
How hackers broke Pokémon Go’s anti-cheat technology in four days - jerryhuang100
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/08/anti-cheat-technology-stopped-pokemon-go-hackers-for-four-days/
======
manyxcxi
I stumbled on to the Java API a day or two after the launch and that was
actually the first time I'd downloaded and run the Pokemon Go app. It was
funny that writing code against the Niantic API was actually WAY more
interesting than the game for me.

A week or two of playing around with it was all I needed to satiate my
interest but it was a pretty neat thought excercise to avoid bans and come up
with different strategies for maximizing XP gains and making the bot make
better decisions and take efficient paths to high value areas.

The annoying thing was wading through slack and discord channels of people who
had no clue what was going on but were pissed that their bots weren't working
or that we weren't providing compiled binaries.

~~~
flocial
I had a similar experience.

But at the same time, it was exciting to think that some of those people
screaming for free technical assistance were getting their first taste of
programming via running bots.

------
flocial
The reverse engineering thread on Discord was one of the most exciting
spontaneous collaborative coding sessions I've read. There were several
talented coders using the IDA disassembler to reverse engineer the encryption
scheme tacked on to Niantic's API and bypassing the new security scheme.

Niantic's (mis)handling of the PoGo launch might go down in history as a
seminal case study in how to botch a black swan event: disabling the
spontaneous tracking aka the 3-step bug, constant server issues, premature
shutting down of pokemon map sites (that mainly arose from the aforementioned
3-step tracking being disabled), bugs in the game play, lack of perceived
engagement with the community, the disparity in game experience between rural
and urban players, unbalanced gym mechanics, divergence from the core Pokemon
experience, etc.

The gyms of the countries that are now getting PoGo are already flooded by
geo-spoofers/bots and most will never get to experience the scavenger hunt
like excitement with neither the in app radar or third party maps. I truly
hope that Niantic manages to recapture the initial excitement an deliver on
the original promise and manage to engage third party developers and the
player community.

------
MaxLeiter
I was pretty heavily involved in the reverse engineering process (although
more the management side as opposed to the RE side).

AMA?

~~~
flocial
Just wanted to say you guys were awesome and inspiring. It opened my eyes to a
whole new side of programming.

