WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.120 JACK: One year, I went to Defcon, the annual hacker conference, and at Defcon, 00:00:05.120 --> 00:00:10.080 there’s something called r00tz. It’s basically Defcon kids, where it’s a whole village set up 00:00:10.080 --> 00:00:14.880 just for kids to learn how to hack. I ducked my head in there to check out the scene. Kids were 00:00:14.880 --> 00:00:21.240 learning how to solder, how to pick locks, how to hack voting machines, and how to hack websites. 00:00:21.240 --> 00:00:28.000 There are talks in this r00tz Village, too, and there was a girl on stage, probably ten years old, 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:33.280 and she was talking about how she hacked a video game on her phone. The game was some 00:00:33.280 --> 00:00:37.800 kind of farming game where you have to plant your seeds and then wait a certain amount of actual, 00:00:37.800 --> 00:00:43.080 real days for the crops to grow. Well, she didn’t like having to wait, so she turned 00:00:43.080 --> 00:00:48.080 the clock forward on her phone and then got back in the game to see if the crops had grown at all, 00:00:48.080 --> 00:00:52.640 but they didn’t. There was some kind of check that the game was using to see if people were 00:00:52.640 --> 00:00:57.760 doing this, but she didn’t stop there. She tried again. This time, she tried turning 00:00:57.760 --> 00:01:03.320 the Wi-Fi off on her phone and then changing the clock. When she opened the game back up, 00:01:03.320 --> 00:01:09.360 boom, all her crops had fully grown. She figured it out; a ten-year-old figured out 00:01:09.360 --> 00:01:17.600 how to hack this farming game, which was one of the coolest talks I’ve ever seen at Defcon. 00:01:17.600 --> 00:01:22.320 (INTRO): These are true stories from the dark side 00:01:22.320 --> 00:01:46.554 of the internet. I’m Jack Rhysider. This is Darknet Diaries. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] 00:01:46.554 --> 00:01:50.560 JACK: Hey friends, I just want to thank you again for being here with me and listening 00:01:50.560 --> 00:01:58.160 to the stuff I create. You, the listener, means the world to me, and I love you. Hey, want to go 00:01:58.160 --> 00:02:03.920 down a rabbit hole with me? There’s some stuff I stumbled into that’s kind of crazy, and you might 00:02:03.920 --> 00:02:08.720 already know about all this, but I didn’t, and I love finding new pockets of crazy stuff happening 00:02:08.720 --> 00:02:18.240 on the internet. So, come along with me and let me show you something. [MUSIC] [RUSSIAN] This 00:02:18.240 --> 00:02:22.280 is an opening clip of a YouTube video called – oh, actually it’s in Russian, 00:02:22.280 --> 00:02:30.360 so I have no idea what it says. Here, let’s see what Google Translate says. [RUSSIAN] Oh, that’s 00:02:30.360 --> 00:02:38.480 weird. Do I know Russian? I think I understood these words. Did it say cheaters, documentary, 00:02:38.480 --> 00:02:46.880 film? Here, listen again. [COMPUTER] Cheater, documentary, film. Cheater, documentary, film. 00:02:46.880 --> 00:02:51.720 Well, now I’m going to make cheatery, documentalni, podcast. [MUSIC] So, 00:02:51.720 --> 00:02:59.760 it came to my attention that – okay, brace yourself – people are cheating in video games. 00:02:59.760 --> 00:03:04.000 Dun-dun-da. It’s probably the most well-known fact about video games, and to be honest, 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:09.280 people have been telling me about this many times, and I was kinda like yeah, of course people cheat; 00:03:09.280 --> 00:03:14.280 duh. In fact, the first hack I ever did was manipulating the Save Game file on Sim City 00:03:14.280 --> 00:03:20.880 and giving myself 999 billion Sim dollars. So, I was just like yeah, who cares about cheaters? 00:03:20.880 --> 00:03:26.000 But someone I was chatting with was like no, no, no, it’s a crazy industry. I still wasn’t 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:30.000 interested; I’m like yeah, of course. Haven’t you heard about Game Genie? I 00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:35.400 really didn’t care because so what if there’s a cheater in a game? It’s just a game. Anyway, 00:03:35.400 --> 00:03:41.720 I finally leaned in to take a look at what this person was telling me, and I was like whoa, what? 00:03:41.720 --> 00:03:46.320 I immediately thought of you, my listener, and how you would probably want to hear about this, 00:03:46.320 --> 00:03:53.120 too. So, let’s get into it. [MUSIC] Now, I’ve been working on this episode for jeez, six months now, 00:03:53.120 --> 00:03:58.760 trying to embed myself in the game cheating community to get an inside look, and I did, sort 00:03:58.760 --> 00:04:03.600 of. I talked with all kinds of people involved in the cheat scene; developers, distributors, 00:04:03.600 --> 00:04:10.440 admins, and players, but I wasn’t able to get any to agree to a voice interview, which was really 00:04:10.440 --> 00:04:15.680 frustrating when you can chat on Discord with someone for hours and hours and day after day 00:04:15.680 --> 00:04:21.000 who are open to just about anything, yet don’t want to have their voice heard. It’s a little 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:26.520 frustrating. This wasn’t one person who turned me down; it was every single person I chatted with, 00:04:26.520 --> 00:04:32.840 so I’m sitting here now just looking at pages and pages of chat dialogue with these people, 00:04:32.840 --> 00:04:39.600 and well, since this is an audio show, hey, why not get a voice actor to read these chat messages? 00:04:39.600 --> 00:04:42.140 ACTOR: How’s my voice sound? Can you hear me alright? 00:04:42.140 --> 00:04:45.220 JACK: Yeah, yeah, this sounds great. Thanks for doing this. 00:04:45.220 --> 00:04:47.626 ACTOR: Yeah, no problem, man. 00:04:47.626 --> 00:04:51.120 JACK: [MUSIC] What he’s going to read for me is kind of a mashup of all the conversations 00:04:51.120 --> 00:04:55.720 I had with a few different people. It’s not just one conversation I had; he’s going to 00:04:55.720 --> 00:05:19.904 read from many different conversations. I’m not so much interested in the actual people who are 00:05:19.904 --> 00:05:32.745 cheating in the games. I’m more interested in the money involved and the battle between developers. 00:05:32.745 --> 00:05:37.960 ACTOR: [MUSIC] So, I’m the admin of a website that provides cheat software for Call of Duty, 00:05:37.960 --> 00:05:41.040 Battlefield, Apex Legends, DayZ, and others. 00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:42.420 JACK: Why do you do this? 00:05:42.420 --> 00:05:45.300 ACTOR: Because people will pay a lot of money for cheats. 00:05:45.300 --> 00:05:49.160 JACK: How much do you charge for, say a cheat in the game DayZ? 00:05:49.160 --> 00:05:56.920 ACTOR: Currently, our public cheats are $29.99 for seven days. 00:05:56.920 --> 00:06:01.360 But we have private cheats too that are reserved for only a few trusted clients. 00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:04.980 JACK: Wait, so you can only use the cheats for seven days? Then what happens? 00:06:04.980 --> 00:06:07.760 ACTOR: Then they have to pay more to keep using it. 00:06:07.760 --> 00:06:12.920 JACK: Oh, okay. First of all, I thought game cheats were free. I didn’t realize people were 00:06:12.920 --> 00:06:17.720 buying them. But not only are they buying them, they’re paying more for the cheat than they are 00:06:17.720 --> 00:06:22.540 for the game itself. I’m extra-surprised that it’s a subscription-based model. 00:06:22.540 --> 00:06:28.080 ACTOR: Yeah, it has to be like that because the game developers are always patching their game, 00:06:28.080 --> 00:06:31.560 which makes it so the cheat doesn’t work. So, 00:06:31.560 --> 00:06:37.000 we need to find a new way to exploit the game. We have to always be developing, which costs money. 00:06:37.000 --> 00:06:39.200 JACK: So, how many people are on your team? 00:06:39.200 --> 00:06:44.840 ACTOR: I am the admin of the website and owner, and I have a developer who creates 00:06:44.840 --> 00:06:50.000 the cheats and loader. I do the customer support, too. [MUSIC] But not all cheating 00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:55.800 sites have their own developers. In fact, not all cheats are even real. There are a lot of 00:06:55.800 --> 00:07:00.840 scam sites out there that promise to provide cheats, but they don’t work. Then there are 00:07:00.840 --> 00:07:05.800 developers and resellers. Say a developer finds an exploit and creates a cheat; they 00:07:05.800 --> 00:07:11.080 can package that up and sell a key to a reseller. The reseller then creates a website or a listing 00:07:11.080 --> 00:07:14.840 somewhere saying they have a working cheat and tries to find buyers. If someone buys it, 00:07:14.840 --> 00:07:18.040 the reseller just sells them the key to use the cheat that they got from the developer. 00:07:18.040 --> 00:07:20.840 JACK: So, two different people are making money from this, 00:07:20.840 --> 00:07:26.100 the developers and resellers. Why wouldn’t the developer just sell directly to players? 00:07:26.100 --> 00:07:31.400 ACTOR: Developers want to focus on developing, not marketing and selling or dealing with 00:07:31.400 --> 00:07:36.040 customers and money transactions. Once a developer finds a good reseller, 00:07:36.040 --> 00:07:40.200 then they don’t have to continually look for new buyers. The reseller will do all 00:07:40.200 --> 00:07:44.080 the legwork. Also, a developer can be more protected because they can 00:07:44.080 --> 00:07:48.380 just accept all payment in Bitcoin from the reseller, giving them a way to hide better. 00:07:48.380 --> 00:07:53.840 JACK: Okay, so in this scenario where there’s a developer and a reseller, who’s making more money? 00:07:53.840 --> 00:07:54.840 ACTOR: The developer. 00:07:54.840 --> 00:07:59.320 JACK: How much do cheat developers make from this? 00:07:59.320 --> 00:08:03.440 ACTOR: They can make anywhere from a few bucks to $500,000 a 00:08:03.440 --> 00:08:08.080 month. A medium-sized cheat would bring in about 20k to 80k a month. 00:08:08.080 --> 00:08:11.560 JACK: Dang, that’s a lot more than a regular job as a developer. 00:08:11.560 --> 00:08:16.340 ACTOR: Yeah, and resellers can make good money, too. Anything is possible. 00:08:16.340 --> 00:08:21.360 JACK: Okay. I’m looking at your website now. The buying process is unlike anything 00:08:21.360 --> 00:08:26.040 I’ve ever seen before. It’s crazy; you can’t just buy and download this and 00:08:26.040 --> 00:08:31.280 begin using it. Can you walk me through what it takes for someone to buy this? 00:08:31.280 --> 00:08:35.440 ACTOR: Okay. [MUSIC] Before you can buy a cheat, you must be verified. You must fill 00:08:35.440 --> 00:08:39.920 out an application which must include your real name, date of birth, country, 00:08:39.920 --> 00:08:43.600 links to your profiles and cheat forums, and we will send you a private message 00:08:43.600 --> 00:08:47.840 to confirm it’s you, which cheat you’re interested in buying, and three separate 00:08:47.840 --> 00:08:56.560 photo IDs like a national ID card, passport, or driver’s license. We also need a selfie. 00:08:56.560 --> 00:09:03.360 JACK: That’s way too much information that someone has to give you just to 00:09:03.360 --> 00:09:06.320 get the cheat from you. Three photo IDs? Are you serious? 00:09:06.320 --> 00:09:08.840 ACTOR: Yeah. There’s a lot of people who 00:09:08.840 --> 00:09:13.260 would love to get their hands on our cheats, and we need to protect them. 00:09:13.260 --> 00:09:15.880 JACK: Protect them from who? 00:09:15.880 --> 00:09:19.800 ACTOR: Haters, game thefts, competitors. 00:09:19.800 --> 00:09:25.880 JACK: Oh yeah, this makes sense. Game developers must hate when 00:09:25.880 --> 00:09:30.040 new cheats are developed. If they could get their hands on the cheat, 00:09:30.040 --> 00:09:36.080 they could probably fix it right away. This makes me curious what game devs are doing about this. 00:09:36.080 --> 00:09:43.080 EUGENE: So, my name is Eugene Harton. I currently work on a game called Dying Light 2 at Techland, 00:09:43.080 --> 00:09:47.960 and before that I worked at Bohemia Interactive on a game called DayZ, 00:09:47.960 --> 00:09:53.240 which was the one where the – I guess the whole security thing around games started for me. 00:09:53.240 --> 00:09:58.880 JACK: Now, it also was not easy to find a game developer to come on the show to talk about how 00:09:58.880 --> 00:10:04.960 they’re battling these cheat-makers, because this is an active war zone. Game devs don’t 00:10:04.960 --> 00:10:10.280 want to share their tactics on how they’re defeating this, but I did find Eugene here, 00:10:10.280 --> 00:10:13.600 because he gave a talk about this at a conference and he’s willing to talk 00:10:13.600 --> 00:10:18.040 about the old stories he had from when he was working on the game DayZ five years 00:10:18.040 --> 00:10:23.200 ago. What was – what were the cheaters like in the game? What were they doing? 00:10:23.200 --> 00:10:29.320 EUGENE: Okay, so DayZ might be a bit of a specific example, but I’ll go into a bit of detail. So, 00:10:29.320 --> 00:10:33.120 generally when you think about cheating, you can say that it’s basically gaining an unfair 00:10:33.120 --> 00:10:38.400 advantage of any kind. With that in mind, it can be probably broken down to exploiting and glitch 00:10:38.400 --> 00:10:43.320 abuse, which is where they are basically using something that we already did wrong in the game, 00:10:43.320 --> 00:10:49.320 so a bug that we introduced ourselves, or a glitch that is not part of the intended 00:10:49.320 --> 00:10:55.640 design. Any game state, command manipulation, and injection, which was also very common in DayZ, and 00:10:55.640 --> 00:11:03.160 automation. Any automation of inputs to basically alleviate any manual work this intended by design 00:11:03.160 --> 00:11:07.906 inside the game. So, all of these things, to a certain degree, were happening in DayZ as well. 00:11:07.906 --> 00:11:09.960 JACK: [MUSIC] Now, we’re only talking about online games here, 00:11:09.960 --> 00:11:13.840 where you’re playing against other players. Some of the exploits for sale today promise 00:11:13.840 --> 00:11:19.160 to give players extra abilities such as being able to see exact locations of other players 00:11:19.160 --> 00:11:23.520 or aim bots which point your weapon for you. All you need to do is click the mouse button 00:11:23.520 --> 00:11:27.440 and you’ll hit your target, and some other things like being able to go through walls 00:11:27.440 --> 00:11:32.120 or making your own hitbox smaller. Even the slightest advantage gained through cheating 00:11:32.120 --> 00:11:36.840 is an unfair advantage to all the other players in the game. It ruins the fun. 00:11:36.840 --> 00:11:42.680 EUGENE: Fun generally means a process of learning and overcoming a system. If that’s the case, 00:11:42.680 --> 00:11:47.600 if what they are doing is not damaging other people’s experiences and they’re doing it 00:11:47.600 --> 00:11:50.220 only for their own experience, it generally is not a problem. 00:11:50.220 --> 00:11:56.400 JACK: Okay, so how big of a problem is this for video game companies? How much 00:11:56.400 --> 00:12:02.500 resources do video game companies or maybe even just DayZ put into fighting this? 00:12:02.500 --> 00:12:09.040 EUGENE: So, I met a bunch of people in the space, and to speak about DayZ first, I would say no; 00:12:09.040 --> 00:12:14.040 we had five people that were dedicated just to the subject. If I don’t count the externals, 00:12:14.040 --> 00:12:20.280 because Bastian Suter was the creator of BattlEye, was the – which was the kind of agent we were 00:12:20.280 --> 00:12:25.840 using to protect the game, basically the common anti-cheat also used in many other games. So, 00:12:25.840 --> 00:12:29.480 if I would count Bastian helping us with the subject, it would be like, 00:12:29.480 --> 00:12:35.200 six people. If I look at a different direction of much more larger games and competitive games 00:12:35.200 --> 00:12:40.240 like League of Legends, as far as I know, the team was like, twenty-five plus or something. 00:12:40.240 --> 00:12:46.880 JACK: Whoa, there’s a twenty-five person team just within the game League of Legends that’s primary 00:12:46.880 --> 00:12:53.560 job is to focus on finding cheats on fixing them? That’s crazy. League of Legends is owned by Riot 00:12:53.560 --> 00:12:58.840 Games and according to Wikipedia, there are 2,500 employees at Riot Games. But even still, 00:12:58.840 --> 00:13:03.920 twenty-five is a lot of people dedicated to just stopping cheaters. I don’t know, 00:13:03.920 --> 00:13:08.200 I’m just shocked by that, because when you play these games and encounter cheaters, 00:13:08.200 --> 00:13:12.600 it feels like cheaters are everywhere in the game and the game-makers just sort of gave up 00:13:12.600 --> 00:13:19.240 trying to fight it or do very little to stop it. But now I’m realizing game-makers actually put a 00:13:19.240 --> 00:13:24.600 lot of effort into battling it, and they take it very seriously. Another thing Eugene just 00:13:24.600 --> 00:13:31.040 said was that game-makers use BattlEye to help stop it, too. BattlEye is an anti-cheat engine. 00:13:31.040 --> 00:13:37.240 Game-makers can integrate it into their game, and its job is to examine all player behavior, to… 00:13:37.240 --> 00:13:42.466 EUGENE: Identify a running cheat and close the game before it can affect the game. 00:13:42.466 --> 00:13:46.480 JACK: [MUSIC] It’s now integrated into over fifty games, and BattlEye has its own team of 00:13:46.480 --> 00:13:51.160 developers to help detect and stop cheaters. They can check for things like if the player is pushing 00:13:51.160 --> 00:13:56.360 buttons at an inhuman rate or if the player’s position moves too fast for what the game allows, 00:13:56.360 --> 00:14:00.480 or if their win-rate is higher than normal. They can try to analyze a player’s game to 00:14:00.480 --> 00:14:05.040 see if they’re exploiting anything, and then ban the player and report the exploit to the 00:14:05.040 --> 00:14:10.400 game developers. That’s just BattlEye; there’s also other anti-cheat software like PunkBuster, 00:14:10.400 --> 00:14:16.320 Easy Anti-Cheat, and VAC. What I’m realizing is that because there’s so many cheaters in video 00:14:16.320 --> 00:14:24.200 games, it spawned this whole secondary offshoot industry of anti-cheat software solutions. Again, 00:14:24.200 --> 00:14:29.560 that’s on top of the dedicated team that the video game company already has working on this. 00:14:29.560 --> 00:14:36.240 So, now we start to see how there are some serious enemies in this space. BattlEye is out there to 00:14:36.240 --> 00:14:41.760 try to ruin the game-cheating industry, which is a bold thing to set out to do, 00:14:41.760 --> 00:14:45.320 to try to ruin a whole industry, and the cheat-makers out there are trying 00:14:45.320 --> 00:14:49.840 to build working cheats but then also make it so BattlEye can’t detect it, 00:14:49.840 --> 00:14:54.200 and they’ve got to constantly be developing new strategies to be undetected and find new 00:14:54.200 --> 00:14:59.480 cheats in the game. Game developers are just wanting to provide a fun experience for players 00:14:59.480 --> 00:15:05.200 and not let their game get overrun or ruined by cheaters. We’re gonna take a quick ad break here, 00:15:05.200 --> 00:15:11.240 but stay with us because when we come back, people start playing dirty. Game devs and cheat 00:15:11.240 --> 00:15:17.480 devs don’t like each other. Game devs are always trying to ruin the cheating industry, which means 00:15:17.480 --> 00:15:22.320 the cheat developers sometimes just wake up some days and suddenly their main product isn’t working 00:15:22.320 --> 00:15:27.200 anymore, which means the cheat developers need to scramble to get new working cheats out there. 00:15:27.200 --> 00:15:31.480 ACTOR: We also have haters who are actively attacking us, trying to bring our cheats down. 00:15:31.480 --> 00:15:32.680 JACK: What do you mean? 00:15:32.680 --> 00:15:37.920 ACTOR: Like, our competitors, other cheat-makers. They sometimes attack us, 00:15:37.920 --> 00:15:42.240 and lots of people get mad at us because they just hate in-game cheaters. So, 00:15:42.240 --> 00:15:45.520 we get DDossed and our site goes down, and then we have to spend 00:15:45.520 --> 00:15:49.240 more money on DDoS prevention and pay for extra bandwidth when that happens. 00:15:49.240 --> 00:15:53.600 JACK: Okay, so now it makes sense on why you ask for three forms of 00:15:53.600 --> 00:15:57.920 ID before giving someone your cheats; you don’t want your cheats landing in 00:15:57.920 --> 00:16:03.920 the wrong hands because if it does, it could make it unusable very quickly. 00:16:03.920 --> 00:16:05.266 ACTOR: Exactly. 00:16:05.266 --> 00:16:08.000 JACK: [MUSIC] So, have you ever tried to buy the cheats yourself? 00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:08.700 EUGENE: Of course. 00:16:08.700 --> 00:16:09.800 JACK: Like, the paid ones. 00:16:09.800 --> 00:16:10.720 EUGENE: Yeah, yeah. 00:16:10.720 --> 00:16:12.100 JACK: How successful were you? 00:16:12.100 --> 00:16:16.640 EUGENE: Pretty successful. Okay, so with public ones, it’s pretty easy. So, the way we did – the 00:16:16.640 --> 00:16:22.640 first thing that we need to kinda implement is kind of a bug bounty program and the ability to 00:16:22.640 --> 00:16:27.240 buy cheats. So, we created a completely physically separate network inside the company that has a 00:16:27.240 --> 00:16:32.560 separate network connection to the internet, and we were using it as basically a separate lab where 00:16:32.560 --> 00:16:39.240 we were buying cheats and disassembling them. So, inside basically this space, 00:16:39.240 --> 00:16:43.600 there had – we had a couple people working on it, like a reverse-engineer and a community 00:16:43.600 --> 00:16:48.720 manager who were trying to buy cheats, be or impersonate people who are looking for 00:16:48.720 --> 00:16:53.600 a cheat both in public and private space. So for public, easy; they would create accounts, 00:16:53.600 --> 00:16:59.880 they would buy it through PayPal money which was deposited by the company, and – because a lot of 00:16:59.880 --> 00:17:06.280 the times, it was like, PayPal transfer, I think there was something even with crypto, 00:17:06.280 --> 00:17:13.000 et cetera. So generally, basically, alternative payment methods. We would have this person look 00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:17.160 for these public cheats and private cheats, try to acquire as much of them as possible, 00:17:17.160 --> 00:17:22.520 and both provide them to the anti-cheat program we were using and if possible, 00:17:22.520 --> 00:17:26.720 use also our own reverse-engineer to figure out how they are breaking the game. 00:17:26.720 --> 00:17:33.800 This process of buying the cheat was easy on the public side as long as you didn’t make it 00:17:33.800 --> 00:17:38.480 clear that you’re from the company, like using the name of a developer, 00:17:38.480 --> 00:17:45.280 et cetera, because they would ban these accounts. But when it comes to private bans, it sometimes 00:17:45.280 --> 00:17:50.880 meant you would have to have a IM conversation on Skype, ICQ, IRC, VK, Facebook, whatever, 00:17:50.880 --> 00:17:56.800 or on forums, through their dedicated channels or dedicated website, and I – we even have cases 00:17:56.800 --> 00:18:03.320 where people were asking for IDs to confirm the identity of the purchaser, especially if some of 00:18:03.320 --> 00:18:08.120 these super-private ones where they are selling like, to ten, twenty, thirty people, and asking 00:18:08.120 --> 00:18:14.720 for a very sizable subscription, like $200, $500, because we’ve seen even those, where people are 00:18:14.720 --> 00:18:19.280 willing to pay $500 to have a private cheat that is just for them. That’s what they want to do, 00:18:19.280 --> 00:18:24.400 and there is a developer that they contact if anything fucks up, and they will fix it for them. 00:18:24.400 --> 00:18:34.440 So, posing as different users, multiple accounts, multiple separate networks that we were using, 00:18:34.440 --> 00:18:40.826 and just being present on all these channels where the barters and trades had been happening. 00:18:40.826 --> 00:18:44.680 JACK: [MUSIC] But it’s not as easy as just posing as someone else to buy these cheats. 00:18:44.680 --> 00:18:49.400 Loading and running the cheat in-game is also a very delicate process the 00:18:49.400 --> 00:18:56.120 game devs have to be careful about, because the cheat-makers are watching that part. So, 00:18:56.120 --> 00:19:01.560 how does your cheat work? If I bought it, what steps do I need to do to get it to work? 00:19:01.560 --> 00:19:07.760 ACTOR: We have a loader. You first run the loader, then it runs the actual game. [MUSIC] It’s sort of 00:19:07.760 --> 00:19:12.760 a wrapper for the game, so all packets coming in and out go through this loader. All memory 00:19:12.760 --> 00:19:19.020 is also available on the loader. The loader manipulates the data to make the cheat work. 00:19:19.020 --> 00:19:21.920 JACK: Okay, I get it, but is there a login feature to the 00:19:21.920 --> 00:19:25.380 loader? How do you know when my subscription has run out? 00:19:25.380 --> 00:19:28.680 ACTOR: We use license keys. When you run the loader, 00:19:28.680 --> 00:19:32.840 you enter in a license key and that makes the cheat valid for that many days. 00:19:32.840 --> 00:19:37.840 JACK: Talking with the cheat-seller more, they tell me that there are also ways to identify the 00:19:37.840 --> 00:19:43.800 machine that the loader is running on, and the key becomes tied to that machine ID, so it might be a 00:19:43.800 --> 00:19:50.240 combination of host name, Mac address, IP address, or other identifiers. What that also means is you 00:19:50.240 --> 00:19:56.000 can’t share the cheat with others; it will only work on the first machine you install it on. Now, 00:19:56.000 --> 00:20:01.840 let’s stop here for a second and recognize how desperate some people are to get these cheats. 00:20:01.840 --> 00:20:08.960 Paying $30 to use a cheat for seven days is pricey enough, if you ask me. But on top of that, 00:20:08.960 --> 00:20:14.960 you have to give the website three forms of ID, and then you download and install and run a 00:20:14.960 --> 00:20:21.920 program from a shady, underground hacking website. Whoever is buying this stuff really has to ignore 00:20:21.920 --> 00:20:28.160 several red flags to get it going, and some cheat-makers see this and take advantage of it. 00:20:28.160 --> 00:20:28.960 EUGENE: You should look into AimKit. 00:20:28.960 --> 00:20:35.920 JACK: [MUSIC] Okay, AimKit. This was a cheat for the game Rust that you had to pay $40 00:20:35.920 --> 00:20:41.440 a month to use, and players reported that the cheat was never undetectable, 00:20:41.440 --> 00:20:45.960 meaning BattlEye could easily spot it if you were using this cheat and ban you. So, 00:20:45.960 --> 00:20:51.280 to begin with, AimKit was not a quality cheat. You buy it, you use it, you get banned, and this is 00:20:51.280 --> 00:20:56.800 not how you want your cheat experience to go. Good cheats go undetected. Anyway, when users 00:20:56.800 --> 00:21:02.080 started complaining about this cheat, other users started piping up too, saying after installing it, 00:21:02.080 --> 00:21:07.640 they got their Discord accounts banned. What supposedly was happening was the loader was not 00:21:07.640 --> 00:21:13.040 just providing a cheat, but also grabbing a few things off that computer that it was installed on 00:21:13.040 --> 00:21:20.920 and sending it back to the devs at AimKit, such as Discord logins and who knows what else. Supposedly 00:21:20.920 --> 00:21:27.640 the AimKit devs used those Discord logins to do things. I’m guessing spam channels or people, 00:21:27.640 --> 00:21:34.440 and that got the person banned from Discord. But that’s just one example of a game cheat that was 00:21:34.440 --> 00:21:39.080 actually malware stealing user information and causing harm to the user. But there are 00:21:39.080 --> 00:21:44.840 far worse ones than this. Eugene says when he buys these cheats, he’s always expecting them 00:21:44.840 --> 00:21:50.360 to be malware or some kind of spyware, so he has to take extra precautions when installing them. 00:21:50.360 --> 00:21:54.600 EUGENE: Well, the application that he sent us did – it was of course on a separate network 00:21:54.600 --> 00:22:00.800 physically and as much of the protection as we could apply within the company, but what 00:22:00.800 --> 00:22:06.480 the application that we sent did downloaded all the Skype database files and send it over 00:22:06.480 --> 00:22:11.200 to the guy. When he reviewed those Skype data files, he could say that it was us developers, 00:22:11.200 --> 00:22:15.440 for example, yeah? So as soon as he basically sent us something which was not working and we 00:22:15.440 --> 00:22:20.120 start to complain that it’s not working, he would go and close the communication immediately because 00:22:20.120 --> 00:22:24.466 he would figure out we are developers. So, they go to really extreme caution. 00:22:24.466 --> 00:22:29.320 JACK: [MUSIC] Wait, are you saying that when they send you the loader or the cheat, 00:22:29.320 --> 00:22:33.340 that the cheat actually looks at other data on your computer to confirm who you are? 00:22:33.340 --> 00:22:35.880 EUGENE: Yeah, yeah. It infects like malware all of the times. 00:22:35.880 --> 00:22:40.160 JACK: You know what? I should have expected that, actually. I remember downloading games 00:22:40.160 --> 00:22:45.880 when I was a teenager from dodgy websites, and half of them did contain malware. Why would I 00:22:45.880 --> 00:22:51.360 expect it to be any different today even if I’m paying for it? Downloading any executable from 00:22:51.360 --> 00:22:57.160 a shady website is never a good idea. So, this is why, when video game developers get a cheat, 00:22:57.160 --> 00:23:01.480 they put it on a fresh computer that doesn’t have any sensitive files on it on its own 00:23:01.480 --> 00:23:07.240 separate network, because the developers of the cheats watch to see who’s using their cheat, 00:23:07.240 --> 00:23:13.960 and maybe even take note on what game devs IPs there are and block it if it matches. But 00:23:13.960 --> 00:23:19.440 this also makes it hard for game developers to share the cheat with the dev team or BattlEye, 00:23:19.440 --> 00:23:23.400 since they can’t send this cheat to someone else. It wont work on another computer. 00:23:23.400 --> 00:23:28.200 So, game developers have to set up Remote Desktop so other people can come into that machine and 00:23:28.200 --> 00:23:33.200 analyze it, or install it on a virtual machine. Eugene also tells me that sometimes people from 00:23:33.200 --> 00:23:38.560 the cheat community will come forward and just give them a cheat, often through their bug bounty 00:23:38.560 --> 00:23:43.960 program, but sometimes not. Sometimes they just get sent a working executable that has a cheat 00:23:43.960 --> 00:23:49.440 in it, clearly something that this person bought but didn’t develop, and are willing to share it 00:23:49.440 --> 00:23:55.160 with the game developer. I think what’s going on here is that it could be infighting among other 00:23:55.160 --> 00:24:00.200 cheat devs, where if one cheat provider wants to ruin the business for another cheat provider, 00:24:00.200 --> 00:24:04.280 they could just buy the cheat and then give it to the game developer who would then fix 00:24:04.280 --> 00:24:08.620 it to make that cheat not work, which means more people buy the working one. 00:24:08.620 --> 00:24:13.400 EUGENE: So yeah, you could say we had both kind of approaches, 00:24:13.400 --> 00:24:17.600 to have a double agent on other side and people from the community, the cheating community, 00:24:17.600 --> 00:24:22.880 that would act as double agents for us by actually providing us additional 00:24:22.880 --> 00:24:27.434 information or directly the binaries of a certain cheat that was private, et cetera. 00:24:27.434 --> 00:24:31.520 JACK: Gosh, it’s crazy, huh? Being a game developer today means you might 00:24:31.520 --> 00:24:35.720 have to pose as a double agent acting like a cheater to get your hands on some cheats, 00:24:35.720 --> 00:24:40.720 or you might have to work with double agents who are in the cheat community, but feel like exposing 00:24:40.720 --> 00:24:46.320 someone. It’s a crazy battle that’s taking place, and sometimes all this gets personal. 00:24:46.320 --> 00:24:51.800 There’s a lot of emotion involved in all this, right? I mean, for a cheat dev to make a cheat, 00:24:51.800 --> 00:24:57.120 they probably already love the game and know it very well, and they would love to develop an 00:24:57.120 --> 00:25:02.920 extra feature in the game. So, they sit down and try manipulating the in-game data to try to find 00:25:02.920 --> 00:25:07.200 something that gives them an advantage, and that might take weeks. But when they do, it’s gotta 00:25:07.200 --> 00:25:13.120 feel great that you outsmarted the game-makers. They must feel like they know stuff about the game 00:25:13.120 --> 00:25:18.720 that the developers don’t even know. So, I bet there’s a bit of a celebration that goes on after 00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:23.760 they find a new cheat. Of course, getting paid for that brings all kinds of new emotions too, 00:25:23.760 --> 00:25:30.320 right? Dopamine hits for sure. But then all that comes crashing down when the game studio 00:25:30.320 --> 00:25:39.360 detects it and patches it. Now that high that the cheat devs had goes away, and they could get mad. 00:25:39.360 --> 00:25:46.040 They might want to know who exactly was the game developer that ruined the party, and find their 00:25:46.040 --> 00:25:52.784 name and start insulting them over Twitter. Now this is where things start getting ugly. 00:25:52.784 --> 00:25:57.680 EUGENE: [MUSIC] We got really close with these people, and by close I mean they – slowly, 00:25:57.680 --> 00:26:03.320 they kind of doxxed us and got our phone numbers and private accounts. They never, I think, 00:26:03.320 --> 00:26:10.280 got actually into any of my accounts because most of them were under two-factor authentication, 00:26:10.280 --> 00:26:15.400 but I guess they at least tried. With these connections to these people, 00:26:15.400 --> 00:26:17.240 I met a lot of different weird characters. 00:26:17.240 --> 00:26:21.360 JACK: Eugene says he was going to give a talk about cheaters at GDC, 00:26:21.360 --> 00:26:25.560 the Game Developers Conference, and apparently the game cheaters started a 00:26:25.560 --> 00:26:31.320 GoFundMe campaign to raise money to – what was it they were gonna raise money for? 00:26:31.320 --> 00:26:34.000 EUGENE: To be able to pay for the tickets to GDC, 00:26:34.000 --> 00:26:36.940 to come to the presentation, and troll me there, basically. 00:26:36.940 --> 00:26:41.680 JACK: Well, he gave the presentation at the conference, and there were no trolls in the 00:26:41.680 --> 00:26:48.720 audience. But he was doxxed and had many invalid login attempts on his accounts, 00:26:48.720 --> 00:26:52.560 and got all kinds of weird messages and threats. 00:26:52.560 --> 00:26:59.200 EUGENE: The things that I hated the most were the creepy calls. I would pick up a phone and 00:26:59.200 --> 00:27:03.360 since it’s my work phone and an unknown number is calling, I generally pick it up because it 00:27:03.360 --> 00:27:10.480 can be any of our partners, and I would have these weird things being said to me or people 00:27:10.480 --> 00:27:17.840 contacting my family members, sending them weird, gory pictures. It was just annoying; 00:27:17.840 --> 00:27:24.560 like, why would you make – like for example, why would you target my family member? I 00:27:24.560 --> 00:27:29.120 don’t fucking get it. Like, okay, bother me on Instagram, bother me on Twitter, bother me on 00:27:29.120 --> 00:27:34.880 freaking Messenger and send me weird shit. Just don’t call me, don’t bother people around me; 00:27:34.880 --> 00:27:41.840 that would be nice. So, it kind of prompted me to be more secure about a lot of my social 00:27:41.840 --> 00:27:47.580 media. [MUSIC] I don’t use them as much as I used them in the past. It’s just all closed up. 00:27:47.580 --> 00:27:54.320 JACK: It’s just wild that the game devs and the cheat devs are both getting attacked in this 00:27:54.320 --> 00:28:01.200 space. It’s a weird parallel with the game itself. In the game, there are battles taking place, 00:28:01.200 --> 00:28:07.720 simulated fighting, but then outside the game, there’s this whole different battle happening too, 00:28:07.720 --> 00:28:13.880 and that’s much higher stakes. Huh. I’m just clicking around on one of these websites that 00:28:13.880 --> 00:28:20.680 sells cheats, and there’s something here that says this cheat is stream-proof. What’s stream-proof? 00:28:20.680 --> 00:28:24.100 ACTOR: It means it’s not detectable on Twitch. 00:28:24.100 --> 00:28:27.440 JACK: Oh, so if Twitch sees you’re cheating, they ban you? 00:28:27.440 --> 00:28:31.400 ACTOR: No, no. If someone is streaming, they can see the cheat, 00:28:31.400 --> 00:28:33.580 but the viewers of the stream don’t see the cheat. 00:28:33.580 --> 00:28:39.280 JACK: Whoa, that’s crazy. That’s a whole ‘nother level of sophistication in this. 00:28:39.280 --> 00:28:43.840 The person playing with the cheats on can see the locations of the other players, 00:28:43.840 --> 00:28:48.440 whatever extra perception they have, but that’s not visible to whoever’s watching 00:28:48.440 --> 00:28:54.520 them play on the stream. This makes the player look so much better than they actually are, 00:28:54.520 --> 00:29:00.720 and their viewers have no idea they’re cheating. This is actually amazing, because there’s a 00:29:00.720 --> 00:29:05.360 lot of people who make a living from just streaming themselves playing video games, 00:29:05.360 --> 00:29:10.840 and I imagine better players get more viewers than worse players. So, having that little 00:29:10.840 --> 00:29:17.225 cheat boost to help you look better than you are probably pays off to these streamers. 00:29:17.225 --> 00:29:19.040 ACTOR: [MUSIC] I feel like personally, 00:29:19.040 --> 00:29:22.960 cheating for fun is fine, but cheating in competition is lame. 00:29:22.960 --> 00:29:25.560 JACK: Do people cheat in competitions? 00:29:25.560 --> 00:29:31.440 ACTOR: Yeah. It’s a very small customer base, but we work with some pro players. For them, 00:29:31.440 --> 00:29:35.860 they use it to win cash prizes in tournaments. Who doesn’t like more money? 00:29:35.860 --> 00:29:39.800 JACK: I can see why this is taken so seriously by game developers. If there 00:29:39.800 --> 00:29:45.560 are cash prize tournaments for a game you make, you want that game to be as fair as possible, 00:29:45.560 --> 00:29:50.720 and in-game cheating at tournament level reflects just as badly on the game itself 00:29:50.720 --> 00:29:56.240 as it does on the cheater. I talked with two different owners of these cheating websites, 00:29:56.240 --> 00:30:00.840 and I asked one of them, is what you’re doing illegal? They said… 00:30:00.840 --> 00:30:01.740 ACTOR: Nope. 00:30:01.740 --> 00:30:04.700 JACK: Then I asked the other, and they said… 00:30:04.700 --> 00:30:07.880 EUGENE: Yeah. Some have been caught, like MizuSoft. 00:30:07.880 --> 00:30:14.987 JACK: MizuSoft. Let’s take a look at what or who that is. Ah, here’s a video. 00:30:14.987 --> 00:30:18.720 JOE: [MUSIC] This teenage hacker runs a small operation from the Netherlands. 00:30:18.720 --> 00:30:24.360 His business can still make almost £1,500 a week, and his customer base is growing. 00:30:24.360 --> 00:30:29.320 JACK: That’s a clip from a BBC news story that the journalist Joe Tidy did. 00:30:29.320 --> 00:30:31.632 JOE: You could get in some serious trouble for this, couldn’t you? 00:30:31.632 --> 00:30:36.400 HACKER: Yeah. If Ubisoft decides to come after you because of copyright 00:30:36.400 --> 00:30:39.160 infringement, you’re in for a tough time. 00:30:39.160 --> 00:30:42.760 JACK: Joe interviews what looks like a seventeen-year-old kid for this, who 00:30:42.760 --> 00:30:48.800 claimed to be making and selling cheats. The kid shows Joe what they do and how they work. Well, 00:30:48.800 --> 00:30:55.920 one month after appearing on BBC, Ubisoft was able to identify this young man and sue him. It turned 00:30:55.920 --> 00:31:01.520 out he was running a website called MizuSoft, selling game cheats for Ubisoft. Ubisoft had all 00:31:01.520 --> 00:31:06.800 this information on this guy; his name, address, his websites, his parents’ information, too. The 00:31:06.800 --> 00:31:12.080 BBC didn’t turn him in, but if you come on TV to talk about the underground activity you’re doing, 00:31:12.080 --> 00:31:16.560 your opsec is probably not the best. [MUSIC] Since he was only seventeen when he was hit 00:31:16.560 --> 00:31:21.720 with this lawsuit, Ubisoft just asked for the website to be taken down, to immediately stop 00:31:21.720 --> 00:31:26.720 developing and selling cheats for the game, and they wanted a copy of all the cheats he had, 00:31:26.720 --> 00:31:31.680 and some kind of financial compensation for the damage that they suffered from it. I believe that 00:31:31.680 --> 00:31:37.920 lawsuit is still ongoing, and I actually did get in contact with the guy, the owner of MizuSoft. We 00:31:37.920 --> 00:31:43.720 chatted for a while, but he ultimately said he can’t talk about this case. So, again, 00:31:43.720 --> 00:31:49.400 turned down, which is typical for the scene. But there are a few other stories like MizuSoft. 00:31:49.400 --> 00:31:56.120 Apparently there was a cheat going around for Pokemon Go, and this cheat was called PokeGo++, 00:31:56.120 --> 00:32:00.280 and it allowed you to move to another location without having to leave your house. 00:32:00.280 --> 00:32:05.600 But the game developers discovered who created this cheat and sued them. The case was settled 00:32:05.600 --> 00:32:13.320 and the cheat creators paid $5 million in the settlement. Wow. Then there was another story 00:32:13.320 --> 00:32:19.440 that Joe Tidy from the BBC reported, saying the world’s biggest video game cheat operation 00:32:19.440 --> 00:32:26.040 was busted by the Chinese police. The story says Tencent and the Chinese police worked together to 00:32:26.040 --> 00:32:32.400 arrest the crew responsible for making cheats for Tencent games. The bust resulted in several luxury 00:32:32.400 --> 00:32:38.800 sports cars being seized. There’s a photo that has a Lamborghini, Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes, 00:32:38.800 --> 00:32:42.680 and a Land Rover. These were all seized by the police, and in fact, the police reported they 00:32:42.680 --> 00:32:48.880 seized [MUSIC] $46 million worth of luxury cars alone from this crew. They reported that these 00:32:48.880 --> 00:32:57.440 cheat developers made $76 million from selling cheats for Tencent games. Ten people were arrested 00:32:57.440 --> 00:33:03.760 who were involved with this, and it was quite an operation for the Chinese police. As I dig through 00:33:03.760 --> 00:33:10.360 court cases, I start seeing even more things show up. In 2019, Epic Games sued a fifteen-year-old 00:33:10.360 --> 00:33:15.720 YouTuber for advertising cheats on his channel. The complaint says he was selling Fortnite cheats 00:33:15.720 --> 00:33:22.480 for $250 each, and what’s really weird here is this YouTuber made a video saying he got sued. 00:33:22.480 --> 00:33:24.880 YOUTUBER: Well, today I got like, 00:33:24.880 --> 00:33:31.800 30,000 pages in the mail from Epic. I don’t know. I think it’s kinda weird that they’re 00:33:31.800 --> 00:33:38.620 suing me. I don’t know what’s gonna happen. I already have a pretty good attorney, so… 00:33:38.620 --> 00:33:44.080 JACK: That was the last video this kid ever posted, and it’s been three years now. Now, 00:33:44.080 --> 00:33:48.520 in this case, Epic is saying the boy violated the copyright laws. Okay, 00:33:48.520 --> 00:33:55.240 I guess I can see that. Perhaps that’s the best legal leg to stand on in this case. In June 2021, 00:33:55.240 --> 00:34:01.400 Bungie sued aimjunkies.com for infringing on their intellectual property. Apparently, this 00:34:01.400 --> 00:34:06.480 site was selling cheats for the game Destiny, but AimJunkies is trying to get this case dismissed, 00:34:06.480 --> 00:34:11.840 saying Bungie is embellishing and exaggerating what happened, and is misusing the legal system. 00:34:11.840 --> 00:34:16.520 So, there’s one cheat developer who’s trying to fight back. I’m not sure how that’s going 00:34:16.520 --> 00:34:22.680 for them. Earlier in 2022, Activision sued two German companies for creating cheats for 00:34:22.680 --> 00:34:27.240 Call of Duty. Activision is saying these companies have violated copyright laws, 00:34:27.240 --> 00:34:31.680 and that case is still ongoing. There are quite a few other cases in the air; 00:34:31.680 --> 00:34:36.040 Epic Games is saying they’ve issued over a half-dozen lawsuits to cheat-makers now, 00:34:36.040 --> 00:34:40.920 but the problem that these game-makers have is they often have a hard time tracking down who the 00:34:40.920 --> 00:34:45.640 cheat developers are to issue lawsuits to them, and sometimes when they do find who these people 00:34:45.640 --> 00:34:51.640 are, they’re in other countries that lawsuits just don’t have that much of an impact to cheat-makers. 00:34:51.640 --> 00:34:57.280 [MUSIC] So, as I learn more about all this, I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t like cheaters. 00:34:57.280 --> 00:35:02.160 I think they do ruin the game for other players, at least online games, right? Cheat all you want 00:35:02.160 --> 00:35:06.800 if it just affects you, but when you’re battling against other players and you use cheats to beat 00:35:06.800 --> 00:35:13.680 them and you’re ruining their game, that’s not cool. Nobody likes that. So, I agree it’s wrong, 00:35:13.680 --> 00:35:20.240 but I’m torn on what should be done to stop this. Okay, issue a cease and desist. Great, 00:35:20.240 --> 00:35:25.800 and you can hope the cheat developers stop there, but many aren’t. All the cheat devs I spoke to 00:35:25.800 --> 00:35:30.520 said they received cease and desist letters, but just sort of laughed and kept on doing it. So, 00:35:30.520 --> 00:35:37.320 what should be the next steps that game-makers should do? Call the cops? Issue lawsuits? Sending 00:35:37.320 --> 00:35:41.880 a cease and desist letter is easy; you just e-mail the cheat support team, telling them stop what 00:35:41.880 --> 00:35:48.200 you’re doing. But issuing a lawsuit requires you to know who the person is that you’re suing. So, 00:35:48.200 --> 00:35:53.960 now the game-makers have to sort of investigate who the cheat developers are for this, which, 00:35:53.960 --> 00:35:59.240 I don’t know, could result in some kind of hack-back type of activity, 00:35:59.240 --> 00:36:05.360 maybe? Like phishing the cheat-makers to try to get info on them? I mean, it’s possible, 00:36:05.360 --> 00:36:11.720 but unethical. It’s just weird to think that there are game studios out there that are investigating 00:36:11.720 --> 00:36:17.280 to try to figure out the real identity and location of who these cheat developers are. 00:36:17.280 --> 00:36:22.880 What seems to be happening are game-makers are using high-price lawyers to try to intimidate 00:36:22.880 --> 00:36:28.320 cheat developers, saying things like we’re gonna sue you for the maximum allowable amount, 00:36:28.320 --> 00:36:34.400 which may be millions of dollars, or some other big, scary things. I suppose some of this works; 00:36:34.400 --> 00:36:38.880 it gets the cheaters to just stop what they’re doing and not do it anymore. But 00:36:38.880 --> 00:36:45.760 it’ll be interesting if someone does challenge a lawsuit like that and wins, because I don’t know, 00:36:45.760 --> 00:36:52.600 maybe they somehow prove that cheating isn’t illegal. It’s a weird legal issue for sure, 00:36:52.600 --> 00:36:58.360 and I worry because corporations have bullied people in the past with lawsuits because someone 00:36:58.360 --> 00:37:04.200 violated their terms of service or some other made-up rule, which has had horrible results. Just 00:37:04.200 --> 00:37:10.800 look up who Geohot is, or Aaron Swartz. [MUSIC] So, it seems like for now, the best tactic is 00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:17.560 for game-makers to solo this one themselves and battle it on their own. I mean in-game, 00:37:17.560 --> 00:37:23.440 by putting more resources into securing the game code and game client and adding more monitoring 00:37:23.440 --> 00:37:29.080 and detection mechanisms to try to find when players cheat, and force them to quit. But of 00:37:29.080 --> 00:37:35.680 course, with every shot fired by the game studios, the cheat-makers try to dodge it and heal up and 00:37:35.680 --> 00:37:56.584 move forward, and this might be the most epic battle that game studios have created yet. 00:37:56.584 --> 00:38:06.960 (OUTRO): [OUTRO MUSIC] A big thank you to Eugene Harton for sharing some of the insights from a 00:38:06.960 --> 00:38:10.520 game developer’s point of view, and also thanks to everyone I chatted with over DMs 00:38:10.520 --> 00:38:15.720 on Discord to give me inside scoops on what’s going on. This episode was created by me, 00:38:15.720 --> 00:38:20.800 your commanding officer, Jack Rhysider. Original music this episode was created by the demo man, 00:38:20.800 --> 00:38:25.600 Garrett Tiedemann. Mixing done by Proximity Sound, editing help by the medic Damienne, 00:38:25.600 --> 00:38:29.600 and our theme music is by the king of the hill, Breakmaster Cylinder. 00:38:29.600 --> 00:38:34.000 I was blowing up a balloon the other day and I was thinking, inside this is CO2, 00:38:34.000 --> 00:38:51.240 right? It’s compressed, right? So, why not call it co2.zip? This is Darknet Diaries.