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Would SMS verification reduce the botting problem?
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The most it may do is cause the botters to add another step to their account creation tools, but once that's done they can make accounts just as fast as they do now.
I'm thinking there is a limit to the number of numbers you can get a hold of. Anyone can create millions of emails off their own email server or even gmail, but can someone do the same thing with phone numbers?
I have used online SMS services, but I had to go through hoops just to get more than one. And since many of them were shared, it would be useless if it was already used. There were paid services that would give you your own phone number, but I don't know if creating my own number was an option.
But let's say they could get as many numbers as they wanted as long as they paid for it. If a hacker has to spend $20 per character or even $1 per character, that might be a huge cost that would make it less cost-effective to run thousands of bots.
I haven't used google voice before, but it looks like you need a google account and a US phone number to actually get a google voice number. A hacker that's planning to create thousands of phone numbers would probably be dealt with by google themselves, which means less work for nexon.
The only hurdle here is implementation.
When these code monkeys make money off of said thing and plenty of tools already exist for abusing said verification methods, yes they will.
You can easily download free and open source tools for bypassing most of the suggested methods for verification. It will not work.
They only make cheap money due to lax barriers, this game isn't much a gold mine for them to set up a dedicated phone line in order to break even. So no they won't.
These 'free and open source' verifiers are usually low quality shared services that can be filtered out of the system (as most companies already do). The time, effort and money it takes to get a reliable server for phone verification is considerable for botters requiring hundreds of accounts per second.
All these statements that 'hackers can simply do X' are therefore based on empty assumptions and simply amount to a fallacy.
Can you describe a free and open source tool that can
1. bypass SMS verification?
2. more importantly, do it at scale? 100 numbers? 1000 numbers? 10000 numbers?
There are many ways to get a dozen phone numbers. Twilio, Google Voice, looking up burner numbers online, etc, but I think the number of phone numbers available is tiny compared to the number of emails that can be generated by throwaway email servers.
Maybe in the beginning, there's a million numbers available. But after a few months, that number will likely dwindle. Ban a couple hundred thousand accounts a week, and that's already a million phone numbers after 3 months.
There are tools that can do that, yes. Just look on github. Really people, it's not nearly as air tight as you think.
The number of banned accounts thing would be what really kills it. You run into the problem of every phone number under the sun being blocked from Nexon accounts though.
Remember that Korean MMOs are backed by real world data as well (KSSN) and they still have hackers.
It might slow them down, but it certainly won't stop them.
https://leagueofbetting.com/north-korea-hacks-south-korean-mmo-to-fund-nuclear-weapons-program/
If every problem could be solved by pretty words and likes, facebook would've cured cancer a decade ago.
Can you link a github example that you have seen that would be an effective bypass against SMS verification, for farm bots?
Having every phone number under the sun being blocked is not really a problem.
The goal is precisely to slow them down, not to stop hacking completely. I think you have a very different goal in mind.
yes the goal its to slow down/lower the amount of hackers
KMS does that, there is hackers in KMS aswell no one can stop that but they dont giveup because that
in GMS maplestory feels opposite
even when you google maplestory you get meso sellers,hacks offers as normal thing
ranking are full with them (weekly ban data just show 50% of them)
go ingame and find elite boss you will see 20+ kaisers and kannas botting 24/7
even top 10 mail providers requests phone number ( yea sure there is some shady providers that dont but why work with those lol )
i dont understand why nexon ignores request of phone number still... small thing that can help more then broken autoban and support system that is spamed by hackers
i dont see nexon loseing if they add this option even if there is no benefit worth the try
also is sad to hear long time nexon workers leaving (some that actuly know the game
I don't know what you think you have in mind, but you may want to check your math there, sport.
Today there are fake programs. such as phone, email, voice recognition, SMS via Google Play Store programs and other websites, this is the problem, many hackers will use these methods to continue in the game and legitimate players who have 2 or 3 optional accounts would be affected, adding this would be a catastrophe because simply nexon is not prepared for this, maplestory .. no .. nexon .. practically became ubisoft and others like Activision, Depp silver and gearbox and other companies for disaster in their games help their communities etc etc
Forgive my language but I think that returning to the old game launcher, an online gm system in the game , a game guard with updates every day as an example does steam or blizzard , programs antibots as have in kms will solve this in one part
Why remove nexon launcher? because it has unnecessary processes and is badly programmed with a blackciper that never worked and this due to the increase in the game of cheats, hackers, files in the folder for example mob.map are damaged and are used by them, note separately the high use of cpu and memory ... with crash lag and unjustified bans results in the end, that the game is abandoned
I won't link to one as that's highly questionable, but there are account creation programs designed to bypass SMS verification.
You can look for them on your own if you care so much for them. My goal isn't to stop hackers completely.
My goal is to slow them down without hurting legit players. SMS verification isn't very secure. Plenty of players don't want Nexon having their information, either.
I've said in the past that phone verification would work to some degree, but that I oppose it.
SMS verification would be a solution going forward. Existing accounts would not require verification. So these "plenty of players" that have been doing fine for years don't need to worry about giving nexon their information.
SMS verification isn't very secure because anyone can get a number, but there is a reasonable limit to the number of phone numbers that someone would be able to get ahold of before they start running into problems.
And it's not like someone's going to be able to use my phone number, get the verification code, and then have my account banned.
Yes, but there isn't an unlimited number of phone numbers available like there is with emails.
If a legitimate player wants to create a second or third account, nexon can allow a single number to be associated with 2 or 3 accounts. Perhaps have a cooldown where you can create a second account after a week or two weeks. If a number is banned, then of course you would not be able to use that number again.
Is there an issue with the math?
For example you would never say something like "WHY EVEN LOCK YOUR DOOR IT'S NOT 100% EFFECTIVE PEOPLE CAN STILL BREAK IN AND STEAL YOUR STUFF." There is value in making things harder. The catch is that nexon also needs to be careful not to make things too restrictive for legit players.
Considering "every phone number under the sun" would encompass those of legit players, yes I'd say "an issue with the math" is a loose description of things.
Only a handful of legitimate players would be affected by hackers going online looking for phone numbers, and I suspect it would be limited to players that do not have a phone number and therefore need to use the same services.
I doubt you nor I would be affected by hackers getting every number out there banned.
Also I doubt hackers would be going anywhere near "every phone number under the sun".
even mails providers like outlook,gmail makes you to have a phone number it also makes the accounts more safe and eazy to recover
just like you said
also nexon can ban from useing sus mail providers and mobile cell phone carriers that mass produce them without verify your info
i dont know why they make big deal of it when everyone uses one to get to verify things allready
and yes it wont stop hackers sure there will be allways way around but wont be so many each week