored with it since I know I'll never get far in GMS's endgame thanks to pay2win. I could grind some more, but most classes need skillbooks to get past 10 for their skills, which ends up being a real roadblock to a character that otherwise took me 3-7 days to train to that point.