10.12.2014

Not much today. The test server was already disabled and next iteration (this time with real vehicle values) will follow.

Also, Storm made a rather large topic, collecting the feedback on the Individual Missions. Or Personal how they are called today. Whatever. Basically, as far as I can tell, the two largest “issues” with them are:

- the fact they don’t activate automatically like achievements and you have to manually select them
- the presence of platoons in requirements

Unfortunately, Storm did not provide any answer as to whether WG will do anything with them based on the feedback or not. Okay, one more very important piece of news. Remember the “replay vulnerability” post? Well, Wargaming just acknowledged the issue by a special portal post. TLDR: replays can be modified to run malicious code.

According to the post, this issue will be fixed in 9.5. In case you want to know your replays are safe, download them only from wotreplays.ru/com/eu (based on your server). This WG site contains a check against this issue, so replays from it should be safe. And of course, not a peep on EU portal… after all, who cares about potential nasty exploits, right?

Also, interesting how this issue was on Reddit for days and this warning was only posted after the matter made it to FTR and Russian blogs…

Posted in Q&A

T-55 in Action in Syria

Hello everyone,

thanks to Looser for this one! An interesting video from the Syrian war, featuring a government T-55 shelling terrorists in Jobar (a part of Damascus) in December 2014.

 

 

As you can see, the old tank still has some teeth. The video was shot by Russian AnnaNews – the journalist mentions that the war in Jobar turned out to be a positional one, with government forces routinely shelling the terrorist-occupied area with direct and precise fire, demolishing terrorist firepoints one by one.

The T-55 tank is using AP shells, that penetrate two or three buildings. The army’s task is to contain the terrorist forces, so they don’t threaten the civillians of Damascus. The Syrians are using the T-55 because it’s not a primary battle zone and the vehicle’s rifled gun is quite sufficient to knock out enemy strongpoints at larger distances. Notice how the tank intentionally stops firing when there are civillian cars on the road not to hit them by accident.

Must be really strange to live like that… normal life a couple kilometers from a warzone.

At 5:40 notice a beautiful shockwave, I wish we had that effect in World of Tanks…

WG Shares In Danger From Being Forcibly Removed From Stock Exchange

Source: https://roem.ru/2014/12/09/wowsce113507

Hello everyone,

once again, the same issue, that was once already mentioned in the past pops up. According to the Russian portal vedomosti.ru, Wargaming Public Company on Cyprus is in danger of having its shares forcibly delisted from the Cyprus Stock Exchange, because it does not fulfill several requirements a listed company should, one of which is not publishing its financial reports (for 2013 and first half of 2014).

However, for Wargaming, it’s no big deal and such a thing would not really damage them.

There are several reasons for that – one is that WG PC is not WG LLP, it’s not the publisher of WoT, “just” a distributor for the EC and Switzerland. Second – and main – is that WG never really intended to perform an IPO, its shares were private placement only (in layman’s terms, instead of offering the shares for public trading, they just offered the shares to actual specific people, who are the same people who founded it, including Big Boss Kislyi, Vladimir Kislyi and others).

Why did they do it then in first place?

Well, as you can imagine, the internet is full of speculations. Two theories that come up most often (the second is allegedly more likely) are:

- some sort of tax optimization (why not)
- an attempt to obtain Cypriot citizenship by the WG owners, which requires some sort of investment on Cyprus (in which case this would actually qualify)

Who knows? Maybe Big Boss likes the mediterranean sun, or is fed up with Lukashenko’s “paradise” and uncle Putin. Wouldn’t blame him.

Straight Outta Supertest: 9.6 Swamp

Hello everyone,

in the future (possibly 9.6, although this is not confirmed), the map Swamp will be rebalanced as such:

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- starting point of the left team was moved more to the center
- bases were moved to more vulnerable areas
- white line zones were changed (terrain, cover)
- the middle “swampy” part had its terrain passability improved

Today’s Advent Offer (10.12.2014)

Hello everyone,

today’s advent offer for EU server includes:

- E-25 + slot
- improved ventilation
- camo net
- binoculars

Price: 31,64 USD (25.75 EUR)

Meanwhile on Russian server, today’s offer is: KV-220 + 3200 gold for 20 USD.

Guys, around Christmas time, WG will give out huge discounts on premium tanks. They always do, my guess is that this one will be 30 percent off. If you don’t want to buy the extra junk and want the tank with a discount, wait a week or two.

World of Tanks Replay Vulnerable to Malicious Code

Hello everyone,

the following very interesting message was found on WoT Reddit – did you know that World of Tanks replays can be injected with (potentially malicious) code?

Check this out – user KeeperOfTheFeels wrote this:

A couple of months ago I was rooting around within the WoT replay files and their format. I discovered that they way they stored data within certain packets in the replays made it extremely easy to get code execution. After a couple of days working at reliable execution I came upon a reliable way to take any replay file and inject code to execute. This happens very quickly after opening the infected replay file with no way to prevent it once WoT begins reading from the replay.

To my knowledge any replay after May, 2014 is vulnerable to this. It is likely any replays before then are also vulnerable and should not be trusted. A proof of concept replay file that opens a calculator window can be found in the link below. As of now you should not trust any replay files from sources you do not trust, until an official fix is released by WarGaming.

I would advise not directly posting about it on the official forums or linking back to here. You may get your account banned from the forums and your message deleted.

Proof Of Concept: PoC

Well, of course I had to try it out and sure enough, the “proof of concept” replay indeed starts the calculator. I am sure you can imagine the potential joys of having infected replays. According to the original poster, WG is now aware of the issue. Whether they are working on a fix or whether they wait for something bad to happen first is the real question.