You're Not Crazy, it is Raining Skulls
A lot of Counter Strike Source servers have seen something that's well, interesting, over the past few days. Someone discovered an exploit that causes the sky to pixilate with black and purple pixels, then it literally starts raining skulls.
There was some early speculation that this could be prevented by changing the sv_cheats from 1 to 0 in your server.cfg file. This is of course assuming you own/run your own server - regular players would not have access to the server.cfg file. This theory was quickly discounted though, as numerous servers (the CSGZ server included) already had the correct settings yet still fell victim to the "raining skulls" exploit.
Here's a screen shot taken by Sparkie, a guy who started a thread on the subject in the Steam forums. There's a few other screen shots take by one of our members, YeLLoW, at the close of this post.
At the present time it doesn't appear that the exploit causes any real damage. As one of the players on our server pointed out it appears the only real "damage" is that a lot of players get shot while they are standing around looking at the skulls instead of watching out for the other team.
If there's a bright side to this, I guess it's that an exploit has been discovered and will be patched, possibly preventing a copy cat exploit that could cause more harm in the future. Don't get me wrong, I'd lay money on the fact that this won't be the last exploit we see. Counter Strike is one of, if not the, most popular online game. It's a prime target for hackers.
Valve is aware of the problem and I would speculate that it will be addressed/fixed in short order....but only Valve knows for sure. A moderator at the Steam forums, smash, had this to say on the issue:
"We're aware. It's a new exploit found by "You Know Who" "
"You Know Who" would be myg0t. Love em' or hate em', they just exposed a pretty significant exploit.
If you own a server, keep your eyes and ears open for information regarding the fix and make sure to update your server right away when it becomes available. As soon as I have any more information I'll post it here. Feel free to drop in the forums and discuss the counter strike exploit too.
Here are a few additional screen shots:
There was some early speculation that this could be prevented by changing the sv_cheats from 1 to 0 in your server.cfg file. This is of course assuming you own/run your own server - regular players would not have access to the server.cfg file. This theory was quickly discounted though, as numerous servers (the CSGZ server included) already had the correct settings yet still fell victim to the "raining skulls" exploit.
Here's a screen shot taken by Sparkie, a guy who started a thread on the subject in the Steam forums. There's a few other screen shots take by one of our members, YeLLoW, at the close of this post.
At the present time it doesn't appear that the exploit causes any real damage. As one of the players on our server pointed out it appears the only real "damage" is that a lot of players get shot while they are standing around looking at the skulls instead of watching out for the other team.
If there's a bright side to this, I guess it's that an exploit has been discovered and will be patched, possibly preventing a copy cat exploit that could cause more harm in the future. Don't get me wrong, I'd lay money on the fact that this won't be the last exploit we see. Counter Strike is one of, if not the, most popular online game. It's a prime target for hackers.
Valve is aware of the problem and I would speculate that it will be addressed/fixed in short order....but only Valve knows for sure. A moderator at the Steam forums, smash, had this to say on the issue:
"We're aware. It's a new exploit found by "You Know Who" "
"You Know Who" would be myg0t. Love em' or hate em', they just exposed a pretty significant exploit.
If you own a server, keep your eyes and ears open for information regarding the fix and make sure to update your server right away when it becomes available. As soon as I have any more information I'll post it here. Feel free to drop in the forums and discuss the counter strike exploit too.
Here are a few additional screen shots:
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