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 Post subject: Team Fortress 2 - Fake Item/Hat Drops
PostPosted: 22 Jul 2009 19:34 

Joined: 16 Aug 2007 06:25
Posts: 367
Edit: This no longer works.

I recently found this info online. I did NOT discover it, credits go out to facepunch.com and other sites who have published it first. But I figure I would post it here as it's a very interesting bug if you are familiar with Team Fortress 2.

Intro: TF2 recently introduced a drop/unlock system where players randomly obtain new items, and even rare hats while playing. When you obtain one of these items, it is announced to the server.

The Bug: The bug is that you can announce that you have earned one of these items... even though you didn't actually get it. You do not get the item, you just announce it and fool everyone. And if you announce a rare hat, usually a bunch of people in the server will congratulate you since they are pretty rare. So this bug can be fun to mess with people :P. In addition, you can use this bug to announce that you have "found" anything listed in the tf_english.txt file regardless of whether or not it's an actual earnable item.

How To:
1) Goto: http://gamepaste.com/item_found.php
2) Type the map you're playing on in the "map" field (example: ctf_2fort). Type your temp player ID in the "id" field. You can find this by typing "status" in console and looking next to the #. So for example, mine is 2 in the parenthesis: (# 2 "SomaFM" STEAM_0:0:12345678 01:00)... Now choose you rare hat from the list to announce to the server. Now press "Submit"
3) You will get a string of text like so: "item_found TF_Spy_Hat_1 37935". Paste this into your console without quotes and press enter. Check the chat! It should announce a fake drop to the server:
Image

Other announcements:
As I mentioned earlier, you can announce anything found in tf_english.txt. The file is too big to be displayed here, but here is the latest copy as of this post: http://pastebin.com/f535db877. You can also get it by extracting your current "team fortress 2 content.gcf" file and looking under the path "tf\resource\tf_english.txt". GCFScape is a good tool for extracting Steam GCF archives.

I want to announce that I have found the item "Spiders". This isn't an actual item, but since it's in tf_english.txt we can say we found it! Use the link that was generated in the "How To" section like so: http://gamepaste.com/item_found.php?map ... O_Monster5. I paste the generated string into my console and voila:
Image

Item_Found.php:
So you probably want to know how the string you type into console is generated (instead of relying on this gamepaste.com website). It's quite simple:
Code:
<?php

$mapname = $_GET['map'];
$pid = $_GET['pid'];
$weapon = $_GET['weapon'];
$base = crc32($mapname) & 0xFFFF;

printf("item_found %s %d", $weapon, $base ^ $pid);

?>


Other notes: You can't pretend to be someone else (nothing will show up if you try, or if you use an invalid string). You can spam it as much as you want though. Be careful, don't get banned!

Enjoy it while it lasts! But I've seen that this info has been known for at least 2 months now without a fix, so I'm not sure what VALVe is doing.


Last edited by SomaFM on 31 Dec 2010 05:11, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Team Fortress 2 - Fake Item/Hat Drops
PostPosted: 23 Jul 2009 14:33 

Joined: 24 Sep 2007 02:12
Posts: 1114
Location: http://sethioz.co.uk
Quote:
You can't pretend to be someone else (nothing will show up if you try, or if you use an invalid string). You can spam it as much as you want though. Be careful, don't get banned!


does this mean that you can't use other person's name and id to show this ? what prevents you from doing so ? what i understood from this is that you can enter any player's id and name and it sends the fake announce. wht am i missing ?


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 Post subject: Re: Team Fortress 2 - Fake Item/Hat Drops
PostPosted: 23 Jul 2009 14:36 

Joined: 16 Aug 2007 06:25
Posts: 367
If you use a player's id that is not yours, nothing will be shown. Probably a check done on the server side.


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 Post subject: Re: Team Fortress 2 - Fake Item/Hat Drops
PostPosted: 23 Jul 2009 14:43 

Joined: 24 Sep 2007 02:12
Posts: 1114
Location: http://sethioz.co.uk
ah yes, the packet is still sent thru your steam, i tought its remote at first, didnt focus on the bug.
so in theory if you can send the whole packet, then it should work, but steam seem to be quite protected against such things.


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 Post subject: Re: Team Fortress 2 - Fake Item/Hat Drops
PostPosted: 23 Jul 2009 14:55 

Joined: 16 Aug 2007 06:25
Posts: 367
The packet is most likely sent to the game server itself, not through steam. If steam had to handle that kind of stuff it pretty much defeats the purpose of having game servers to begin with.

But the game server probably goes:

"Oh hey, a message from player 1234. He wants to announce a new item."
"Wait a minute.. he wants to announce a new item for player 5678? DENIED! THAT'S NOT HIM!"
.. and nothing happens.

Of course since TF2 uses udp, spoofing is probably possible. But then you would need to know the ip/port of the player you're spoofing. And that info is not available to regular players on a server (only the server admin).


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 Post subject: Re: Team Fortress 2 - Fake Item/Hat Drops
PostPosted: 24 Jul 2009 08:34 

Joined: 24 Sep 2007 02:12
Posts: 1114
Location: http://sethioz.co.uk
umm so it is remote, but the IP where its coming from has to be connected to the server at same time ? so it matches up the IP and player ID (and name).


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 Post subject: Re: Team Fortress 2 - Fake Item/Hat Drops
PostPosted: 24 Jul 2009 10:41 

Joined: 16 Aug 2007 06:25
Posts: 367
Correct.


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 Post subject: Re: Team Fortress 2 - Fake Item/Hat Drops
PostPosted: 14 Aug 2009 13:38 

Joined: 16 Aug 2007 06:25
Posts: 367
This appears to have been fixed in yesterday's patch. Either that, or they changed the algorithm to generate the string. But my guess is that it's probably fixed for good so you can't manually announce it using console even if you have the algorithm figured out.


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 Post subject: Re: Team Fortress 2 - Fake Item/Hat Drops
PostPosted: 15 Aug 2009 06:30 

Joined: 24 Sep 2007 02:12
Posts: 1114
Location: http://sethioz.co.uk
hehe, guess it means that lot of ppl read Luigi's forum :)


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 Post subject: Re: Team Fortress 2 - Fake Item/Hat Drops
PostPosted: 09 Sep 2009 12:37 

Joined: 29 May 2009 05:42
Posts: 4
hey posting here because i don't think it deserves its own thread, but seeing as a few of you are tf2 fans might as well.

in the new blog article, they said at the near end:
"We realize there is a high level of demand for items, and we're still working on systems to allow you to find them in new ways (via Trading, and crafting duplicates into desired items)."

so hold onto your dupes i suppose, lol


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 Post subject: Re: Team Fortress 2 - Fake Item/Hat Drops
PostPosted: 09 Sep 2009 16:54 

Joined: 16 Aug 2007 06:25
Posts: 367
I am definitely excited about this. Just wish my backpack was bigger :P... I have tons of dupes that I would like to keep if we're going to be able to turn them into hats. Wish they would give us new info on how it will all work soon.


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 Post subject: Re: Team Fortress 2 - Fake Item/Hat Drops
PostPosted: 30 Dec 2010 05:26 

Joined: 30 Dec 2010 05:15
Posts: 1
oh its seems really cool .....let me try


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 Post subject: Re: Team Fortress 2 - Fake Item/Hat Drops
PostPosted: 31 Dec 2010 05:08 

Joined: 16 Aug 2007 06:25
Posts: 367
rockyleak wrote:
oh its seems really cool .....let me try


This was fixed long ago.


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