My friend was hacked while logged in

[Shirai]

What I don't get is why RMT would want to do this... stealing gil directly from players actually harms their own business. Why would anyone buy from them if RMT could just steal it back again?

I have a feeling some of these RMT guys are starting to get desperate.
While we notice little because they keep coming back with new characters constantly, SE is actually hitting them quite hard with their purges.
Not only their advertising bots and farming bots but also their bank characters and several suppliers are being taken down constantly forcing them to find new ways to fix their gilsupply.

Believe it or not, there's quite a demand and the RMT are starting to show clear signs of struggle.
While SE (nor any other MMO company regardless of what some people claim) won't be able to eradicate the problem completely, as long as they keep up FFXIV will become less and less attractive for RMT companies.

[Khalette]

That's a good question. It was a bit too flashy for a class that likes to remain under the radar. A lot of what RMT does makes little sense. If I had to speculate I'd say that this may not have been RMT but just a run of the mill hack job. They may have even found the exploit, warned SE about it, and nothing was done or it wasn't handled fast enough for their tastes so they decided to make a statement.

That sounds like a gamer for sure. I wouldn't be surprised if it really happened that way.

[Grefia]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...24#post1536024

[Tahldon]

What I don't get is why RMT would want to do this... stealing gil directly from players actually harms their own business. Why would anyone buy from them if RMT could just steal it back again?

Interesting question you propose here. It doesn't really make sense to me either; however, in the face of SE combating their other various routes of gaining gil abnormally, something like this doesn't seem to far off... But like some people have said here, it seems a little unusual for them to just blatantly attack players who are actively playing the game. Not only that, they did it to a large number and not just a handful.

But, I must say, I'm pretty impressed with how fast the Dev team jumped to stop this issue from ensnaring more victims. Though, there were people in the middle of stuff who got the short end (Sorry to hear about that guy who lost 9 animal fat in a synth. Ouch.) Nonetheless, legal action has gotten involved now. Hopefully that'll deter further attempts to cause chaos later on. But one can only hope, of course.

[Freakiie]

snip

This hack/exploit was done by making the server think your client sent commands to buy stuff of the MB. By this logic it's not all that hard to send a command to the server that withdrew all gil from your retainers first. Whether this was done or not I don't know, but considering what they've done it seems well within the realms of possibilities.

And the reason why I run around with all my cash is because I can quite simply put. I dislike constantly having to run to the retainer when I see a good deal and I can control my spendings pretty well so there should be no reason for me to dump my cash on a retainer.

[JayCommon]

I'll put it out there, plain and simple. I've said it in another thread, may as well here. Even your retainer gil was not safe. Doesn't matter if you had it stored or not, any gil you had was VULNERABLE.

According to the most recent statement by Yoshi-P, gil in retainers were excluded from this hack. So, your retainer gil was safe. In 20 pages of posts no one reported gil from their retainers missing. Only one person came close by saying he/she dumped gil into their retainer only to find out the hack hit him/her right before it processed.

[Orsnoire]

Until now there was no real reason to ever put your gil on your retainer... it's not like it should be possible for anyone to steal it. Hell there's no reason why the retainer would be more secure either... if they can hack your character they can probably hack your retainer.

What I don't get is why RMT would want to do this... stealing gil directly from players actually harms their own business. Why would anyone buy from them if RMT could just steal it back again?

That it harms their own business is not at all true.

Steal from the players and sell it back to them...

[Dozer]

Holy cow! This sucks, guys. Sorry to all those who lost gil. If they try to take my gil they are in for a rude awakening... because I am dirt poor already. =/

[TeganLaron]

I just hope this begins to deter the people who buy from the gil sellers.

Before this the gil sellers were simply annoying spammers to most of us. Sure, their constant tells were frustrating, but they didn't really effect you overall. They almost seemed harmless. However now after this vile, clearly well planned and organized attack, we have all seen what these people are really capable of. They aren't there to help you, as a way to just give you a little in game boost, they are nothing more than parasites and we need to eradicate them from this game.

Square-Enix can only do so much, ultimately it comes down to us. They operate on supply and demand. So if we stop demanding, they stop supplying.

[Tupsi]

It's utterly baffling how low RMTs will go to steal hard-earned money from legitimate players.

As bad of a situation this is, you have to realize it's not just RMT that will hack and steal from people as there's forum communities full of people who use hack (BG and Evo forums for example) - This is why every company (including Blizzard) installs monitoring software on your computer and SE is the only one that doesn't try to impede in that regard (since people would complain.)

I'm deeply hoping Square Enix does whatever it possibly can to fix this issue so as to protect us.

In all honesty, they'll have to redesign the game in certain areas at this point.

I just hope this begins to deter the people who buy from the gil sellers.

It won't - people still buy leveling services (Deepvoid mouse in shroud) and buy gil because it's easier.