Other players can modify my portal

Community Support
1

I got a message from a player today (which I never met before) that my portal can be modified for a brief moment.
Created a new alt to try this out and it works as described. I did not give any rights to that new character.

Here is a short video:

What I do:
I activated the portal by looking at it. It is in my back at the beginning of the video.
In second 3 I walk through it.
Immediately after I press E and the portal settings come up. It closes automatically less than half a second later.
When pressing E again the notification comes that I have no rights.

The problem is now that when I position my mouse correctly and press a button while the settings are up I am able to modify the portal. It is possible to rotate the portal exit for example.
This can be retried as many times as wanted after every crossing.
Portal is at Dzassak 748N 1037E. PS Dzassak is directly next. Please do not try to close the portal as that may break the reproducibilty.

Edit:
Looked again and found other portal that I have 0 rights on and can be modified by me this way. Sucessfully did a 360° turn on the exit.
@james @vdragon

2

The actions should still be validated by the server. How exactly do you have more control over it? You can rotate and close it from your side as well.

edit: Wait so the char has 0 permissions on both sides? And the rotation is applied?

1 Like
3

Exactly that is what happens. You can come by and modify it if you want. I dont mind as long as you dont close it.

2 Likes
4

I’m trying it and it’s not letting me change anything.
Edit to add, while walking backwards through it, I can see the click X/click E to interact prompt, but it says I don’t have perms when I press x or E

5

Yikes, what about removing fuel?

6

The server notices that the action was invalid and removes fuel from inventory again. So it is just shortly visible in the client.

1 Like
7

When you first enter a world you’re in an untrusted state. During this period the game will not allow you to do anything: shoot, mine, interact with entities, etc. You become trusted once the server has taken ownership of your character from the world you’ve just left.

Whilst untrusted the client shouldn’t allow you to open the GUI as no action you attempt to take would be accepted by the server.

8

Somehow it allows me and others to do so on certain portals.
Here is a quick video to show how I am able to rotate the portal directly after crossing. Again with my new character. No rights, no guild, just directly from character creation.

Up to second 5 I position the mouse cursor. Then I try to abuse the bug by clicking the button of portal exit rotation fast enough…
At second 12 the first portal exit rotation happens.
At second 15 the second happens.
At second 19 the third happens.
At second 22 the fourth happens to complete the 360° turn.
Second 17 shows that I have no rights on that portal because I was too slow on that try. The interaction markers shows for a short moment.

Checked the other portal that also allows me to do this and in both cases both sides of the portal are on the same server.

9

What does another player see whilst you’re doing this?

I would hope the changes are aesthetically limited to your own client and are in no way persisted to the server or other players. Are any of the changes ever persisted?

I now realise that this is a portal within a world - and hence all the untrusted stuff is not relevant.

10

You brits are adorable

1 Like
11

Next are: whom, then whomso, maybe even whomever, then finally whomsoever.

16 Likes
12

Another player sees my changes as I do them and they are persisted on the server. It is behaving like full control in that regard.
Exception is the Oort. That appears to be validated separate as I cannot steal it.
Have not tested closing the portal so far as I am not sure if the bug will reappear.

13

I tried to reproduce this on PC and on PS4 and I cannot do it. Maybe I am not clicking fast enough? but this doesn’t happen for me.

14

You have to be very fast. It is less than 0.5s after crossing.
It also only affects some portals. My portal is one and I know of another one.
Portals of the guild are not affected. I will try more portals as I cross them.

15

Thanks for the information. Some head scratching here. (cc @lucadeltodecso)

1 Like
16

So like you could close everybody’s portals on them?

17

@james
Found something that looks like it is the reason for this: the settlement loading.
When I enter through the portal the settlement name changes with 3 states (Visible at second 12 of the last video).

  1. The capital comes first
    1
  2. The city I am connected to comes shortly after
    2
  3. Then my beacon as the final state
    3

As long as the settlement display is in state 1 or 2 my placement cursor is having an orange color which turns red when reaching state 3. I can place blocks as long as the cursor is orange but they reset once it gets red.

Screenshots

On my character without rights on the beacon

20200519111451_1
20200519111451_11680Ă—1050 232 KB

20200519111512_1
20200519111512_11680Ă—1050 190 KB

20200519111514_1
20200519111514_11680Ă—1050 222 KB

@DKPuncherello
Opened a second portal to try closing it but the confirmation dialog vanishes too fast to click.
Just to be clear: This only applies to some specific portals. Your mall portals are fine for example.