10-Year-Old Girl Reveals Exploit in Android, iOS Game

[Guest]

It's not the fact that it is new that is somewhat special, it's the fact that a 10 year old did figure it out themselves that is. Yes the exploit is old, yes it has been around for many programs but do you think they knew that? They just thought of something to tried and figured it out and no, not every kid could do that since not many at 10 make the connection between game progression and system time like an older person would.

I guess I was smart for my age then. I bought a ps1 at around 1998/1999, and monster rancher (released in 1997) you could do the date thing on that game. Considering I was born in 1990, I was 8/9 when I figured this 'exploit' out.

 

[11796pcs]

I found this on the DefCon Kids site:
DefCon is a very adult orientated conference, more of a party then your typical conference. There will be adult language, alcohol and there may be nudity.

How come I wasn't invited?

The DefCon Kids conference room will be situated in and around the adult DEFCON, therefore you and your kids will be exposed to a wide assortment of people, lifestyles and philosophies.

Philosophies? Well, I guess I would be afraid if my kid started showing interest in Unix too.

 

[meradz]

Good for her.

I never cared for time based cheats myself as I found them too easy. Hex editing was my thing back then.

 

[husker]

Okay, so she found a way to cheat in a game. This is NOT HACKING. Do people not know what the word "hack" means anymore?

 

[Marthian]

I did this on Animal crossing XD that's sadly what killed it for me, I had all the money (or bells) and could buy anything... so gameplay = ruined...

on the other hand, I never liked these farmville-esque games that require time for stuff.

 

[Miharu]

No one have ever used a speedhack ? A little program existed since Windows 95, where you can make game slower or faster. Most games are affected and any Flash games. Ho yeah! it's wasn't the flawless Mac OS. "It's sure you can do the same with iOS and Android!" And it's still not fixed in Windows 7 because you can't fix that if you don't use a Server-Client game system.
Great job little girl, perhaps, someone will figure out.. shiny doesn't mean better. (no sarcasm, great job)

 

[Dannypwnsall]

Some day people will realize many of the best ideas for inventions or hacks come from Children. They don't follow the same laws of thinking as most adults do. And many of good inventors think of solutions as a child might, finding stupid yet easy things to come up with.

 

[gti88]

One little boy discovered that it takes too long to wait until he dies, and shot himself. Smart little boy.

 

[guanyu210379]

WOW! She is good! I did not even think of that.

 

[johnsmithhatesVLC]

She's a hacker for figuring out how to change the time? Oh boy, how times have changed...

 

[s997863]

Not really hacking but it's a start ...

In MetalGearSolid3, when you & a hiding sniper boss were hunting each other in the jungle, you could advance the PS2 clock ~10 years, and the old-guy boss simply dies of old age (this was one way to beat him).

 

[NuclearShadow]

This is the first time a child or a female has ever figured out and did something by themselves.

(The above comment is a joke don't take it seriously)

 

[Pyree]

Well everyone needs somewhere to start. Do you really expect a 10 year old to hack into FBI or the CIA? If that girl have genuine talent with a little bit of help from more experienced people, I will not be surprise if she starts pwning many of us all in a couple of years.

 

[therogerwilco]

This my friend, is retarded and not worth the 30 seconds I have spent here

 

[dread_cthulhu]

My 13 year old has been hacking WoW forever... it took them like 6 months to plug whatever security hole he was exploiting, but he gave himself speed hacks, and some way to pass through world objects. It was crazy, lol.

 

[hoofhearted]

I remember the days of the Vic-20 and the C64. Even wrote a little program to loop through and call pagers via the 300 baud modem. Said target would get tons of calls with people asking "Did you page me?"

Then there were the days of Kali, Warcraft 2 and Win 95 OOB blue screen. Even wrote a little progran such that when the Kali server were full, it would loop thorugh all the ips on said server and send oob, figure 10% or so weren't protected, voila, open slots.

 

[zak_mckraken]

[citation][nom]RicardoK[/nom]What's impressive, in this case, is that there are so many 'bad' programmers out there that forgot to check for the real date/time on their apps that this exploit might be just a door opened to other worst exploits on the said systems.[/citation]
There's not much they can do. The only way they can confirm the date/time is by syncing it online. If there's no connection available, they have 2 options : brick the game ("Sorry, the game couldn't confirm the date/time online"), which is pretty much a DRM, or continue anyway with the consequences we know.

For a silly farm game, I'd say option B is the obvious choice.

 

[DSpider]

$100 because she changed the system time ?? Damn.

As I was reading and you said something about "a new class of exploits" (I was like "Hmmmm... Impressive...") but then she only changed the frigging time. Omg.

Thanks, Kevin. You weasel, you... At least it didn't end with a never gonna give you up, never gonna tell a lie and desert you.

 

[f-14]

lulz i'm pretty sure we all did this with earlier versions of anti virus where we rolled the clock up to 4-1-2030 when we installed it.

 

[godmodder]

lulz i'm pretty sure we all did this with earlier versions of anti virus where we rolled the clock up to 4-1-2030 when we installed it.

Yeah, those were the days. And I was 9 years old back then and I saw the connection between the expiration date of software and the system clock: whoooooo spooky!