How to keep your IP from showing?

ID:269297
 
May 15 2005, 9:03 am
We've been having problems with our savefiles randomly getting deleted and the world shutting down.

The person hosting has to turn off their firewall in order to host, meaning it's pretty much take advantage of me type of situation...

Yet why are there ways on byond to find the IP ADDRESS of a host?! Seems silly to me... is there a way to stop amature hackers?

I'm not sure exactly what's happening but people have done this for a year now... they'll randomly hack the host and delete the savefiles, and it's not just one guy playing a prank it's been multiple different hosts, of various ages and maturity...
May 15 2005, 9:08 am
Ever consider it's your game doing it? You could try downloading something like the 'dynu basic' package (Google it) to mask your IP. But I highly doubt anyone is doing any 'hacking' here. And no, to host you DO NOT have to totally disable your firewall, you open a single port. And if you're hosting that port is very much in use, so a 'hacker' would have trouble getting in that way.


Summary: It's either somewhere in your programming, or it's the host's own ignorance.
May 15 2005, 9:41 am
In response to Nadrew
no where in my programming (other then a direct verb that deletes and restarts the world) is there anything that deletes savefiles... as in removes them from the drive not just corrupts them. A corruption I could understand. So we'll try the other things you mentioned...
May 15 2005, 2:26 pm
In response to Nadrew
Isn't the hosts address null anyway? I mean in client.address.

Even if someone is hacking, which I highly doubt, they're not getting the hosts address through byond.
May 15 2005, 2:37 pm
In response to Airjoe
If you add a world to your favorites it keeps the IP.

~>Jiskuha
May 15 2005, 4:22 pm (Edited on May 15 2005, 4:28 pm)
In response to Jiskuha
All I know in some form or another someone or something other than the host is doing this.

It's been happening for a very very long time, with different levels of intelligent hosts.

I'm not sure exactly how people do it, but I've seen a program a long time ago where someone was able to edit the variables through an outside program they made of a byond game or something of that sort... given that byond isn't exactly a commercial program yet... I'm sure there's some loop hole or mistake somewhere, since it's only worked on (in the spare time mind you) of only a few brilliant minds.
May 16 2005, 12:41 am
In response to Jon Snow
Perhaps the host deletes the savefiles after every update you give him? I know on alot of computers that when you unzip files to a file already existing, it deletes the existing file and adds the new one to it's place.
May 16 2005, 11:41 am
In response to Jon Snow
Savefiles getting corrupted has happened in the case of certain situations such as a file being read from and written to at the same time. If your game is not careful with savefiles, this can very easily happen.

Anyway, shutting down the entire firewall to open a single port is fairly ridiculous. Any firewall will allow you to configure which ports you need for access.

Lummox JR
May 17 2005, 2:00 am
Jon Snow wrote:
Yet why are there ways on byond to find the IP ADDRESS of a host?! Seems silly to me...

Anyone can use basic networking utilities (usually supplied with their OS) to get the IP of any computer they connect to, including BYOND game hosts. It is how networks know where to transfer data.


is there a way to stop amature hackers?

That's what your firewall was there for. You only need to open the port you host the game on, as Lummox pointed out, and optionally a port for your BYOND pager.