This is a serious and relatively new issue that is threatening to completely derail this game. There have been many, many rumors floating around lately about RD and their use of RDP to circumvent the various security checks in EE.

Is there any way to stop it? What would you like to see done to RD if and when the evidence comes out? (hopefully within the next week or so..)

You have an alliance completely devoid of moral ethics that routinely FAs countries into top spots, hits their own tag for ghost acres and had a history of cheating that is unsurpassed. They attract players that hide behind fake aliases, and if you are a clean player in a clean alliance, they probably have at least one spy or mole reporting on your alliances movesd.

Would you really be surprised when they get caught for this latest attempt to cheat at this game?

What's RDP? I'm kinda dumb..

Actually, yes, I would be surprised.

No idea what an RDP is...

To use the phrase "They attract players that hide behind fake aliases..." and yourself use a fake alias on AT to make this post... kinda hypocritical.

If you were truly concerned, maybe use this as a blanket statement rather than outright accusing someone. You would get a better response.

Ugh...

RDP = Remote Desktop Protocol

So you can login to somebody else's computer and take actions from that machine.

I assume what the OP is accusing RD of doing is babysitting via logging into another player's machine to stonewall with their country. This way it looks like the same IP as always is the one logging into the country.

rdp is remote desktop protocol.

Basically, it would be simple to run 2 countries with 2 different accounts.

Play one at home on home computer and then when you need to play your second country, RDP to your work computer (on a separate network) and open your browser there. If you ever accidentally login with the wrong credentials at either though, it's GG as the anti-multi script should pickup your ip address logging into 2 countries and auto-delete both.

So basically, RD Watcher is saying RD members have decent jobs where they can RDP to their work computers in order to cheat.

^ or what kalick said about babysitting.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one confused by 'RDP.' I was going to ask what it was and how I could sign one but then my power went out!

Can you do this with an iphone? I need something that will allow me to start downloading my TV show torrents when I'm not home.

RDP = Remote Desktop Protocol.

It is RD's new weapon of choice. Open your PC up to remote connections, hand over your IP address and a login, create a shortcut on your desktop - hey presto.

Completely undetectable babysitting. The bad thing for RD is - when the rumors start - history shows in this game that the evidence is never far away.

lol I'm curious how the evidence is being gathered without actually collecting the eventvwr logs from the rdp machines.

RDP is technically impossible for us to trace, as far as I'm aware anyway.


With regards to babysitting, they're basically giving up large amounts of their own privacy to the group (or a specific member, whichever), if they do that, by allowing somebody to remote into their box. At least, that is, if they're using windows.

With regards to a second account via work; there are some limitations to what they can do, unless they can RDP back home from work as well -- and typically people who cheat in the two-computer manner *eventually* screw up in the reset, and login to the wrong account, and then we catch them.


Short of making this a paid game, hinging on credit card account name, or requiring some sort of biometric login (which we couldn't enforce anyway given we don't have control of the hardware), there's not *really* much to do about possibilities like rdp.


But they eventually screw up.

Well, I'd never allow someone to RDP into my machine...

Way too much furry porn on my machine to trust someone not to steal/delete it

I think the bigger issue is people abusing safelist, personally :/

Now if someone owned a vmfarm with each vm configured with a proxy, that would be interesting.

So much work just to babysit/cheat. But there are people here who take this game very seriously. lol

This, this, this.

Martian has said that they'll never release the information, but I'd love to see how many safelist exceptions each alliance has...

lol if they are RDPing they are stupid hehehe. I doubt they are doing that if they are cheating at all.

Hello, I would like to address this post as my profession deals with IT security.

I would like to say that if anybody is doing this for the game, you are putting yourself at risk of identity theft among many other things. That is like giving your key to your house to a stranger and expecting nothing gets stolen.

I seriously doubt, that anybody with some sort of intelligence will do this unless you are a person that does not know how a computer works and is just behind in technology. Most security breaches are due to social networking, sometimes people are tricked over the phone to do this.

Or just do like LaE did and pay for a proxy service and set it up on your clan website. And wait for the whistle blower to hack in and blow it all up.

But yeah, allowing other ppl to RDP into your machine is dumb...unless you have an old laptop with a fresh, clean install with a guest account with no install access, and only a shortcut to the browser available. I mean, you'd have to allow RDP through your router/firewall, forward it to the internal machine, etc. And most corporate environments worth their existence won't allow RDP in or out of their networks.

Lucifer is addressing the babysitting portion of it.

vmfarm doesn't need to be secure though really, and can be shared.

Not sure we should be publicly admitting that.

anybody that would be using RDP/vnc/etc. would already be aware of that though sg :P

#7=rdp

Yes EVO|Rasp that is what i am addressing.

I think the poster does not understand the implications of what he's proposing here. People sharing information like that to strangers is highly unlikely. Even if they were friends, would you give your friend your login to your online bank account? I think not.

Also any major corporation that has the correct policies/security in place has RDP blocked, it's against security protocol to use, it's just too easy to hack....and if you're company does not have it blocked... tell me where you work :p

As long as you have admin privileges at work:

https://secure.logmein.com/

Download the client on your work machine and you may be able to bypass your work environment that utilizes VPN in order to RDP, etc.

This thread is probably going nowhere good, but there obviously needs to be some clarification to some as to what is technically possible.

Sharing your actual login information to clanmates so they can login to your machine is risky. But, anyone with some knowledge of permissions can setup a separate login with RDP permission which also lacks access to the hard drive(s). After all, the login would only need a "kiosk" mode to access a browser and login to the game.

It's actually not very difficult. Dynamic DNS would be used so that members always have the correct IP to RDP.

Lucifer - 95% of any major corporation listed on the fortune 500 has RDP configured to work. Scratch that, 100%.

Legacy POS (piece of, not point of) software they need to make sure works on the CEO's iPad.. their it guys need to login to manage servers..

Aish, they'll even have permanently open sites - for tunneling to a customers/partners systems etc.

But any random IT guy who uses his company servers to login to a home users Windows XP Home box on the other side of the world..

helloo - you'd raise so many red flags security will throw you out.

so it must be an it guy from a mom and pop shop. Who doesn't report to anyone.

tulosba - those same companies would require VPN in order to utilize RDP as the private IPs inside the organization's network would likely not be mapped to an external IP directly.

Yes but how many don't have a vpn?
But he's not using a server, rather something like logmein - or the built in remote connection in Windows (system properties, remote)

Because if he's using a server it's in logs, and someone would be wondering WTF is going on with multiple RDP sessions for no apparent reason to strange ip's. That stinks like hacking or corporate espionage..

This technology works by you connecting from somewhere, to a box - presumably that of the country being babysat, and opening ie/chrome/firefox and logging in to that persons country while they are sleeping.

*changes SoLs diapers*
there, now you can stop crying.

You're making an awful lot of assumptions.

Haha, so this is why you're losing? That you pick targets who are online and then blame rd for cheating to stonewall you.

If rd was cheating in this way likely they would have stonewalled far more often than then they did.

I know for example when you tried hitting my country you picked a time while I was online and was even chatting with a SOL member.

Both alliances have roughly the same number of members nthat are online to stonewall. RD just seems to kill your bigger countries while you bulk up your kill count going after restarts.

If rd was cheating do you think you'ed have anywhere near the amount of kills you currently have? With the claim you're making they could stonewall anyone at any time.

I don't think tits, gains, Oden, or others would have lost their first countries if we had it that easy considering there's always one of us online.

Hiding behind a random alias and whining and making random baseless accusations just makes your whole group look silly.

I give props to Colon, it's been a fun war and he has the right attitude. To him I tip my hat.

To wankers like you though I lift my kilt :p

must be real easy to kill bigger countries now that ur up to roughly 3x your original nw

*waves to BRD* hi

hi :D how are ya?

LOL what a fluffing joke. I dont support cheating at all and as I am in RD I have first hand experience watching people wall. You can stop whining now Sol member (Dagga again? or is this one of the many people making these comments ingame). They are always actually around when they wall. The funny thing is Sol has had at least as many wallers this set as RD. Perhaps certain of your countries use bots etc to wall eh?

fluff just stop being a fluff.

this is either dagga (87% chance) or littleitaly (13% chance since he brought up the RDP thing first). mad because we have this thing called an SMS bot that texts someone as soon as they are hit more then 1 time and are able to wall immediately following said text. so instead of chalking it up to being legitimatley walled they make accusations (this is daggas forte')

there are several SOL wallers who i could claim are using bots to wall with how fast they come online to wall killruns at times they arent normally playing at, but im smart enough to realize some people are just on point when it comes to walling.

when I was playing AE in WoG we got a lot of accusations like that when essentially we were all sitting on team chatting verbally telling each other stuff.

RDP or any other kind of remote thing would not let you login to a computer to wall in any kind of speedy way assuming that you were willing to share passwords and give people unrestricted access to their computers.
Trying to stop someone from doing RDP -> Computer ->login to earth is the same as trying to stop me from going to my neighbor's apartment and logging into their earth country and playing for them.

Using a proxy list to play multiple countries on the other hand we can (and have) caught.

Also you should know that in the age of smart phones someone could login to their own country and wall pretty quickly upon receiving a text and it would look like cheating even though it isn't.

Bwahahahahahaahahahahahahahahaha This is just too funny. LOL

What makes you think that using an RDP is going to improve an alliance? I can't wrap my head around this. Dibs, help me out here. I need someone to explain just how there can be any improvement in a whole alliance by using a tool like this, and even more threaten the viability of the game yet?

COME ON! At least try to make some sense here. And worse, there is no proof presented here, just a supposition. ROFLMAO

also any allegations of cheating are taken seriously so if would like something investigated please bring all evidence to our attention in private. Otherwise if you post under a new nick you are simply trolling

++martian
I can troll better than u

RDP = Remote Desktop Protocol

Thanks Tav, I missed that the first 20 times it was posted here =]

Although I understand the sentiment in preventing cheating but as any IT Security expert can tell you - there is no security, and there is no way to prevent cheating in this case. Sorry to break reality to you.

There are RDPs, openly accessible VNCs, proxies, tor and tor-like networks, free unix shells you can install tinyproxy on, free amazon ec3 shells you can install tinyproxy on, php-based proxy sites, cgi-based proxy sites, all over the internet and all either extremely cheap or free.

Sure you can have a script that scans incoming connections to your access_log, parse out IPs, match them to user account logins and scan those IPs with nmap automatedly for open RDP, open VNC, open tor ports and you may be able to investigate individually the potential cheaters but you will also find lots of false-positive results of people playing from work legitly, using tor to prevent loss of privacy, and so on.

So cut the fluff short.. there isn't much you can do about it. Enjoy how the game is and if people really love this game they will stop cheating eventually. If they don't all that is going to happen is that someone else will create a bigger and better alternative and people will eventually quit playing EE and it'll be a rinse and repeat situation.

My two cents.

Easy solution is to write some code which keeps track of how fast user types their password... j/k

Bonus! :P

I think Martian is cheating on his diet by sneaking Jr bacon cheese burgers on his way home from work.

Investigate!!

RD probably spit on his burgers too. Those fluffers.

FALSE! martian quit his job!

I highly doubt RD is using this 'RDP' to wall. It seems like this would take time to get logged into someone elses computer. Many RD countries get online in under 10 seconds, faster than I can even type earthempires into my browser, much less load the page and login :P I'd say they just spend a lot of time sitting logged into their country. I'm the easiest country to kill, there is about a 2 hour window per day I can wall. Outside that window a kill run could last 8 hours on me and I still wouldn't wall.

Martain likes the foot long instead!

Easiest eh? I might take that argument. How many times have you died now? Died 5 times now myself. Walled once in 10 seconds on BR because I was chatting in IRC at the time :P

There's a thing called Bookmark and save password. I doubt that would take 10 seconds to log-in.
This RDP stuff is stupid if that's the way to cheat.
Unless they're just using this to avoid the captcha and have some macro or scripts to run.

Since the changes have happened, Walling has changed. Before good walling took skill, now it's more about availability.

Along with the changes, smart phones and text messages are the reason for increased walling.