Crossfire Archive
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

CF: crashing the server

I've found that there are two major ways of cheating that you can do
if you figure out a way to crash the server:

 1. Have two characters, and use the 'save' command to save yourself,
    then hand off your valuables to the other character and save him.
    Then crash the server...  You've doubled all your items--very abusive
    for potions in particular.

 2. Find a map where you can get a lot of experience quickly.  Do so,
    and 'save' yourself.  While your characer is still on that map,
    crash the server.  That will reset that map, allowing you to go
    right back and play the same map again.  (This is also useful for
    abusing treasure rooms.)

Playing 0.93.3, I know of two ways to crash the server:

 1. Telnet to the server, and use the 'name' command to change your
    name, only set it to something several hundred characters long.
    (Some telnet clients will limit your line length, making this
    more difficult to observe.)  This will result in a buffer overflow,
    crashing the server.  I expect that there are a number of other
    similar ways to do the same thing with other commands.

 2. I actually ran into this by accident:  Since you can combine commands
    when binding them to keys, I tried it from a telnet connection:
	add my.host.dom ; quit
    That seemed to crash it instantly.  Possibly it's just another buffer
    overflow error, but it looks a little different.

Maybe someone should test these and see if they do the same thing on the
newer versions.  I'm don't see a good way of fixing those cheats other than
to eliminate all means of remotely crashing the server.

--PC
[to unsubscribe etc., send mail to crossfire-request@ifi.uio.no]