Comment by pizzeys | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pizzeys | Hacker News Reader

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Interesting to see this story here, I didn't know enough of that info was public to even end up here. (You have to be someone I know/know of, right?)

Basically true, though:

- Aryan wasn't the first clientmod, not even the first to deob - probably the first to go fairly 'mainstream' and end up being well known outside the circle of people using it, though (being free probably helped here)

- No legal action, tbh. Well, the same amount of legal action that all of the cheating scene got (some C&D's, domain takedown attempt type stuff at various times, but not the scary kind of legal action in the way other bots got)

- The banwave backdoor did happen, and basically as you say (iirc it was the actual UID but negative, rather than -1) but was more of a conscious decision, there wasn't an 'agreement' beforehand - it was proactively taken. Jagex were informed about it in order to detect it though, as far as I'm aware.

> (You have to be someone I know/know of, right?)

Doubtful. I was just a kid at the time who lurked on forums. Were you involved in the scene? If yes, do you mind if I ask what you ended up doing professionally? RS cheat developers were my role models growing up. I’ve often wondered what members of that community are up to now.

Yep, I used the nick 'Mopman' then, if you remember that name at all. Kind of appropriately for the name, I was mostly a janitor :D Admin @ Moparscape and the public Aryan channels, there's a few commits of mine in the bot but I definitely can't take credit for most of the bot itself, that was other peoples work. I did make few releases of it after the banwave incident you mention, though quickly passed that torch on (it was a lot of hassle, tbh).

Professionally nowadays I'm a pen tester/security consultant.

That's so cool. I'm star struck. I haven't thought about RuneScape in a very long time, but this thread has made me overcome with a bitter sweet sense of nostalgia. I knew so little about programming back then, so people who could manipulate this game I loved with their own code were like gods to me. The whole experience made a very strong impression on me. Thank you!

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