A nice blog post written on the MapleGlobal website. It seems they have some cool features in store for all you maplers and maybe pirates (hint, hint) and it looks like they’re taking another a vacation. Or not!

I tried to edit some of the question marks that replaced all the correct punctuation (i.e. quotes, commas, apostrophes, etc.) so it isn’t annoying to read.

Hey everyone,

What a year thus far! Ariant, Masteria, PQs, Leafre, 4th Job, Horntail, MTS, Solo Dungeons, iTCG, new bosses and a ton of new features…

And, that’s it. We’ll be on vacation!

KIDDING!

Despite a few setbacks this year, we’ve accomplished much and added massive amounts of content, features, and event prizes—at this rate we?ll have to give away Prose?s Yeti! One would think that with everything we’ve updated, we don’t have much left in the tank to finish. We do. In fact, the next few months ARR going to be big. Huge. Enormous. Gigaterrific.

One of the areas that w’?ve sort of neglected in the past months has been the website. No longer. With the ever increasing list of new NPC’s, monsters, worlds, quests, and so on, we thought it would be helpful to provide a more comprehensive game library. (You guys know we have a Game Library section, right? It’s under GUIDE, just in case.) So, today, we have updated the NPC guide section. You can search by their names and find out where they’re located at. We’ll be updating the other game library sections soon—monsters, areas, and a few other things that you won?t be able to find anywhere else.

We have so many great surprises ready for you guys, it’s hard to keep my lips sealed, we’re going to finish off 2008 with a bang!

GM humor:

3 Maplers, low on health and potionless sought to escape the mighty Papulatus. They reached a small cave, where they found three boxes that would cover their appearance. One of the Maplers had an idea:

?If we hide in these boxes, we can escape from spit-curl face, and make it back to town!?

The other two agreed, and they quickly hid. Before long, Papulatus warped inside the cave, and began to examine the boxes. He bumped the first box, with the first Mapler inside, and heard, “Woof!”

Papulatus said, “Odd. A husky without its master? Not what I seek.”

He went to the next box, bumped it with the second Mapler inside and heard, “Meow?”

Papulatus said, Hmm. A kitty without its master? Not what I seek?

He went to the last box, and bumped it. No noise. Puzzled, he bumped it again. Nothing.

He bumped harder, and heard: “Mesos?”

richan asked me to inform all of you of his scan of NEXON’s “Search and Seizure” notice. For anyone who had any doubts about OdinMS being sued, here’s your proof.

Discuss.

Hi there Maplers,

I have some very serious news. As you all know, it costs money to run a website. The Maple-News Network is run on a dedicated server by our good friend Joey, who runs Ducky Hosting. Our server dues were due yesterday. Thanks to a good samaritan who will remain nameless, the cost was covered for this month. Our server costs at whopping $395.00 USD. Our server runs Maple-News and our various sister-sites. What does this mean? We need your help.

Maple-News has made it through for another month, but we need to help Joey out a bit. We’re asking you guys to please help keep the website up by clicking on our google ads (on the bottom right) once or twice a day. Please don’t “spam every ad” as we will be removed from AdSense if that happens. If you have some spare money, please Donate. Every cent counts. Donors get special privileges which can be found on the donate page as well. We would not ask this if we weren’t in dire need. Our next server dues are due October 20th, 2008. Any help is most appreciated.

Thank you.

-Savage and the Maple-News Network Staff-

I spoke with richan formerly of OdinMS. He reiterated that nothing was new with the OdinMS lawsuit, but asked me to do him a favor and tell you all about a blog he just started. The blog is new, but richan will be updating it more and more as time goes on.

To stay updated with the OdinMS Case, you can check out richan’s OdinMS Blog Here. You can continue to help

Yesterday a short update was posted on the OdinMS site.

Update (09/19/08): We just want to let you know that we are still there and the situation hasn’t changed very much during the last two months. Our lawyers are currently waiting for access to the records which may still take some time. We will update you with more information as soon as possible, so check back once in a while. Thank you for your support.

It seems like this is going to take a while.

This video was made by maple-news network productions and its are good-bye odinms. Please enjoy and comment!

It will be uploaded to youtube because, its to big to upload on the site.

Good Bye OdinMS

Hi there Maple-News viewers!

Savage here just hoping to get some feedback from you all! Rather than making a poll, I’m trying the more direct approach if you don’t mind. We’ve noticed that a lot of you don’t use our forums…which worries us. We notice the familiar names who comment on our news posts and we’re eager to start a strong community here at Maple-News, a community in the form of a forum.

So, I’d like to pose a question to all of you. We’ve been working on developing a built in forum for the MNN site. This means that you would not have to sign up again on a forum, rather, you could sign up on the Maple-News site as a subscriber, and immediately access your account by clicking the “forum” link. This forum of course, would not be as high tech and fancy as our current one, but it would be easier for those of you who don’t like signing up a lot.

We would appreciate if anyone would share their thoughts on this matter. We want to make a forum that you guys will all use.

-Savage

Hey there guys, Savage here.

I just wanted to make an announcement about our friends at TheNEXGame.net. TheNEXGame.net has been down for a month or so for numerous reasons but there have been some big changes and they’re now up and running!

If you’re into foruming and talking with other maplers about the hottest MapleStory issues issues like, Private Servers, MapleGlobal, MapleSEA, other MapleStory versions, and even other video games we encourage you guys to check them out at www.TheNEXGame.net.

-Savage

Two posts posted on PlayPark Forums (AsiaSoft Forums) by two AsiaSoft staff members are as follows.

September 12, 2008

Dear Maplers,

We understand your frustrations regarding the recent irregularities and problems faced while playing MapleSEA, and sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused to all players.
Recent in-depth investigations have revealed that we were under attack originated from China and to combat this problem, we have since upgraded our system and have taken the following measures:

1. Consulted and engaged experts from various technological and gaming fields
2. Blocked all IP addresses from China to prevent further hacking
3. Upgraded and reinforced the security systems within our game servers

Your understanding and feedback are essential to us, and will greatly assist us in monitoring our security enhancements. If you are still experiencing issues, please do not hesitate to contact us through Qbox and we will work to address your concerns.

-AsiaSoft Administrator

September 13, 2008

Quote:
Originally Posted by [Mapler]-LyNx- View Post
frankly, other than laying security measures
AsiaSoft should make appropriate compensations to the victims of hacking
They will need some time to study this and see how are they able to help the victims. I hope you all understand, there are numerous amount of false reports as well. They will need to see thru all the cases reported and see who are the real victims.

Quote:
Originally Posted by FireOGG View Post
can i know china still attacking the server now?
As what i know, the progress was encouraging in fighting off the attacks. So i think they did well at “defending” now.

We will continue to update you as new information comes along.

Dear users,

First I’m back from moving and such but that’s not why I’m posting this. There has been some recent news with MapleSEA and china. China has been hacking into MapleSEA SQL database’s stealing information about users in the game. Here are some recent information i found.

Dear Maplers,

We
understand your frustrations regarding the recent irregularities and
problems faced while playing MapleSEA, and sincerely apologise for the
inconvenience caused to all players.
Recent in-depth
investigations have revealed that we were under attack from China and
to combat this problem, we have since upgraded our system and have
taken the following measures:

1. Consulted and engaged experts from various technological and gaming fields
2. Blocked all IP addresses from China to prevent further hacking
3. Upgraded and reinforced the security systems within our game servers

Your
understanding and feedback are essential to us, and will greatly assist
us in monitoring our security enhancements. If you are still
experiencing issues, please do not hesitate to contact us through Qbox
and we will work to address your concerns.

-AsiaSoft Administrator

http://www.maplesea.com/intro/news/newsdetail.aspx?id=110

Well as you read it heres a story of a victim. (I can not mention name)

My story of how i got hacked by a China.

On the night when I was hacked, my friend (H333rmit) saw one of his
friends online at about 4-5am. He called him, no reply. Getting
suspicious, he tracked his friend and followed him. His friend’s char
entered cc6 fm rm6, and he found him to be trading with a guy called NaiveRange. When the hacker saw him enter the room, his friend’s char straight logged out, leaving only NaiveRange and himself in the room. NaiveRange
then kept cc-ed as my friend tracked him. In the middle of it, he saw
my char (DarkTensei) enter a room with the hacker also. And he used my
char to say something weird ” i am a hacker, u have to follow me, and i
respect u , steal.” <<< totally broken english.

The nxt morning when i logged in, i discovered that my mesos read “0″.
I then realised that i got hacked. But all my items and eq were still
intact. I asked my BL whether anyone saw me logged in last night. That
was when H333rmit told me the story and asked me to read his forum
thread.

Following that, i tracked NaiveRange. He was online in FM for almost
the whole day (i tracked him at cc4, cc2 fm). At around evening, he
started to station himself at cc1 fm, and stayed there until 11pm +.
After that, he moved to cc4 fm rm6.
That was when i thought he was going to start hacking ppl’s accounts. I
told one of my friends about this, and i asked him to use his noob acct
to try to spy on the hacker.
A few minutes passed, nothing happened. Then, i suggested to my friend
to ask him go “chat” with the hacker to find out more information.
Below are some of the screenshots of the chats (it seems broken up
because my friend did not send me the full set of ss, i will post them
up if i manage to get all.)

My friend is talking to him using hanyu pinyin because the hacker doesnt seem to understand english very well….
This gives us a hint of where is might be from =x
My friend’s ign is erased off because he wants to remain anonymous.
From this ss, the hacker asked “ni ye hui?”, meaning “you also know?” means he already admitted himself that he knows how to hack.

[/url]

My friend disguised himself as a fellow hacker to gain his trust.
At the last part of the first ss, the hacker said “wo kan dao ni mi ma le“, meaning “I saw your password.”
My friend didnt believed the hacker knew, and asked him to tell him his password.
The hacker spelled out the whole bloody password, without any mistakes.
The password is censored by my fren, for obvious reasons.
The hacker even attempted to teach my friend to hack(yao bu yao xue, yao xue wo jia0 ni) -.-

After all these information that i got, i made the few following deductions:

1. The most glaring and obvious one is that the hacker is able to retrieve your user id/password just by knowing your IGN.
Trust me, this is the first time my friend made contact with the hacker
using this account, and his account did not get hacked before. I don’t
know how the hacker does it, but according to my this same friend(a
retired software engineer), the hackers seem to have full access to maplesea’s SQL database server. <<< i am not sure wad it means, just quoting my friend.

In easier terms, the hacker could be doing the following:

Step1: Obtain IGN through normal means(fm, rankings, wadever.)
Step2: Access SQL database servers using external hack program.
Step3: Enter IGN. Links to account ID/password in database.
Step4: Retrieve ID and password.
Step5: Log into game client using the retrieved id/password normally.
Step6: Transfer mesos/items to own legitimate account.
Step7: Log off. You are screwed.

2. It seems that the previous rumours about the reasons of
getting hacked ( namely, logging in to asiasoft passport/topping up
cash/looting items in fm grounds/buying items from shops) are unfounded. Because
the problem lies in the loophole of the database server, that allows
the hackers to retrieve data from it just by knowing your IGN.

3. Changing your password or wad probably does not have any use. The hacker can still access ur newly-changed password.

3. The hackers camp FM to look for targets to hack. Have you all realised that those who got hacked are mostly ppl who shopped at fm and set up shops?
I myself set up a shop and surfed fm frequently the few days before i
got hacked. Just put yourselves in the shoes of a hacker. There are so
many accounts. You cant possibly hack them all. Of course you will
choose the ones that look rich, and probably active.

4. The hackers themselves probably don’t play maple. Why do i come to
this deduction? Because from wad i know, the people who got hacked in
the first few days lost all their items and mesos. After that,
gradually, ppl lost their mesos only.
Even the godly and nice nice items, some were left intact. My guess is,
after hacking so many accounts, their slots were full, they can only
hold mesos. And they dun take the godly items because they don’t know
it’s godly. If u are a hacker who maples, why would u choose to hack
70m worth of mesos, but leaving a tma126 widam staff behind?

Measures you can take to reduce your chances of getting hacked

1. Try to stay low profile. Try not to mega too much, or set up shops in fm. The hackers are watching.

2. This is a bit extreme, but i think staying 24/7 online on ur character will prevent u being hacked.

3. Look out for one another! If you see your friend’s
character logging in at weird timings or behaving suspiciously, track
him/her! My friend (H333rmit) has found out the IGN of one of the
hackers in Delphinus by tracking his BL who behaved suspiciously. I
dunno how many are there, there shld be many. Other worlds shld follow
the same steps and try to find out the hackers’ IGNs! Once you all find
out, it makes it troublesome for them to hack, and it might make them
give up, you will nv know. Unity is strength, guys.

4. Transfer away ur mesos and items to newly created accounts and IGNs. Do not keep it in high profile characters. You nv know when the hackers will change their methods of finding their targets.

In the light of all this, i hope that Asiasoft can do a double or
triple check on the security measures of it’s servers and database.
Don’t tell us there is nothing wrong, THERE IS STILL SOMETHING WRONG! PEOPLE ARE STILL GETTING HACKED EVERY NIGHT! I know you guys are working hard, we all want this saga to end asap.
Mods, hope the above information helps a bit.

Maple Sea thinks people are getting hacked from the fake Asia passport sign-up page! Here’s a idea.

With regards to fears arising due to DNS poisoning and fake Asiasoft
Passports websites. Please make sure that you only login to your
Asiasoft Passport if you see the Asiasoft Passport Certicate. Only the
true and original Asiasoft Passport will contain the certificate. Any
phishing or fake websites created to mimic us and steal players’
information will not contain the certificate.

Below is how you can identify the original Asiasoft Passport.

1) Make sure that the URL of the Asiasoft Passport begins with “Https” and not “Http”. The “s” symbolizes a secured website.

2) Right click on the website and choose “Properties”

3) Click on “Certificate”

4) Make sure you see the certificate as shown below. Fake websites will not be able to produce this certificate.

Do NOT login to the passport should the certificate as shown above is not available.

Well thats all for now remember all this news was brought to you by xbrahaxz and Maple-News.

(Do you have any idea of how maple sea users are getting hacked? Well email us now giving us your idea and supporting idea’s to help us solve the case!