Re: Halo PC server exploit

[ennui]

Some of our devs here have been talking and working with Roger Wolfson over at Bungie regarding the recent Halo PC server exploit that many people have been experiencing. He has made a post on the Bungie forums to help address concerns many people were having. Here is the text of his post:

Originally Posted by Roger

Hi all,

Roger here, Bungie's old Halo PC guy from way back when. I've been in touch with Gearbox regarding the exploit currently being abused to make Halo servers unresponsive, and we've identified a fix. Now, I have no idea what the official support status of this game is, and I don't relish the thought of asking our friends at MGS to spin up a new Halo 1 PC support team and get their copy of the source out of whatever underground vault they keep it in. So, since I still have the official build machine under my desk (well, I put it in storage for a while, but yesterday asked our IT team to "unseal the hushed casket"), I made a fixed build and I'm posting it here. Don't take this as any official change in the game's support policy from MS, Bungie, or Gearbox, but when a problem like this comes along, we do want to help out the fans who have kept the game alive for this long.

So here's the plan: The zip I'm posting today has binaries that fix the particular bug in question. It's gotten only minimal testing to verify that it runs and isn't vulnerable. Over the next couple weeks, we'll watch the community feedback and look through the source a little more to see of we see any similar vulnerabilities we should patch at the same time. Then in about a month, I'll assemble a regular auto-patch so that players will get this fixed build automatically. Until then, the old build 1.0.7.0614 will remain live on the autopatcher, and you'll have to get this fix manually from here. The exe will be version stamped at build 0615, but in-game the version string will continue to say 0613 for compatibility reasons.

This patch contains four EXEs: client & dedicated servers for Halo PC and Halo CE. Drop the binaries into the respective game directories. If you provide feedback here, please focus on items related to this exploit fix; we will not be making other changes related to new hardware support, performance, etc.

Since these files are not codesigned, the MD5 hashes are as follows:

Halo PC

5be538321fd40f52ebdea496f3427bec halo.exe
72502a9f922b9dd5413f76cf9f215b16 haloded.exe
0a84675e9e2af4603dbd2263c7990306 Strings.dll

Halo CE

e3dc00b18f33558fd801b739315bcc21 haloce.exe
0315a461440e7fdf26698bdad4dea2a7 haloceded.exe
d01f8b7e039079d9084470774f5c3377 Strings.dll

The patch is at the following URL:
http://www.bungie.net/images/games/h.../halopc615.zip

Gearbox also plans to mirror the patch, I expect that it will be linked from here:
http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/index...games&game=hal o

Enjoy!

-Roger

Thank you all for sending your concerns to us, hopefully this can help resolve problems people were experiencing. I'll be uploading the fix on gearboxsoftware.com as well.

[selentic]

cool

[Masterz1337]

And I was just about to post this. Glad to know we're not all forgotten.

[ennui]

Here's the link to our mirror of the fix: http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/index...download&dl=33

[baturkin17]

wow this is awesome!

[The_Wraith]

God it's good to think that Halo PC wasn't discarded as an abomination by it's devs.

[NullZero]

Awesome!

[akskiller]

Pretty sweet!

[UXB]

The Halo CE version is up for download at HaloMaps.org. The CE files were extracted from the original archive to prevent confusion.

Unofficial/Official 6.15 Patch for the Halo Custom Editon Game
Author: Bungie
http://hce.halomaps.org/index.cfm?fid=3816

The archive includes:

haloce.exe - main Halo ce program
haloceded.exe - Halo CE dedicated server program
Strings.dll -
bungie-message.txt - copy of Mr Wolfson bungiel.net post
Hot To Install.txt - install instructions

-Dennis
Webmaster www.halomaps.org

[cvsteel]

And for all those that said noone cares about Halo and that it is dead....
Thanks Bungie and Gearbox!!