Quote from DarkShadow32 :

Just another thing that may be worth mentioning:

Don't use the same username and same password that you use for your LFS account on any website that requires you to register when it comes to website from LFS (Not talking about TC OR LFS ITSELF

You should not use your LFS password on the TC server or website either.

Thread: LOGIN DETAILS - use on LFS websites only!

Quote from LFS Terms & Conditions

Quote :

3.4 You must not give your username, WEB or GAME password to other LFS users.

There aren't exceptions, including pirates LFSPro and Pereulok or legitimate systems like TC.

Thread: Possible password leak from Pereulok

Quote from Vilix :

I apologize, I assumed it was understood why it was such an important part of the economy but I'll explain it then.

Thanks for taking the time to give examples to paint a fuller picture.

I suppose most of the things you mention (jobs/repairs/trade of items) could be done using fixed prices and that would provide the fun without the unbridled capitalism that appears to be currently corrupting the server and replicating real world inequality.

I like (or should that be 'liked' in the past tense) that in LFS, after buying a license, everyone is equal. There are reasons why we don't have prices on items you can add. I mean, reasons other than us developers being idiots for not squeezing the community for every penny they are worth, like many other game companies do. I actually like creating an environment where people can race or play free from consideration of real life finances.

So I'm sad to see that money and corruption is creeping into LFS servers and creating incentives to abuse our license system.

Quote from turbofan :

As long as people think that money is an elementary particle of the cosmos and things can't exist without it, we are screwed.

Agreed!

Quote from hsvdin0 :

If you still don't get this

Just a quick note, it's you who doesn't get what's going on, but I won't explain again.

Unfortunately, I started this one thread about two separate subjects which are probably not related.

For the password subject, I have now started a new thread: https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/107278

Dear LFS Racers,

As many of you know, there was once a pirate master server and community based in Russia called "Pereulok".

Despite warnings on our forum and in our license agreement, many LFS racers actually handed over their LFS user name and game password to the owners of Pereulok.

We have recently seen approximately 40 accounts that have been taken over by one or more individuals and in some of those cases, not only the game password was confirmed and used online but also the web password was obtained (maybe it was similar to the game password).

At least two of the owners of the affected accounts that have replied to us, have used Pereulok at some point in the past, so it's a possible source of the leak. It appears that the leaked data is old because the hacker makes several attempts before finding one that works.

If you ever logged in at Pereulok and have not changed your passwords since, please change your passwords immediately. If your password used at Pereulok, or any other pirate site, is in any way similar to any passwords you use on other websites, you should change them all.

It is not our duty to explain to you that you should not use the same password on multiple sites, and particularly not on the websites of pirates or hackers. But this causes some disruption when, after a leak, a user can access multiple accounts. So that's why I have written this alert.

Previously discussed on the Hackers alert thread but that thread covers a different subject as well.

Quote from Vilix :

Stopping money transfers between players would simply crash the TC economy

So simple, you can't even explain it?

Just like PVL you can only say "of course" or "simply" but you don't give a single example of why it's necessary.

Quote from Vilix :

In all honesty, it seems a little unfair to suggest to potentially destroy the entire server economy

Who suggested that? If you are referring to me, you are mistaken. I have repeatedly asked why it is necessary to allow money transfer between players, but have not received an answer yet.

Quote from hsvdin0 :

It has nothing to do with rented accounts - in fact

Before commenting, maybe you should read back a few pages, and you will start to understand there is a link to rental accounts.

Repeat: It appears that the rental accounts are a tool for illegal account pirates (called 'owners') who rent out their accounts to gain TC money which they then sell for real money. This is a criminal activity enabled by TC money transfers. That is a fact, not an opinion. Even if you don't like it, it's still a fact. Don't fall into the modern human thing of denying things just because you don't like that they are true.

Last edited by Scawen, Fri, 23 Feb 2024 08:40.

Quote from 0033549 :

I was playing in Pereul*k project, so that could be reason

Thanks for the information.

I don't need more info from you now, but would like to know if any of the other affected people have similar information.

Last edited by Scawen, Thu, 22 Feb 2024 20:46.

Quote from P V L :

The problem is that more than one person uses the same account, not the TC economy.

I think you are not seeing my point (that took me a long time to understand) that the reason someone allows multiple people to use the same account, is to gain TC money. And this only happens, because there is a real world value applied to TC money.

Quote from P V L :

And yes, of course it would be a great issue for TC if we could not send any cash between accounts.

Why "of course" ? I really don't know why you have to be able to donate money, but I am interested, which is why I asked.

Sometimes if a feature does more harm than good, things get better when it is removed.

Thanks. Do you think there would be any real harm to TC if you could not donate money between accounts? As if I understand correctly, that should prevent the purchase of TC money by lazy people who aren't playing in the spirit intended.

Quote from P V L :

I see the problem with rented accounts, thats true. But this has nothing to do with the TC economy, to be honest.

Apparently it does, if I understand correctly, because part of the reason for existence of rented accounts is to gain TC money. Rented accounts don't really make much money from the rental charge, but the account owner gains TC money, which they can sell to rich lazy players.

So apparently the TC economy and its crossover to the real world is fueling the rental account phenomenon.

Well then I am almost certain, this trade is against the spirit of TC money, which was about playing, not paying, I believe.

And I suggest the transfer of money between accounts should be stopped, to end this trade. I don't think it is doing LFS or TC any good.

Again, that is not an explanation.

Someone has to pay the money. Who is paying the real world money, and why? That is the question.

Quote from 0033549 :

It wasn’t me

Your account is one of nearly 40 accounts known to be temporarily taken by this person. The number was around 20 a few days ago.

We still don't know where the passwords have come from. It looks like old data. They make several attempts, usually failing but then they find one that works. This is why I suggest people should change their passwords if they haven't been changed for a long time.

In several cases the person has logged into the website as well. I guess sometimes the web password is similar to the game password.

Have you, in the past, entered your details into one of the Russian or Brazilian pirate servers, or any other website? Have you installed software for LFS purposes, from a source that you couldn't really trust 100% or anything else?

I don't want to write the list of accounts that have been compromised, but I would like to know where the hacker has got his info.

I wonder if the real world trade in TC money would end if TC admins removed the ability to transfer TC money between accounts?

If that is the case, it might reduce the account renting system, if I understand correctly. But maybe there is a good reason why TC money needs to be transferred between accounts.

I think if I was a TC admin I wouldn't like this real world trade in TC money, but I am full of confusion at this point.

Thanks.

I am probably being dense but I still don't get why TC money is worth real money. As far as I knew, TC money isn't a real currency, though it is probably more stable than crypto rubbish.

Maybe I could understand if I knew who the buyers are, which type of person hands over their real money to buy TC money?

Please don't send us all the information. We can't just take your info and start banning accounts.

I know you are trying to help but we cannot spend every minute of our lives investigating Turkish LFS racers, poring over the evidence and trying to be judge and jury too. I am a software developer trying to find a bit of time to do some actual development. I am not a underpaid policeman and I'm start to get fed up looking into all this rubbish. Even though you are trying to help, it just takes more of my time, not less.

Quote from Bruhmomento :

They sell the TC money for real life money

This is the part I can't understand.

You can't just say something that makes no sense at all, and expect me to take that as a reason for something.

Well I can't understand Turkish, but the obvious suggestion is to not remove bans for reason "I am illegally renting a license" or "I bought a used, banned license as disallowed by the LFS regulations".

If rented accounts are useless then maybe the trade in them can stop. I am astonished that anyone can profit from renting out LFS licenses. It must be so cheap for the driver, to be worth renting instead of buying.

So the amount of effort involved for the illegal renter (who is basically a software pirate) can't be worth the income received. It's very strange.

Though I heard something about TC cruise money being used to make real money, which I don't even begin to understand.

Quote from Rubbel_31 :

I think after typing /rtex, the texture of the Indicator Glass and headlight glass of some vehicles is not visible. But it comes back after typing /rtex. I know it can be fixed after writing this command, but I still wanted to report the error.

Although it doesn't seem to be a serious issue, I've tried to see why it goes wrong but I can't make it happen so far. I've tried in single player and multiplayer.

I'm not really worried about this as texture loading is handled differently in the new graphics version but if anyone can explain a simple method to make the FZ dash and headlight textures disappear (maybe after typing /rtex or by some other means) then I would look again.

I don't think it is related to VR support, but there is multi monitor support that goes some way to support a curved screen, in an imperfect way.

I don't know how good the final effect is in reality but you can specify up to 5 "left screens" and up to 5 "right screens". This can represent a cylinder as several planes. I don't know how bad it is at the seams between the planes.

I did /window 1800 600 on my LFS and set 5 left and 5 right screens, the result is attached. You can set the FOV of the centre screen and the angle between screens, and LFS works out the total FOV. If the angle between screens isn't too high then the seams aren't very noticeable.

But the seams are visible and it look pretty heavy to draw the main view using 11 renders. It might be best done using a post processing shader to produce the correct distortion, conceptually similar to what we do in VR.

We've had an illegal LFS community in Russia, later an illegal LFS community in Brazil. The Turkish LFS community suffers from frequent DDoS attacks from its own members.

These were big problems related to certain countries but this does not mean that all Russians, Brazilians or Turkish people are troublemakers!

I know your intentions are good but I'm not taking off topic suggestions on this thread.

Please use the suggestions forum section.

No, I can't join either, your host needs restarting. The symptom I see (Queue Position : 1 endlessly) does happen after 49.7 days (aka 32 bits worth of milliseconds) and I believe I have fixed it in my own version, recently. But the fix isn't yet available. I'm wondering about moving soon to a minor update full version with various fixes and improvements seen in the test patch.

Yeah that's what I'm thinking. There is no suggestion that our servers have been hacked, no security breach on our side.

So in effect we are simply giving advice that there are hackers around and a few licenses have been stolen (around 20 as far as we know, as I've already said).

For example, some people actually entered their LFS game password into the systems run by people who formerly ran pirate master servers. It may sound crazy, to willingly hand over your password to a hacker, but that's what they did. We don't know if this is a source of some of the leaked passwords. But I am aware of failed attempts to use other licenses, by the same person that successfully used multiple licenses.

Anyway, I repeat the general advice, even if it's painfully obvious. Don't use the same password on different sites, do make sure your GAME password is not similar to your web password, don't give your password to hackers, or use it on other websites. Don't install exes given to you by "some guy on Discord" or whatever.

EDIT: We are still looking into this. LFS development has not resumed!

Last edited by Scawen, Mon, 19 Feb 2024 12:01.

I should explain that there are actually two separate issues here. They may be linked or partially linked, I don't know yet.

The first thing is a small number, around 20 that we know of, accounts in which the GAME password has been discovered by some means, that we don't know. We haven't heard this is widespread but we have seen repeated related attempts to use other licenses. At least some of these licenses are LFS users who have given no permission for anyone else to use their license.

The second thing is an illegal LFS license rental service based in Turkey. A certain group of users has actually purchased licenses and rents them out to other users. We don't know if they have also been using stolen licenses, but that is a possibility.

These two scenarios, that are definitely happening, have come to our attention in the last few days. Maybe they are entirely unrelated but people should make sure their WEB password and their GAME password are entirely unique and not used on other sites.

Dear LFS Racers,

We have seen evidence of people obtaining the GAME passwords of LFS racers.

[EDIT: We know of around 20 passwords obtained by one person - there is no evidence of a widespread problem]

We don't know where they get the data, but there is no evidence of a breach of security on our servers. Passwords have not been obtained by brute force attack either. We suspect there are multiple sources, possibly including data from pirate master servers that no longer exist. Possibly some password guessing and possibly passwords could have been obtained by software supplied by unscrupulous LFS community members.


EDIT: Unfortunately, I started this one thread about two separate subjects which are probably not related. For the password subject, I have now started a new thread: https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/107278


We have also received a report of a rental system in Turkey, run by some users that have obtained at least the GAME password of several LFS accounts and are renting them out for money (although some of these accounts may have been purchased legitimately rather than stolen).

If you have not changed your GAME password recently, please change it now, and make sure it is not related to any other passwords you use on the internet.

I'll have to take some more days off actual Live for Speed development in order to try to detect accounts that are being passed around.

If you have seen any account being used illegally, please try to contact the true owner of the account if you can. We will not be able to handle large numbers of reports to our technical support email. Such reports usually contain very minimal proof and it's hard for us to simply take such accounts offline. But if the true owner could change their passwords then the problem is solved without our intervention.

Live for Speed licenses are not for rental or loan to other users, so if we find accounts being used in this way we will remove their access to the online system.

EDIT: More information below: https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/2080549#post2080549

Last edited by Scawen, Fri, 23 Feb 2024 09:58.

Hello Mod Creators!

Here is a new video about rim profiles, different types of wheel and how to recreate realistic wheel rims in the LFS Editor.

Narrated by me, photos taken by Leo at Haynes Motor Museum.