BRAVE FC Letter to FFXIV (Security system glitch)

[iMustafa18]

Dear Square Enix (FFXIV Team Developers)

Greetings from [Edited by Moderator], Better known as my online ID in Final Fantasy XIV “Lionel Lightshield, Founder of The Zodiac Brave Free Company “BRAVE”. I would like to first command and appreciate the work you all put into making this game the beautiful game it is today, I have been playing ever since A Realm Reborn release acrossing through Heavnsward and Storm Blood and absolutely looking forward for the release of Shadowbringers. Great content allowed me to a nice opportunity into making a big and nice community within the game to enjoy and share the experience at most level.

In regards to my letter, however, I am approaching with all respect to discuss an issue that occurred in game on June 4th, 2019. We discovered that a trusted member of our FC's account unfortunately got hacked, resulting an incident where a total of 190,000,000 Gil, which was saved over a very long time by the donations of multiple FC Members, was stolen from the Free Company Chest. The victim's account has since been re-secured by a password change and the addition of a security token, which is something we are now requiring for all high-ranking members of the free company.

The method by which this incident occurred is what is making us concerned and is why we are approaching for the developers for cooperation in solving this issue. Our FC contains 10 ranks, with the top 4 ranks designated as management roles, giving these ranks access to certain settings (mostly the ones related to member and free company management) that the rest of the members cannot use. We have Gil withdrawal access limited to only three people in the two highest ranks, the Free Company Master and the two other leaders. However, the member who's account was hacked had permissions to promote/demote members, which we discovered (after the fact) meant that they could promote themselves or other players to any rank in the free company except for FC Master, meaning they were effectively able to give or gain access to any and all permissions that were not exclusive to the FC Master. Because of this, the hacked account was able to invite a new member to the FC, promote the member to the second-highest rank (which was above their own rank), then the new member was able to withdraw the Gil from our chest, after which they were discharged by the hacked account.

We are unsure if the game's official team is aware of such a scenario, but we would still like to point it out, as well as try to find a solution since this incident created chaos within a very friendly FC that has been around for over four years. Our security within the FC was taken very carefully, according to the maximum possibility that the game allows us to. This has become an emergency situation with unfortunately bad timing, especially considering the short amount of time left before the release of the new expansion, Shadowbringers. We tried to reach an in game GM via reports as soon as we discovered the issue and they escalated the issue to a GM supervisor, but we have yet to be contacted or told of any developments by them ever since. Please work with us to come up with the best possible solution to minimize the losses, and hopefully fix some of the Free Company settings to avoid such problems in the future, for both our Free Company and the free companies of players around the world.


Sincerely,
In game FC leaders:
Lionel Lightshield
Devil Johan
Stella Iris

[Dynratygus]

Thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

We apologize for any inconvenience that has occurred when playing Final Fantasy XIV. Unfortunately the issue you are describing is not a technical issue. I will be moving this thread to "General Discussion".

Hope to see you online!

[AlliciaCapulet]

Thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

We apologize for any inconvenience that has occurred when playing Final Fantasy XIV. Unfortunately the issue you are describing is not a technical issue. I will be moving this thread to "General Discussion".

Hope to see you online!

I'm just curious on how a bug like this is not a technical issue? It's not the first time that I ear stories like that, I agree that the simple way to solve this is by having the fc leader only with the right of withdraw gils, but... If there is a problem like that, why it's not solve, or not seen as a technical issue?

[Felis]

I'm just curious on how a bug like this is not a technical issue? It's not the first time that I ear stories like that, I agree that the simple way to solve this is by having the fc leader only with the right of withdraw gils, but... If there is a problem like that, why it's not solve, or not seen as a technical issue?

It seem that it is not a bug because it is not code related, but design related. It work the way the devs want it to work. It is not about the tech team to change it, but the devs have to change their design.

[Seraphor]

I'm just curious on how a bug like this is not a technical issue? It's not the first time that I ear stories like that, I agree that the simple way to solve this is by having the fc leader only with the right of withdraw gils, but... If there is a problem like that, why it's not solve, or not seen as a technical issue?

Because it's not a technical issue...

Someone using the valid mechanics of the game to steal gil via accessing their account against their wishes, is a people issue, not an technical issue.
If the account was 'hacked' through the game itself then maybe there's a technical issue there, but chances are his login details were obtained outside of the game itself.

[iMustafa18]

Because it's not a technical issue...

Someone using the valid mechanics of the game to steal gil via accessing their account against their wishes, is a people issue, not an technical issue.
If the account was 'hacked' through the game itself then maybe there's a technical issue there, but chances are his login details were obtained outside of the game itself.

Regardless, what we are concerned about is the possibility of promoting above your own rank, so it's not a people issue otherwise we wouldn't try to have an action from the developers.

[linay]

Maybe they should make it so you can't promote over your rank. Either way, I think that permission should only be given to the next rank down from the FC leader at most and not any rank below that.

[iMustafa18]

We have it as three ranks highest, gils withdrawal for 2 highest only. The three members who are top 2 ranks are basically who started this FC from the beginning until today and we trust each other.

[NessaWyvern]

Yeah, being able to promote over your current rank always baffled me about FCs.

[Rosentretter]

What happened to you and your FC is very unfortunate. I just wanted to point out the coincidence on Free Company name and Tag, we created the Zodiac Braves in Twintania yesterday, of course we didn't knew there were more FCs with that name.

If it helps, this situation will help us to be careful with everything FC related. I hope you can find a solution to your problem, I bet it feels really bad. Tell us how it goes!