What got me interested in CyberSecurity? (Part 2)
Quick Recap
In the last post, I talked about the first time I was introduced to exploiting and working my way around a system so I could not only play my favorite game but also have an advantage at it. That was just my first taste! In this post, I’ll be talking about what solidified my interest in tech and security.
All Roads Lead To… Well.. Exploiting.
TankiOnline wasn’t the only online computer game I would play. There was also Wizard101, Animal Planet, Poptropica, and my two favorites, Club Penguin and Roblox. There were a lot of online games I played as you could see. But my main focus today is Club Penguin and specifically Roblox.
“My Penguin Went Clubbing”
Let’s travel back to the good old days. Before a certain company took away my childhood (we all know who), I would be online at Club Penguin every second of the day! It was by far my favorite game. To those who don’t know, Club Penguin was an online game where you’d pick your color penguin and hang out and socialize with other penguins. They featured games, events, tournaments, shops, pets, and more! I won’t get too into it, for more info on the game, I’ll have another post on it. Anyways, the game had shops where you could buy clothes and pets (puffles). If you were on at the right time you could buy a limited edition item that you could flex on your fellow penguins with. Which led me to want the rare clothes that I too could flex with. So I did just that. I went to certain sites where all you had to do was enter your username and password (I know, super stupid to do, but I was like nine years of age at the time) and select the item you wanted to give your penguin, and it would give it to you. The next time you log into your account, that item would be there! It also worked the same with coins and whatnot. That experience made me want to cheat the system all the more. That’s when we get to the Roblox era…
“Robux’s And RPG’s Are All You’ll Ever Need…”
Skipping the overview since everyone already knows this game… I used to play this game religiously. More than Club Penguin and Tanki! I’ve been playing since I was a kid. For a little over a decade actually. My favorite type of games I played on the platform were the RPG games. Specifically “Gear’s Online RPG”. These games were pretty much sword-fighting games. Not much to it. Fight monsters, get rewards, buy cool gear, and repeat. However, if you were in the game early enough, there were limited edition items you could acquire that were quite frankly OP as heck! They were so cool to me! One day a player joined the server and he had been giving away these cool limited edition items. I had wondered how he had so many considering the rarity and the fact that everyone had a limited inventory space that this guy was well exceeding. I asked him, and he told me that he had found a dupe glitch that allowed him to multiply his items seamlessly. He then taught me how to do it, and I’ve been hooked since!
So It Begins…
Ever since that dupe glitch, I devoted my summer nights to gaining an unfair advantage on any game I played on that platform. I eventually came across injectables, such as script executers and gui’s. I learned about ‘JJSploit’, ‘ThunderMods’, and the legendary ‘Synapse’. Instead of doing basic duplication methods, I was using these new tools to change the values of my character and the game as a whole. I found how to access the games library and manipulated everything to my advantage. For example, let’s say I found the speed variable, I would change the value to 300 instead of the usual 25. Or when I would find a weapon, I’d find the ID and input it into my script to execute to get the item for free. I learned quite a bit about the Lua environment. It also taught me a significant amount of reverse engineering (in game terms). I kept this up for years.
“The Dark Meets The Light”
All exploitation must come to an end at some point. It did for me when I woke up one morning to my account being permanently banned. I was devastated. All my hard work to make my gameplay easy left me with a sadness that still hasn’t quite left me. My OPSEC was also complete freaking garbage though. It was a miracle that I was able to go so long without being noticed. I did all of that on my main account with no form of secrecy whatsoever. It was fun while it lasted.
What I Learned.
All of that taught me so much though! I found a passion for software and exploitation. I learned programming languages, reverse engineering, and ways to bypass a system. It was around that age when my mother first mentioned to me about cybersecurity. Funny enough I had no idea that existed until that very moment. I just did what I did because I loved it, and it gave me a sense of ‘adrenaline’. Where my heart is really at is Malware engineering and analysis. But to come to that realization, I had to go through my “exploit era” and learn new things.
Thanks For RŠµading!
Thank you for taking the time to read my posts. I’ll be posting more topics in depth about game exploitation. I might even make it into a series. But until then, Goodbye!
Pretty cool!