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Be Careful When You Download Co-op Mods! Some Can Steal Your CD Key!

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Saw this over @ gonegold.com forums

Quote:
Please take the moment to read carefully the story below as a co-op modification may affect your CD-Key permanently. Do not download any mods without being certain.

Couple days ago a mod that would allow co-op in Doom 3 was released which supposedly wasn't finished. However after several members from PlanetDoom gave it a test, they've recently discovered that their cd key was now listed as "Already in Use". All of what this mod seems to do is display single player maps in the map list and crashes the host whenever a player attempts to join. Obviously, from now on it is believed that this is not a mod at all but more of a cd-key stealing program, so please be aware next time about what you download.

This news was submitted by SgtEversman from FPSC, edited by me for the public and thanks to him for warning the community. Feel free to comment and discuss maturely.

Source: SgtEversman

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Thanks for posting that. Geez, what a shame. It's only been out for a few days and already there are jerks out there trying to ruin it...Are there any Co-op mods out there that are legit?

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oy, fun stuff here... stickied because this is pretty important to know and lots of people were bitching about lack of co-op (and thus will jump on the first co-op mod they see)

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How is this even possible? The coop mod is a zipped pk4 file and inside the pk4 file is a map.def. All the map.def does is make sp maps deathmatch so they can be run in mp.

I've had the coop mod since last night and I can still play mp with my cd-key fine.

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Revenant100 said:

How is this even possible? The coop mod is a zipped pk4 file and inside the pk4 file is a map.def. All the map.def does is make sp maps deathmatch so they can be run in mp.

I've had the coop mod since last night and I can still play mp with my cd-key fine.


There is more then 1 co-op mod available, no doubt the one you have is a legit one, but it seems as though there are other "co-op" mods that steal cd keys and don't work as a co-op mod at all.

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Well, I downloaded a coop mod from that site. I'm not taking any chances though, I'm gonna re-install my game. I wasn't that far in the game anyways :-/

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Silent you could probably move your savegame directory someplace else before reinstalling.

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Thanks for the warning, but which co-op mods are legit and which are not?

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just an idea what if someone who doesnt have the coop mod joins your server.does it send the the whole folder including your key stored in the coop folder?

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Epyo, I barely past the beginning. I'll just fly through what I've done already and catch up where I left off. Besides, I've done it once, I suppose it will be easier a second time. And the extra practice couldn't hurt :-)

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Dron said:

Thanks for the warning, but which co-op mods are legit and which are not?


Until we know FOR SURE which ones are actually legit and which are not, then don't download any. I'm sure eventually a co-op mod will be released with a bunch of cool features that will become the standard co-op mod, that isn't a hack one.

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The game just came out about three days ago and now there are fag's trying to stuff it up already.

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You know it was a Microsoft employee who created this mod. In order to make people too affraid to play a co-op mod for the PC version. That way more people will buy the x-box version for the co-op.

Just kidding of course. :)

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Well I want a cco-op mod for lan parties, so I would like to know the legit ones. Damn cd key stealing fuckers.

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WTF? What a bunch of losers. Stealing keys???

Thanks for the warning. I downloaded it, but did not open it yet.

I will delete it when I get home.

BTW - It is a very small file.

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yes it was a small file, I made a post in a No Co-op thread I started, and I questioned then the size of the .pk4 file. It did seem small for a co-op mod. I know mod's can be relatively small at times.

Thanks for the info, I believe the one listed in the thread:

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=450575#post450575

Is legit...If not just me and my friend testing it was the only ones that ever joined it to try it out. It was passworded from get go so I don't htink my cd-key has been nabbed.

But yea thanks for the warning...I won't be downloading another co-op mod for awhile until we all know there's a legit one out there.

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So for this to steal your key, you have to actually put it in the doom 3 folder right? Because I downloaded the zip but never actually bothered to try it out.

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You'd think id would have learned a lesson from the Quake 3 cd key stealing trojans and simply not store the key in an unencrypted file in the first place. Sure, that still wouldn't have made it impossible to steal, but it would have made it take longer for the theft to have any serious impact.

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Fileplanet and d3files.com are the trusted sites. Don't download from any other locations if you want to stay secure.

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I don't know why those jerkstores don't just use a cd key gen and a cracked .exe. If they're going to do illegal crap they might as well do something that doesn't piss on other people's parades. Heh, I wonder if id knows about this. I'm sure there's a legal disclaimer that says they've no interest or responsibilities in third party mods and what they do to the customer.

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They want to play on the public servers with legit cd keys rather than play on private servers with the reloaded cd key

S1lent said:

Well, I downloaded a coop mod from that site. I'm not taking any chances though, I'm gonna re-install my game. I wasn't that far in the game anyways :-/

If you ran the stealer then your cd key is already stolen. Re-installing isn't going to help you in any way at all.

Mastaba said:

You'd think id would have learned a lesson from the Quake 3 cd key stealing trojans and simply not store the key in an unencrypted file in the first place. Sure, that still wouldn't have made it impossible to steal, but it would have made it take longer for the theft to have any serious impact.

It's still more secure than just storing the key in the registry like most games do.

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No idea if this will help prevent that specific exploit, but in XP Pro you can encrypt files so that they can only be read by that machine. Right click on the file doomkey --> Properties --> hit the advanced tab down near the bottom right --> check the box next to 'Encrypt contents to secure data'. I am not sure if XP Home has this feature.

This would only work if the exploit tries to send the actual file and not just read the data and then transmit it. It is probably a good idea to do anyway just incase your box does get 0wN3d (not just remotely, like if someone were to get local access to your machine and try to copy the file to a disk and run).

I have done this to my doomkey file and it still works fine on both single and multiplayer.

As people have already suggested, always be careful what you download no matter what protections you may have.

Running firewall software with application level protection would probably have prevented this from happening to those people too. I am guessing that the exploit came as an executable file and would have tried to connect to the internet on its own exclusive of when doom.exe was run.

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