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shanga

El - What A Nice Keylogger

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Here's a nice test for you... I didn't believe this until I saw it with my own eyes...

 

1. Open EL and Yahoo Messenger (didn't test on other messengers)

2. Minimize Yahoo Messenger and move around in EL a bit

3. Have a friend send you a message on YIM so the YIM window pops up

4. Write something on YIM and send it (press ENTER to send)

5. Ooopss... seems what you write in YIM gets written in EL too ... and sent too...

 

I hope someone realizes what an ugly bug this is... and how it can damage any reputation EL devs hold. No one wants to play a game that sniffs private conversations.

Edited by shanga

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Busted. All this time we've managed to hide a keylogger trojan inside an open source game.

 

Seriously though, it may be a bug in SDL.

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Here's a nice test for you... I didn't believe this until I saw it with my own eyes...

 

1. Open EL and Yahoo Messenger (didn't test on other messengers)

2. Minimize Yahoo Messenger and move around in EL a bit

3. Have a friend send you a message on YIM so the YIM window pops up

4. Write something on YIM and send it (press ENTER to send)

5. Ooopss... seems what you write in YIM gets written in EL too ... and sent too...

 

I hope someone realizes what an ugly bug this is... and how it can damage any reputation EL devs hold. No one wants to play a game that sniffs private conversations.

The full source of EL is Open Source and if what you say is true, then its a bug either in SDL, Windows, or YIM. There is no keylogging code, just getting the normal keyboard input from SDL. Since I don't use or even have YIM, I can't test this out myself.

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It did attract your attention, didn't it?

 

I am sure you would've made it more discrete, if it was a keylogger. But nevertheless, the bug is annoying and private conversations should not end up splattered on EL chat.

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Does not work with MSN instant messager. I type in the forums and on the game at the same time. I am doing it right now, in fact. Is a bug in YIM, I think.

Edited by freeone3000

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Is a bug in YIM, I think.

 

Let me say... LOL... LMAO...

 

Ah, and before any smartass replies as "you've got a virus yourself" get posted, this happened on 4 separate PCs in 4 separate locations, following the above steps.

 

The minute the YIM window pops up above EL, everything written there is sent into the game too.

Edited by shanga

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Busted. All this time we've managed to hide a keylogger trojan inside an open source game.

*Wonders how they could all have missed the get_all_messages_from_yim() function...*

 

This must be caused by a bug in SDL or yim. I don't suppose you could try with a newer .dll?

Edited by Wytter

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Busted. All this time we've managed to hide a keylogger trojan inside an open source game.

 

Seriously though, it may be a bug in SDL.

if that was true this post would have been deleted in under one minute :P

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Well, getting past some smart ass attitudes, I'll add that this bug/incompatibilty/whatever doesn't appear on Trillian. Dunno about Gaim.

 

don't suppose you could try with a newer .dll?

 

I actually tried with YIM 6.0 and the freaky text doesn't appear anymore. I'll do more tests in the morning.

Edited by shanga

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It's a bug in your instant messanger client, and/or in windows itself. An application should not recieve the keys from some other application.

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Maybe, maybe not... Dismiss this if you want to, but I had never had YIM send text to MS Word, IRC or any other web game I've played for that matter.

 

It's only up to you to find out or not what caused this. I don't even care, since it's not my name on the game.

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It does this for me for MSN... but I've actually found a keylogger on my computer... I just don't know how to get rid of it... it won't let me delete the file...

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It's only up to you to find out or not what caused this. I don't even care, since it's not my name on the game.

I don't care what causes this, since it's not our problem. It is the problem of the application that send the keys to the wrong window. If you do not like that, then you have 4 options:

1. Contact the makers of those programs and explain them the problem.

2. Do not play Eternal Lands.

3. Do not play Eternal Lands while using the programs that manifest this problem.

4. Use some other OS (AFAIK, there are no problems like that under Linux).

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It does this for me for MSN... but I've actually found a keylogger on my computer... I just don't know how to get rid of it... it won't let me delete the file...

You might wanna look at www.symantec.com for solutions to your keylogger problem, or you can download and runs Spybot search & destroy.

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Guest nully
It's only up to you to find out or not what caused this. I don't even care, since it's not my name on the game.

I don't care what causes this, since it's not our problem. It is the problem of the application that send the keys to the wrong window. If you do not like that, then you have 4 options:

1. Contact the makers of those programs and explain them the problem.

2. Do not play Eternal Lands.

3. Do not play Eternal Lands while using the programs that manifest this problem.

4. Use some other OS (AFAIK, there are no problems like that under Linux).

:D

 

IMHO, it is YOUR problem. I tried other apps (putty, ssh) - "console" based and it does the same thing... now wouldnt it be A BIT weird to contact the makers of those programs too? <_<

 

At least admit it when your're wrong... ;)

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Umm, I'll try to explain what is happening when we get characters in EL as good as I can in a normal language.

 

You see, we use a library called SDL, that acts as a layer between the operating system and the game. It is responsible for drawing what you see in EL from the pictures and shapes we send to it. It is also responsible for getting keystrokes and mouse movements from your OS.

Now, when we're getting key-strokes from that media layer we don't know anything of what's going on on your system - it is an abstraction layer which should ideally mean that we do not have to worry about those things (because there's nothing we can do about it).

 

It is indeed a bug that the keystrokes are being seen by the client as well - but it is simply not our fault, and it only happens on Windows. It is quite likely a bug with either the applications that run above EL, or a bug with SDL - which means that it's not a bug we can do anything about.

Try getting the newest sdl.dll from:

http://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL-1.2.7-win32.zip

 

And see if it behaves in the same way.

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Eeekk!!!

 

I was wrong! It keeps doing it with YIM 6.0, latest version. And it does it, yes, with SSH and putty.

 

Now, SDL or not, it's not the PLAYER'S responsability to fix YOUR game. Any sound minded developer would've hidden been out of view now, trying HIMSELF to see if an updated SDL is needed. This is a statically compiled lib, so I won't even dream of recompiling EL (a mind numbing job in intself) just to see if it works or not.

 

It's a lib in a public version you put up for download. As far as any user is concerned, it's a nice, come-and-get-it, keylogger. Go work for MS if you think this is the way to treat a serious bug report.

 

PS: Si mai zice lumea, domnule Privantu, ca avem programatori buni... bleah...

Edited by shanga

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i am not experiencing any of this under linux, and i regularly type stuff into emacs beside playing.. my guess would be it's an sdl problem. alas i cannot try to confirm it, as i have no windows anywhere here..

 

yoddhar

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Eeekk!!!

 

I was wrong! It keeps doing it with YIM 6.0, latest version. And it does it, yes, with SSH and putty.

 

Now, SDL or not, it's not the PLAYER'S responsability to fix YOUR game. Any sound minded developer would've hidden been out of view now, trying HIMSELF to see if an updated SDL is needed. This is a statically compiled lib, so I won't even dream of recompiling EL (a mind numbing job in intself) just to see if it works or not.

 

It's a lib in a public version you put up for download. As far as any user is concerned, it's a nice, come-and-get-it, keylogger. Go work for MS if you think this is the way to treat a serious bug report.

 

PS: Si mai zice lumea, domnule Privantu, ca avem programatori buni... bleah...

And stop calling it a keylogger because it isn't. If it was a keylogger, do you think it would even display it like this?

 

This is probably a bug in some program loaded on your system, but its very doubtful it is in EL itself. Can you find some other SDL based programs to see if they have similar problems? Have you checked to make sure you don't have a real keylogger or virus in your systems?

 

Also, what version of Windows are you running? What other programs are you running?

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Of course I checked, that was the first suspicion I had. But when the bug was replicated - as I already said - on four different computers, all running updated AV and firewall, it became obvious it wasn't an external program.

 

It is a keylogger since it captures keystrokes it shouldn't. I am not saying it's an "intentional" keylogger, or a vicious one. It's simply poor programming. If it's the SDL or not, as I said, it's not for the user to find out. That is a pathetic excuse. Like MS saying they carry no responsability for OS bugs, since the buffer overflow was there when they begun.

 

I think I've seen too much dissing instead of a decent "ok, we'll fix the bug in the next release" or something. So, no I won't play EL anymore and be sure I won't let anyone I know do such a stupid thing either. Maybe the 13 year olds who worship the devs egos around here don't care if their private info gets spilled over a public chat, but I do.

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