Minecraft's 'Worst' Server Was Exploited So Hard, Griefers Could See The Future

The tale of how hacker group Nerds Inc. took over 2b2t—Minecraft’s oldest so-called anarchy server—is convoluted and painstaking. It’s the story of how 300,000 players were constantly tracked, 15,000 bases discovered, and over 200 million items stolen. And it was all achieved exploiting not the software intended to keep the server functioning properly, but by conditioning the people who maintain that software.2b2t is infamous. Short for “2 builders 2 tools”, it is to Minecraft what 8chan is to forums: a den of unregulated freedom, with all the extraordinary creativity and the ugliest elements that invariably contains. Players who use the server will encounter racism, porn, gore, and most recently, some of the most intricate griefing ever seen. Perhaps the best coverage of this came from RPS’s Brendy Caldwall, in early 2016 before it had reached wider public attention—there he captured its deeply unwelcoming ways, how it spawns players in a barren location of utter horror, where survival is close to impossible.Unmoderated, and all under the barely-watching eye of server admin ‘Hausmaster’, you’re as likely to stumble upon a mountain-high swastika or skyscraper-like cock as you are a town-sized towering statue of Jesus. With a chat that was primarily used to…
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