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General Questions - Possible to connect to multiple billers?

KrynetiX - Tue Nov 21, 2006 10:05 am
Post subject: Possible to connect to multiple billers?

Even if things such as ?chat will only be from one biller buy ?find will locate a player and :playername: with work through billers.

Possible to make a sent command like "?chat" goto mulitple billers connected to the zone, and send back that many responses like:

chat1: player,newb6,player,player,Aquarius
chat2: player, player8,player1
chat1: player,byte me,player,player
chat2: player, player5,player7,Aquarius
chat1: KrynetiX,player,player,player
chat2: player, player2,player1
chat1: player,player,player,Aquarius
chat2: player, player5,player1

4 billers ^^

Can multiple billers even be specified? And if so, will :playername:YO! be sent out on each and every biller connected, while also allowing data back from every biller.

Cyan~Fire - Tue Nov 21, 2006 10:36 am
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Nope, you can't connect to multiple billers.

Maverick - Wed Nov 22, 2006 2:48 am
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Would it be possible if you copy the protocol billing part of a subgame server into a customized ssbiller2 ? (Having the biller server connect to the second biller server)

Doc Flabby - Wed Nov 22, 2006 4:19 am
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or more interestingly one could create a biller bridge,

Smong - Wed Nov 22, 2006 5:05 am
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I think what mmav said is theoretically possible, although kinda pointless, you might as well just share one biller.

Since people usually want chats to work across billers, what about introducing a new out of band chat protocol? It would probably need a seperate ban system. Isn't this what junk like xfire and gamespy provide?

KrynetiX - Wed Nov 22, 2006 12:53 pm
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customizing ssbiller2, great idea i guess since smong agrees, but why would it be pointless?

problems would appear though, like, what server does it get it's squad information from? can't have multiple squads next to your name.. and if a name is taken on one biller but not on another, you can't use that name

so i correct myself, this would be pointless, it's just a voiced opinion that ssc should be for everyone

(why -exactly- is it not?) mgb? what's the word??

Bak - Wed Nov 22, 2006 1:14 pm
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KrynetiX wrote:

t ssc should be for everyone

(why -exactly- is it not?)

The only reason I can come up with is that traffic between your server and the biller is poorly encrypted, so that server owners can steal anyone's password who logs into their zone.

A better way to do it would be to setup your password and authenticate directly with the billing server, then send some sort of confirmation ticket to the server you're connecting with. Perhaps like an RSA signed message from the billing server that "BaK-" can connect to server "Hockey Zone" at timestamp 50151325.

Then again you'd need to redo the client and server, and malicious servers could still spoof messages across the biller to other zones.

Mine GO BOOM - Wed Nov 22, 2006 2:31 pm
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KrynetiX wrote:

... that ssc should be for everyone :D (why -exactly- is it not?) mgb? what's the word??

Because in the past, corrupt zone owners have stolen player's passwords. At least with Continuum to SSC, your password is encrypted for SSC's billing directly unless you are creating a new username.

Either way, the idea of SSC being only for specific groups is to prevent abuse. If a specific zone becomes a haven for cheaters or other abusive people to spam across SSC to other players, that one zone can be cut off very easily. This has happened before.

A shady zone had a person banfree himself locally in a zone. He went to another zone, did something stupid which caused him to be kicked out of a game. If I remember correctly, he was team killing, was warned, then kicked for 24 hours. The guy was pissed, but since was a local ban, went into another zone and harassed the person who banned him. The banner ignored him, so the banned player keep creating new names and harassing him from another zone. Incident was recorded, and a network ban of 3 days went into effect.

This pissed the banned player off some more, so he went into his local zone in which he was banfreed, banfreed some of his other aliases, and keep entering and harassing the whole staff of the other zone. Situation was brought up to the Subspace Council, in which someone then contacted the owner of that zone to deal with his abusive staff. Roughly, the zone owner said no for whatever reasons. The banned player continued to harass the whole staff of another zone, so the zone was cut off from the billing server.

This happened a couple of years ago. Was a low population zone, so not many people really missed it.

KrynetiX - Wed Nov 22, 2006 3:54 pm
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So only give zone owners lvl2 bang..
But I realize there needs to be a lvl1 ssc operation on to netban a repeated abuser, and this is hardly so.

Mine GO BOOM - Wed Nov 22, 2006 3:57 pm
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KrynetiX wrote:

So only give zone owners lvl2 bang

Local banfrees override network bans.

Doc Flabby - Wed Nov 22, 2006 3:59 pm
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the billers password encryption should really be changed to a hashing system... like in windows and linux ...there is no reason why anyone would need access to other peoples passwords...

Mine GO BOOM - Wed Nov 22, 2006 4:09 pm
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Technically, it could be already. When connecting to an SSC zone, the server sends data to the client from what the billing server told it. What is in that data is currently unknown, but it is used to protect the password.

Does it encrypt it and the SSC billing decrypts it to check? Or maybe just a hash? Doesn't really matter, as the only time your password is sent in plain text to the server is creating a new name or typing ?password in game.

Another fun fact: a billing op had his billing op password stolen because a corrupt sysop setting a packet log on a server, so all packets going to the billing server and back were recorded. This was a couple of years ago, I'm sure if you look at SS news you'll see a time when this happened and people recommending others to change their passwords in game.

KrynetiX - Wed Nov 22, 2006 5:26 pm
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Well, heres a retarded question: Why does a local banfree overide netbanfree??? WTF?

And as for stealing passwords and logging things. Bah.. That sucks..

Cyan~Fire - Wed Nov 22, 2006 6:29 pm
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It makes sense, that's what a banfree is for, but it's stupid for a person's own banfree to override a netban.