Unusual request - Finding a spy in our gaming TS3 server

[magik20]

Someone has been recording TS conversations and posting them to our enemies / public in the game we play.

There are at times a few hundred people in our TS channel during our operations, so I am searching for a method to track down the person without alerting them.

I was wondering, is there some way to send a unique, low volume sound to their specific TS client that will be recorded, but not be obvious to them.

That way, when the recording hits the public airways I can track down who recorded the operation...

btw, they arent being obvious and using TS to record

any ideas or suggestions?

 

[Dstoop]

Unless they're using TS3 to do the recording, you're pretty much SOL. Your method would require keeping a separate, constant private PM open to *each* user connected to your TS server, and actively streaming that unique white noise to each one, which is both bandwidth intensive and extremely obnoxious to configure. It's also completely obvious that its being done, and they'd just only record the base chat and not your PM, rendering it completely ineffective.

I'm assuming this person is doing some sort of live streaming of your chat to the opposing team in order to divulge your strategy/location/orders/etc, putting you at a considerable disadvantage. In that case, you're looking for a technology solution to a people problem. No matter what system of secure transmission you devised, (talking in code, only saying important things in chat, feeding false information, etc) you're still giving the correct info to the spy in some way. You'll have to root out the culprit using another approach, sorry!

 

[magik20]

well since our comms usually get posted in forums and such after fights, i think sending just a short "private" low volume or white noise type effect to their client would go a long way

if the noise i send is unique per client, i can then download our recorded comms, go through it with a tool like audigy and listen for that sound...

but sending the sound in the 1st place is a bit beyond me...

anyway to program some kind of app to do that??

 

[Dstoop]

well since our comms usually get posted in forums and such after fights, i think sending just a short "private" low volume or white noise type effect to their client would go a long way

if the noise i send is unique per client, i can then download our recorded comms, go through it with a tool like audigy and listen for that sound...

but sending the sound in the 1st place is a bit beyond me...

anyway to program some kind of app to do that??

Short answer: it technologically can be done, but in order to be done right you'd need the people who make Teamspeak to hard code it into their client and force all servers and clients to update to the latest version. So yeah, that's not going to happen.

 

[sm625]

This sort of thing happened all the time in shadowbane. That game was all about subterfuge and intrigue.

There is something you can do but it would not be as easy as using something integrated into TS. What you can do is use a background beat playing on your stereo. Just a drum and a cymbal or something simple like that. Alter the frequency of the cymbal and save it off into an mp3 file. Create dozens of mp3 files each with slightly altered effects, differing cymbal frequencies, beat frequencies, durations, etc. Assign one file to each person registered in your TS and play that file right before you push-to-talk to them. You should be able to write an autohotkey script that loads a registrant's mp3 file when you click on their name in the channel. (Autohotkey can be used to pull text from a window or a log, process that text, and then load the mp3 from a table or list of names.)

It would take some effort, but if you did it right, the person doing the recording would never suspect the background beat, and you'd easily be able to pull it from their recording and analyze it and find out who it is.

You would of course need to send a private message to everyone in your channel at least once during a fight. You could get several inner council to assist with this. It would only need to be a simple 2 second message, like "good job, ____" (insert user name), as long as it contains your altered audio beat in the background.

You can also do it by process of elimination (and blind luck). Just write a script that loads an altered mp3 every time you push to talk, and then logs all the users on that channel. Then when the recording gets posted, analyze the background beat to find out which mp3 file it was, and then use that to find out who was logged in at that time. After a awhile you will be able to eliminate probably 75% of the people leaving a much smaller list of suspects. Note this method does not require editing mp3 files if you have some way of telling exactly when the recording took place, and you have a record of who was in the channel at that time.

 

[Dstoop]

This sort of thing happened all the time in shadowbane. That game was all about subterfuge and intrigue.

There is something you can do but it would not be as easy as using something integrated into TS. What you can do is use a background beat playing on your stereo. Just a drum and a cymbal or something simple like that. Alter the frequency of the cymbal and save it off into an mp3 file. Create dozens of mp3 files each with slightly altered effects, differing cymbal frequencies, beat frequencies, durations, etc. Assign one file to each person registered in your TS and play that file right before you push-to-talk to them. You should be able to write an autohotkey script that loads a registrant's mp3 file when you click on their name in the channel. (Autohotkey can be used to pull text from a window or a log, process that text, and then load the mp3 from a table or list of names.)

It would take some effort, but if you did it right, the person doing the recording would never suspect the background beat, and you'd easily be able to pull it from their recording and analyze it and find out who it is.

You would of course need to send a private message to everyone in your channel at least once during a fight. You could get several inner council to assist with this.

That's assuming you're strictly talking to each person one on one via PM/binds/whatever its called in TS. If you're just openly talking to the team, everyones getting that same beat and the recording would be the same regardless of who was recording it. Just the contents of a PM alone on the uploaded recording would give away the culprit regardless of the beat, so it's probably safe to assume that they're editing those out already.

 

[sm625]

How about this. You tell everyone you are having technical issues with your TS server and that people are randomly dropping from the channel. You tell them if they get dropped or kicked then just pop back in. Now you have the backdrop for a method which can work.

Here's what you do.

You kick each person out of the channel at a certain time. Say, every 30 seconds you boot one person. You have a song playing in the background. When the recording gets posted there should be a gap in the recording where they got disconnected. Find out what time that gap occurred and then go into the log and find out who got booted at that time. The song that is playing in the background needs to be music that can be used to tell what time the disconnect occurred, or there needs to be some other way to find the time.

 

[Puppies04]

How about this. You tell everyone you are having technical issues with your TS server and that people are randomly dropping from the channel. You tell them if they get dropped or kicked then just pop back in. Now you have the backdrop for a method which can work.

Here's what you do.

You kick each person out of the channel at a certain time. Say, every 30 seconds you boot one person. You have a song playing in the background. When the recording gets posted there should be a gap in the recording where they got disconnected. Find out what time that gap occurred and then go into the log and find out who got booted at that time. The song that is playing in the background needs to be music that can be used to tell what time the disconnect occurred, or there needs to be some other way to find the time.

It would work however if I was posting a constant recording of a channel and I knew I had been dc'd at a specific time I would realise that it would be very easy to catch me.

Try it though, the spy might be a moran .

 

[Puppies04]

OP 3 questions.

1. Is this occuring every time you are playing
2. How often is that
3. Is anyone above suspicion (i.e how many people could it be)

I am thinking that if this is occuring quite often then you could do something along the lines of splitting the users into 2 groups (on the pretext of each group working on a different task) then see which groups recordings appears online. Then next time you take half of group A and swap them with half of group B. If that recording appears online you have reduced your possible list of spys to 25% of your members (perhaps even lower if certain members weren't online on both occasions). Carrying this process on would enable you to catch your spy without resorting to any high tech methods.

That said and without knowing which game we are talking about have you considered that even if you catch the spy that they could simply make a new account/character and join your group again (unless they used the same IP and you can track users IP addresses like you can with vent)

 

[Michael]

Several hundred people at a time on TS sounds like Eve Online.

Michael

 

[RampantAndroid]

Just rotate through sending voice to only ONE person on TS at a time. Make it be inconspicuous - like "hey, how's it going [name]"

Then, once you see the audio uploaded listen to it and see what name you get.

 

[HutchinsonJC]

That way, when the recording hits the public airways

I can't imagine that this "recording" is not broadcast to the opposition in real time. Perhaps they just post it publicly after the fact?

If it's not done in real time and unless the person is dumb, they aren't going to upload any audio that asks them by name how they are doing. They will do one of a few things:

1) splice just that part out - easy give away, unless someone other than spy is recording the spy's broadcast and then posting the audio and doesn't splice that part out, in which case it's an easy give away and they rooted out their own spy

2) randomly splice random parts of the audio (including where you ask them by name how they are doing)

3) not share the audio at all - hard to do this one if it's being shared in real time and someone else, other than the spy, is recording it and posting it publicly.

Since they most likely will not post any audio with their name in it asking them how they are doing, you could use this to your advantage, because you could space out the same question to everyone on your team and since only you would know exactly how the question was spaced out between each person on the team and in what order, only you would know when there would be audio splices missing depending on who the culprit is.

You don't need anything fancy to do this. Maybe just a text doc and a repeating alarm on a wrist watch (every 2min alarm beep). Just do some key word/phrase that's a key word only to you in terms of timing to start things off. "Alright guys, let's rock this boat".

Text Doc
"Rock Boat <key word/phrase" @ 8:55PM //Start repeating alarm
//Watch beeps, ask a person on TS how they are doing
Asked <name> how they were doing @ 8:57PM
Asked <name> how they were doing @ 8:59PM
Asked <name> how they were doing @ 9:01PM

At the end of it, you're going to know in relation to the key word/phrase exactly what time it was whether or not anything recorded in TS is time stamped or not or 3rd party recording program or not. You're going to notice a spliced out audio x mins into the audio from the key word position, maybe even a few random spliced out audio segments as their attempt to throw you off, but all you have to do is record the whole segment beginning to end and you'd be able to match up from your whole recording to the spliced recording and figure out the times where the audio is missing.

You could probably do other tricks too:

Run TS on a separate computer running a really low resolution and use fraps to record the whole the screen including the little clock in the bottom right corner. That'd allow you to have all the audio and a time piece to gauge from. I'm not familiar with TS so I don't know if TS allows for time stamp logs of when who said what.

You could start recording early or make an attempt to have your team on TS 10mins early, and gauge by when people joined TS as to who possibly the spy could be. Use some kind of music track and the fraps idea above to help figure out when the spy first joined and started broadcasting your conversation. Odds are they are dumb and record beginning to end from the time they join, or pretty close to it.


Edit:
Another possibility is doing a private message to each person of nothing more than a number 1 through 100 all tracked or logged in a text document. Private Message someone the number 72! and then a slight pause and then say "whoops!" as if you Private Messaged the wrong person, and then don't say anything else to them. On your side, you'll have 72 associated with a very specific name and you can just listen for your # + Whoops on the recording.