Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Just A Small Token...

There are certain people I hate.

Okay... There are a lot of people I hate.

Lots of them.

Many of them for odd and sometimes plain ridiculous reasons.

But among the many, many, MANY people that I hate, I reserve the upper echelons for a very particular type of person.

Or is it the lower echelons?

Let's just agree that there are echelons.

This is echelon-related hate.

Now, you may be asking yourself who I might reserve such a special level of contempt for.

Murderers?

Rapists?

Octomoms?

No. While these people do deserve advanced levels of loathing, I am very selective in my hating.

This is serious business.

I reserve my deepest hatred for account hackers.

What kind of person would do something like that? To just steal someone's password and then destroy their most cherished characters...

It's inhuman.

Actually, it usually is inhuman. Usually, it's some form of virus you picked up from visiting the wrong websites.

You know what websites I mean.

Naughty, naughty.

Now, some guy in another country has your password, access to your account, and a frightening knowledge of your sexual preferences.

I suppose you could have just saved them time and sent them your birth certificate, credit card numbers, and a blood sample.

Save time for everybody.

So, being the intelligent guy that I am, I actually foresaw his problem years ago. I spent some serious time reading through the game code trying to identify specific security weaknesses.

Also, like every single person ever mentioned it on a forum.

Because it seemed like a big idea, I mentioned it at a staff meeting.

Supervisor>> Any more business?
[GM]Dave>> Yeah.
[GM]Dave>> What if we provided USB keys to protect accounts?
Supervisor>> That sounds difficult.
Supervisor>> Let's say no.

Not to be deterred, I brought it up at the next staff meeting.

Supervisor>> Any more business?
[GM]Dave>> What about those USB keys I suggested?
Supervisor>> I will investigate the matter.
Supervisor>> BWAHAHAHA!
Supervisor>> No.

And that's how it went.

At every staff meeting.

For years.

Supervisor>> Any more business?
[GM]Dave>> USB keys?
Supervisor>> No.
Supervisor>> For the twenty-seventh time...
Supervisor>> No.

I was on a crusade. There was no way I was going to give up on this.

The fact that it drove my supervisor insane had no bearing on it at all.

Supervisor>> Any more business?
[GM]Dave>> I have an idea.
Supervisor>> ENOUGH WITH THE DAMNED USB KEYS!
Supervisor>> NO!
Supervisor>> NO NO NO!
Supervisor>> Now... Any more business?
[GM]Dave>> USB keys?
Supervisor>> I will fly at you like a lemur monkey!

And so it went.

It became our little ritual.

Just like the pills he took right before every staff meeting.

Then, a few days ago, we had another staff meeting. Something was different though...

Our supervisor wasn't there.

NewSupervisor>> Yeah, he won't be back.
NewSupervisor>> He submitted a new idea to corporate.
NewSupervisor>> And he's been given a huge promotion.
[GM]Dave>> ... What idea?
NewSupervisor>> Using USB keys to verify passwords.
[GM]Dave>> ...
NewSupervisor>> It's a really great idea.
[GM]Dave>> I'm going to hurt someone.

Apparently, my former supervisor is now making twice as much money.

His new job is to sit in his office somewhere and come up with genius ideas.

Man, it would be terrible if that office were to burn to the ground.

Just terrible.

17 Comments:

At 7:41 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

0.o
You should call him and continue to ruin his days and make him feel as guilty as inhumanly possible.

 
At 8:00 PM, Blogger Ben Yuscavage said...

You should slap him, steal his money, throw him into some plastic bag, and throw him into a tree and wait for someone to come so you can slap that person, put them in a tree, and put the supervisor there too. And then say it was your idea. And yes this was my idea.

 
At 8:10 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

you mean to tell me that you didnt strangle the new super ...... I would have personally went ape s**t..

 
At 8:14 PM, Blogger J. Scarper said...

Dave, you will fly at him like a lemur monkey. And then you will burn his office down.

And then he'll get a new, bigger office withmore pay for his "trauma". Life sucks that way.

 
At 9:02 PM, Blogger Katherine said...

Well, that's terrible. Happens all the time, which is more terrible, but still. *comfort huggle*

 
At 1:54 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

A sad reflection of Final Fantasy XI's developers when people are promoted from stealing ideas from Blizzard, oh wait...

 
At 5:50 AM, Blogger Martin said...

Yea, Blizz beat you to it again (as they always seem to do :D)

 
At 6:50 AM, Blogger Angelique said...

So where exactly is this office of his?



Just out of innocent curiosity.

 
At 8:00 AM, Blogger Ex Aequo said...

[GM]Dave,

As a fellow oppressor we can only admire your futile attempts at enforcing your dominion.
Seeing that somehow you have managed to enlist quite a following of on-line lambs.

As a fellow writer we would welcome your recognition. Be it as peers or eternal Nemesi.

Ex

P.S.: There will be no handing out of European nations, no matter how small, without my say-so.

 
At 3:48 PM, Blogger jasonx254 said...

Congratulations! You have caught up to WoW's level of acccount security!....pity most of the players are still morons...

 
At 4:35 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's not a USB key it's a keyfob. You push a button and then enter the code displayed on the screen along with your account password when you log in.

If it's the same as Blizzard's (and it looks like it is the exact same VASCO keyfob with an SE logo instead of a Blizzard one) then it contains a clock and some secure encryption hardware along with a unique serial number. It encodes the current time using the serial as the key. SE's servers know how to decrypt this and if the key was generated within the last 30 seconds it will be accepted. One specific fob is tied to your account and only that one can be used to log in with.

Don't worry about RMT cracking this. It's a practical impossibility to break it by looking at the previous passwords (think decades if you had every computer on earth working on it). Even governments are unable to break a properly designed one time password system. The fob itself is tamper resistant and will destroy itself if someone attempts to break into it physically to get at the hardware inside.

 
At 4:58 PM, Blogger Leut said...

If this really did happen and you want to get justice, you probably already know what to do....

....seek legal coucil? Hell no.

Ninjas.

 
At 6:15 PM, Blogger Bufuman said...

So, this awesome idea that you thought up, got him a job where he tries to think up awesome ideas? I see a flaw in this little strategy of his, namely that he's going to get shit-canned when he's unable to think up another awesome idea. The universe will work in mysterious ways.

Unless, of course, other people are dumb enough to give him more awesome ideas.

So, you know what you must now do. Start killing other people.

 
At 4:57 AM, Blogger JAFO said...

Maybe, just maybe...
I know in my little particular corner of hell, there is a minute taker an every meeting jotting down notes...also...there are quite a few other people at these meetings. If you wanted to, you could very easily put 27 meetings worth of transcripts into an anonymous interoffice envelope with the specific lines of text highlighted (we all know upper level managers don't read unless there are pretty colors or pictures involved) and then send it over to whoever promoted him. Take a chance, see what happens.
Either that, or wait until he leaves his office, pop in and send an email to his direct supervisor complimenting their genitals. Maybe make a few suggestions on "getting together" to properly admire them. *optional* refer to melted butter, silk ties and interesting uses for "C" clamps...

 
At 10:47 AM, Blogger shallot said...

I love you so much. You're like the evil version of my geography teacher.

 
At 10:48 AM, Blogger shallot said...

...which is a compliment, in case you were unsure. Not a very good one, but still.

 
At 7:39 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Ya know.. World of Warcraft has been using USB Keys for a while now...

 

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