Re: To Digex and ALL Galaxy GMs!

From: bampton@cs.utk.edu (Howard the Energizer)

Date: Wed, 07 May 1997 00:00:00 +0000

In article <5kogeh$o4d@access4.digex.net> jdc@access4.digex.net (John Cochran) writes:
>In article <336E825E.A32C117C@ix.netcom.com>,
>Eric Bales  <alai@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

Just to make my bias on this issue obvious up front, this is the
policy in my games. I mail this (along with a lot of other notes) to
all players in my games.

It is possible to "spoof" the programs and read other people's turn
reports, or fake messages from them. Anyone caught doing this may be
ejected from the game. I have not gone to great lengths to prevent
spoofing because I'd rather spend the effort on making the game better.

Thankfully, I've never had anyone attempt such actions in the 4 years
or so I've run games.

>>It has been brought to the attention of this GM that one of
>>the players in galaxy columbus has been forging orders for
>>other races.

>>This player has been removed from the game, and blacklisted
>>from all future games.

>I am that "menace" to the community that Mr Bates is refering to.
>I apologize for disruption to Mr Bates game.  However, I request
>that anyone interested read what follows.

>Keep in mind, that there are Galaxy variants that do not have
>passwords implemented.  Those variants would fall under the
>classification of security = none.  There are also variants that
>do have passwords.  These variants would fall under the classification
>of security = optional.

>To my way of thinking, you can have 3 levels of security in a game;
>None, Mandatory, or Optional.

>None - There are no passwords or other security measures.  Because of this
>       any attack that involves security is outside the scope of the game
>       and must be considered illegal.

Agreed.

>Mandatory - Because security is required, security based attacks
>       will fail and therefore are not used. Galaxy could be modified
>       to have mandatory security if an initial password was assigned
>       to each player on the turn 0 report and if the "Y" command
>       always required a password.
>
>Optional - Security measures are used or not used at the discretion of
>       each player.  This implies that a player's decision about security
>       affects their position in the game.  You can decide to not build
>       warships to defend your worlds.  Does this mean that you can
>       legitimately complain if another player invades them?
>       You can also decide to not use available security measures.
>       Does this also mean you can legitimately complain if someone
>       else exploits your lack of security?
>
>In any game that has optional security, I will ALWAYS use it to prevent
>attacks of this nature. This is only prudent.

From a player's perspective, I will agree that your points are not
baseless. However, having GM'd 9 games (give or take), and playing in
even more than that, I would strongly disagree with you-

1) Most std. galaxy games have either no order checker, or a horribly
primative one[1]. The error rate for orders in Blind games, which is
about (90%+) as good as a real turn report is pretty high- on the
order of 50%. Even experienced players in my games manage to botch the
subject line or #galaxy line. Most players would just as soon not have
one more magic cookie that they have to type in (and risk getting
wrong), at least so I assume.

2) Many new players have a _lot_ of trouble figuring out the game. You
are suggesting forcing them to make use of a feature that really
doesn't gain them anything. As a player, I'd rather have opponents
that are learning to make use of fleets, intercepts and the like than
have finally mastered how to set their password but haven't produced a
ship yet... [2]

3) I personnaly think that passwords add nothing to the game, and one
should be able to assume a safe and secure line of communication from
my HQ to my units.

>If anyone thinks that war is nothing more than moving forces from one
>place to another, I would suggest reading the following (either translations
>or the original).

Using your reasoning, I suspect I could justify trying the following
tactics to win in galaxy games[3]:

1) Forge orders for empires that have never submitted orders (they
are obviously not going to ask the GM about problems).
  2) Examine the Galaxy code for programming erorrs and exploit them.
[Ex: A certain 4-1 ratio is in fact 3.9840637-1 in many galaxy
versions.]
  3) Obtaining an account on the machine that runs the game so you can
examine game related files which the GM has left unprotected.
  4) Comprimising the security of the machine running the game so you
can change orders to your liking or "lose" an opponent's orders.

In summary, I agree with Eric's decision that you did the wrong thing.
I would sugggest to other Galaxy (or other PBM/PBeM games) GMs where
this is technically possible, that they determine what their policy is
in this regard for their games ahead of time and inform their players.
Where feasible, logging of what goes to your server in some human
accessible manner is a Good Thing when running games for this reason
as well as others.

Howard

[1] Galaxy-NG appears to be close to Blind's, or so I've heard. Galaxy
3.56 (or whatever the next version will be), may have the abilty to
have a forecaster as well.

[2] Well, unless I am trying to get in the Galaxy Hall of Fame. Then I
want them to not be very good. (:-)

[3] I personally think that none of these are acceptable behaviour,
and when a fault surfcaces in the Galaxy code, I attempt to fix it.

--
$1000 plus $1 per byte fee for proofing commercial mail sent to me.
Howard Bampton   bampton@cs.utk.edu     http://www.cs.utk.edu/~bampton/
System Administrator, Stibo Datagraphics

References

To Digex and ALL Galaxy GMs!
Eric Bales <alai@ix.netcom.com>
Mon, 05 May 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: To Digex and ALL Galaxy GMs!
jdc@access4.digex.net (John Cochran)
Tue, 06 May 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

To Digex and ALL Galaxy GMs!
Eric Bales <alai@ix.netcom.com>
Mon, 05 May 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: To Digex and ALL Galaxy GMs!
jdc@access4.digex.net (John Cochran)
Tue, 06 May 1997 00:00:00 +0000