Considering that I and BLC Online as a whole is being accused and insulted, I have also decided to post about this to totally back up what Zim has just said.
The first contact I had with Dave/Warrior/Bill Lawry (after this referred to as his current name - Warrior) was on 16th December when he contacted me on ICQ, he seemed at the time to be a decent guy and I talked about Cricket in general with him several times on ICQ.
After chatting to him for a while he started talking about his site (http://www.nzwarriors.com) and his contact with EA. I didn?t at this time know that he had been sent the Cricket 2002 patch from Andrew but I knew that Andrew had been in contact with him and had posted on his forums after he referred me to a few posts about it that he had made on BLC Online forums.
He then alerted me to what he called "Terrorists" on my forum and said he had abuse from several BLC Online forum members. I jokingly said to him that he was advertising in my forums which was against the rules, but I didn?t really mind about this. However Warrior seemed to get very angry and abusive about this throw-away comment and he started talking about my forums dieing and I said his weren?t exactly buzzing before said he didn?t want to speak to me again. I didn?t see that this was a reason for what I thought was a nice person, to stop speaking to me again so I contacted him via email and I tried to explain what I said.
After a few more emails when he said he wouldn?t speak to me again and he couldn?t trust me etc. I contacted him on MSN messenger this time and after a bit of an argument when he said he was "thinking of asking about possible forum merger" before saying he would rather talk to a hacker than me (ironic, considering what he was to actually accuse me of). However after chatting for a while we managed to end this argument and chat normally again.
I was interested with the idea of a forum merger and tried to discuss it but at that time he didn?t seem to be interested anymore and said he was in negotiations for a forum merger with 2 other cricket sites forums (I won?t name them here). I didn?t give up on the idea and contacted him again and he did seem more keen if BLC Online forums were merged into his with all my admins still standing.
I investigated a bit into forum importing as he uses different forum software but he changed his mind and was against a merger again. After that we chatted normally again for a while, with him talking about Cricket 2002 etc. and he seemed to know people from EA so I told him about an extra hidden forum on BLC Online which was set up to test the play-by-email BLC (a variation on which is being used for the Online World Cup but for C2002), and to finalize an email that was going to be sent with BLC suggestions to Jeremy Willard of HB Studios. This forum was only known about by 4 members and didn?t get many posts but one post was from Zimrahil who had also been in contact with Warrior and had been told about the patch, had private emails between Warrior and Andrew forwarded to him by Warrior and had been sent a beta version of the patch. It turns out that Warrior had been told this information in confidence by Andrew and had been told not to give out the beta version of the patch to anyone.
He had however given this to Zim who had sent the patch to 2 other members who could visit this hidden forum. I didn?t know anything about the patch when I gave Warrior access to this forum. I then realized my mistake when Warrior sent an email to Zim telling him that the patch had bugs in and would somehow mess up Windows and therefore not to install it & how he now couldn't trust Zim because he had shared the patch. Zim posted this information on the hidden forum. Warrior got angry with Zim because of this and said some harsh words for sharing the patch, basically falling out with Zim completely. Talks between myself and Warrior went on about a forum merger for a few more days before Warrior noticed that I had posted on the hidden forum saying that the non-functionality of the patch was not true (believing this to be true, whether it was or not).
Warrior managed to take screenshots of this and several topics in the hidden forum and he sent them to me with an abusive email saying he didn?t trust me at all anymore. I decided to ban Warrior from the hidden forums and he did not have access to them using his Bill Lawry name after this. There were a bit more discussions about a forum merger but it turned out Warrior didn?t trust me at all and he kept on constantly changing his mind about this proposed merger. He them suddenly was very keen for the merger and want to prove he trusted me by making me an admin on his forum and he asked me to make him an admin on the BLC Online forums, I said to him I wouldn?t do this as I want to talk to my other admins about it first but he decided that this meant I didn?t trust him anymore and after more abuse said he didn?t want to speak to me ever again.
I accepted this and was ok with that choice of his but im sure he then realised that Zim could be angry with Warrior and could email EA Sports about Warrior sharing the patch and confidential emails with him. I don?t think Zim would have done this but Warrior decided to make up a story about myself and Zim hacking the NZWarriors servers to illegally get the patch. This is totally false and it was just dreamed up by Warrior to give him a story to tell EA and make EA think he didn?t share the patch so he would continue to be trusted by EA and keep his position as a beta tester for C2002.
You can see the topic where the claims where made here:
http://www.nzwarriors.com/forums....42&st=0
Warriors main piece of evidence that there was a hacking was a screenshot he posted which he claimed was from the BLC Online hidden forum. He was right that the original screenshot came from the hidden forum from a post where Zim said that he had been given the patch by Warrior BUT Warrior has edited this screenshot in PhotoShop or Paintshop Pro to change the message completly and create a false message saying Zim hacked the forums.
You have seen the original screenshot in Zims post above and heres something I have done to show the screenshot is fake:
The second post by Zim on the screenshot was really on the hidden forums but the first one has been created by Warrior in a different font (Times New Roman) to the font of the second post on the screenshot and everywhere else in the BLC Online forums including this text you are reading now (Verdana). Times New Roman is not used anywhere in these forums and the fake post in this font makes it a total giveaway that this evidence is fake meaning no hack ever took place!
His only other evidence was an IP address that he claimed was that of the person who hacked into NZWarriors. Zim and myself both use Freeserve (along with millions of others in the UK) which don?t have fixed IP addresses so this IP might have been one of ours but it was just from the forum admin control panel which gives details of the IP of the person who posted every post on a forum. The Southwark information given on his forum has nothing to with Zim or myself and is just the area of London where Freeserve or a connected company Planet Online are based.
Warriors story about the hacking seems to just be flawed and he doesn?t really give that much information. He says the NZWarriors servers have been hacked, by this does he mean the FTP servers? If so Zim would still have to know that the patch was on the server at the time and he couldn?t know this without Warrior actually telling him something. If this is how the hacking took place, why was the file just on the NZ Warriors serve in the first place.
However Warrior told me in an email with a word document which claimed to be from some sort of legal organisation based in India that the alleged hack was of a secret area on NZWarriors server. If what Warrior was saying is true, how an earth would Zim know of this server area without being told about it by Warrior himself. The address of this secret area was not something like "http://www.nzwarriors.com/secretarea/"
but
http://www.nzwarriors.com/foydeco , so Warrior cant say in his fantasy world that Zim guessed that address. Zim would also have to somehow get into his either FTP servers or Secret area. Either he could be given the password by Warrior or he would have used a hacking program which tries a list of 1000s of passwords until one is accepted. Zim would have had to know the username for the secret area and then the server/secret area would have to be unusual that it wasn?t set to block an IP address after 5 or so wrong passwords.
Warrior only posted one IP address and details of one alleged access to the NZWarriors server/secret area, could it be that Zim managed to guess the username and password in one go!! Well if that happened and Zim is not hired by the CIA by next week, he can choose my lottery numbers on Saturday! If this hacking story had an ounce of truth, Warrior would have logs showing 1000's of attempted logins by that IP address over a period of quite a few hours until the he password was finally entered correctly.
This just shows, as well as the faked screenshots and email, how totally untrue this story that Warrior has come up with is.
The screenshots that appeared on BLC Online forums of the patch - one of which I believe to be fake - were sent to my by Warrior, not to post on the forums but to "shove up Zims arse" as seen by this MSN/Trillian log when after saying he wouldn?t speak to me again, Warrior contacted me again: (Warriors MSN address removed from logs)
*** ###########@hotmail.com (Warrior) has joined the conversation.
Warrior: and shove this up zims arse
Warrior: to what the 6th beta solves
***File "cricket022.jpg" received from ###########@hotmail.com (Warrior)
Ste: ok sure will do
Ste: what is it solving btw?
*** ###########@hotmail.com (Warrior) has joined the conversation.
Ste: ?
Ste: I mean what does that picture show the patch solves?
Ste: ???
*** ###########@hotmail.com (Warrior) has joined the conversation.
Ste: u their?
Session Close (Warrior): Mon Jan 06 09:48:29 2003
Session Start (MSN - Ste:Warrior): Mon Jan 06 09:52:40 2003
Warrior: goochisgod
*** ###########@hotmail.com (Warrior) has joined the conversation.
Ste: pardon?
Ste: what update does that screenshot show?
Session Close (Warrior): Mon Jan 06 10:02:50 2003
Session Start (MSN - Ste:Warrior): Mon Jan 06 10:09:49 2003
Warrior: can you shove this up zims arse too
***File "2.jpg" received from ###########@hotmail.com (Warrior)
Ste: ok sure
Ste: can you tell me what the other picture is first?
Ste: ?????????????
*** ###########@hotmail.com (Warrior) has joined the conversation.
Session Close (Warrior): Mon Jan 06 10:21:47 2003
Session Start (MSN - Ste:Warrior): Mon Jan 06 10:36:14 2003
Warrior: we'll its pretty obvious aint it?
Ste: the first one?
Session Close (Warrior): Mon Jan 06 10:36:21 2003
Session Start (MSN - Ste:Warrior): Mon Jan 06 10:38:26 2003
Warrior: footmarks in ODI's
Ste: ok
Session Close (Warrior): Mon Jan 06 10:38:34 2003
Session Start (MSN - Ste:Warrior): Mon Jan 06 10:38:44 2003
Warrior: and cya cya later
Ste: bye
Session Close (Warrior): Mon Jan 06 10:38:48 2003
Well Warrior wasn?t pleased that I had "shoved" them onto the forum instead of where he said. He posted on his forums discrediting the pictures and it does turn out that the rain one he sent me was fake, this was removed from the post on the BLC Online forums. The next day (UK time), the same day (NZ time), I was contacted as soon as I came online in the morning (I was off university because I had time to revise for exams) by Zim saying that he couldn?t get onto the main BLC Online forums and the extra forum. I looked at the site and it had turned out that my admin password had been changed, new registrations had been blocked and only members logged in could view the forum on the BLC Online main forums and the extra forum.
After realising the only way I could get back into the forum was to install the ikonboard software again. After doing this and restoring myself as admin I noticed that the posts about the screenshots had gone, as well as the wishlist topic and some other topics. All admins had also been removed as well as the whole BLC/SWC forum deleted. To get this back I had to restore the forums using a backup I had made several days before meaning a few topics and posts including the screenshots topic was lost forever. I only think that someone had managed to get hold of the password I used for the Admin Control Panel, and there are 2 ways that this might have happened - I stupidly used the same password to access the NZWarriors forum, Warrior or one of his admins could have got this from NZWarriors forum admin control panel (im not sure if Invision forums allows this, Ikonboard certainly doesn?t) or the accrual database information from the forum. An alternative way my password could have been received could have been because of the several emails I received from one of the NZWarriors admins (I wont name him here), telling me that he had given me access to the NZWarriors admin forum :
hey ste,
###### here, I got the pics you wanted, its at the admins forum and I have given you access to them
Log on with the same username and pass @ the forums here www.nzwarriors.com/forums/admin.php and you can see the info for yourself.
Goodluck
######
The pics he talks about where pics of the NZWarriors that this admin said where supposedly more proof a hacking had taken place. Now in my foolishness and given that temptation, I couldn?t really resist giving it ago and tried to access only to be told "ACCESS DENIED". I can only assume that my password would have been logged by this and Warrior or one of his admins used it to access the BLC Online forums admin.
Several other interesting emails were sent by Warrior. The first was sent to my hosts, which Sports-Gaming forwarded to me, and was supposedly from me using an address
[email protected] (an address that is nothing to do with me):
From: Ste Cooper (
[email protected])
To:
[email protected]
Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2003 4:46 PM
Subject: My website blc.sports-gaming.com and planning to add a 'Warez section'
James
I have read the rules and apparently I am allowed to put up a warez section and later on an adult section on my site at blc.sports-gaming.com, and will be putting up files and got a link up at kickme.to/blackwarez.com and will be merging with them.
I thought I would let you know as it would be polite, but you can do nothing.
Thanks
Ste
Ofcourse warez/adult sites are not allowed on Sports-Gaming Network and after further investigation by my Hosts it was found that the email had the following information in the header:
..........
Received: from [b
ost_uid0] warriornzrl95[/b
ost_uid0] ([210.54.104.239]) by mta4-rme.xtra.co.nz
with ESMTP
id <20030105004634.KKXY29171.mta4-rme.xtra.co.nz@warriornzrl95>
for <###@sports-gaming.com>; Sun, 5 Jan 2003 13:46:34 +1300
.............
It was sent from a New Zealand IP address (I am in the UK) with an ID possibly an II SP username of warriornzrl95. Who could this Warrior be???
A few days later I received this email, supposedly from Andrew of EA Sports using an address -
[email protected] (not his real email address, all people from EA Sports would only use a official email address for business emails with an EA domain e.g. @ea.com or @easports.com or @easports.com.au :
Hello,
I am wondering where you got those screenshots from on your forum because the patch does not have rain. Nor will Cricket 2004 have rain. Jeremy and I were looking to update graphical issues on the patch, and it does not have AI or extra features. Please note that this gives EA?s fans a false sensation. Please take note.
Cheers,
A.
The email also included Andrews accrual signature with his phone number which of course Warrior knew of because his contact with Andrew. Surprise, Surprise it also had the following text in the header of the email:
Received: from warriornzrl95 ([210.54.104.191]) by mta5-rme.xtra.co.nz
with ESMTP
id <20030106212520.OKF18554.mta5-rme.xtra.co.nz@warriornzrl95>
for <
[email protected]>;
Tue, 7 Jan 2003 10:25:20 +1300
Again with the NZ IP address (Andrew is in Australia) and the WARRIORnzl95 ID.
I replied to this email and was sent an email back :
I have no intentions in talking to you or anyone at BLC. The investigations
have begun and BLC forums will be punished, the evidence stacked against you
are serious and EA and HB will not communicate with hackers and any persons
involved in illegal activity.
A.
Proving that Warrior has registered this hotmail address and could have at other times used it to pretend to be Andrew of EA Sports.
More emails followed to my hosts including ones that where actually signed Dave Johnson threatening myself and Sports Gaming Online legal action. These emails sounded pretty realistic but knowing Dave actually studied law in college I knew where just scare tactics with my hosts thinking the same saying "I'm just playing along with it. I can tell that this is fake. No one really sues over a forum..." after he had replied to Warrior basically saying that SGN has no responsibilities for hosted sites.
Anyway, that is basically my side of the whole sorry story. There was no hacking into NZWarriors servers at all, Warrior was worried that Andrew would find out that he shared the patch (Andrew now knows the whole story) and Warrior/Dave has relentlessly tried to turn everyone against me and BLC Online forums (stopping his admins from talking to me, getting them to keep saying they had been removed as admin from NZWarriors and could they be a BLC Online admin, pretending to delete NZWarriors forums and asking to be a BLC Online admin in exchange etc. etc. etc) and in some way has succeeded with alot of abuse posted against Zim and myself in the topic on the NZ Warriors forums topic :
http://www.nzwarriors.com/forums....42&st=0 which is why myself and Zim have decided we had to post the truth about what happened.
I hope that you can now see that myself or Zim has not been involved in hacking, that topic on NZWarriors forum all lies, posts where edited on his forums to try and make it was Zim posting an admission, and in all Warrior has just been trying to fool you all on what really happened and what he did.
There is actually more emails that I can give details of with full headers from emails, more emails, supposedly legal documents etc. if anyone feels they need more proof about this? Does anyone wish to add any comments about this?
Ste
: ...
