GameMaker Blog

UPDATE: The situation is now over, and the iframe has been removed. Google will still list the GMC as a “malicious website” until they recrawl it.

Some users at the official Game Maker Community have today reported receiving warnings from their antivirus software or web-browsers when viewing the forum.

The alerts are triggered from an iframe which appears to have been maliciously inserted in the forum header and were first reported at around 1:10pm BST.

Two hours after the attack was originally reported it was clear that the GameMaker Community remained vulnerable, as the offending URL in the iframe had been changed from its original to another dubious site.

KC LC’s attempted explanation, “It’s probably being generated by one of the advertisers on YYG”, does not seem remotely plausible to me and I believe the code is more likely to have been the result of a MySQL injection.

NakedPaulToast helpfully provided a link identifying the vulnerability within the Invision Power Board software which is used to run the forum.

A vulnerability has been identified in Invision Power Board (IP.Board), which could be exploited by attackers to manipulate and inject SQL queries. This issue is caused by an input validation error in the “xmlout.php” script when processing the “name” parameter, which could be exploited by malicious people to conduct SQL injection attacks and gain knowledge of sensitive information.

http://www.frsirt.com/english/advisories/2008/2487

A patch was released on August 29th, so obviously the forum software has not been kept up-to-date.

At around 3:10pm BST YoYo Games CEO Sandy Duncan began writing a post to users of the forum- however this post has not yet appeared.

This live blog below is now closed, but you can replay it.
A textual article on the topic of GameMaker Community viruses can be found here.

YoYo Games decided to mention the release of GameMaker magazines (GameMaker Tech 2 days late).

I must admit I am a little confused following the merger of The YoYo Games and Mark’s blog. The result appears to deliver a strange mix of YYG updates, GameMaker tips and requests to GameMaker users - and now apparently community news.

GMM has announced a new issue of their magazine, with a new name of Gamemaker Scope Magazine.

Issue 5 is the November issue (?) and features a new layout and 36 pages of content.

Download it here.

Two days after the release of a short sample, GameMaker Tech have released their full 13th issue.

Direct pdf link (5.5MB)

This latest offering includes:

• Game development articles focusing on using Cut-scenes in games and the use of colours in your games
• Interviews with hotshotscott about Halo Revolution and homebrewpc about GMArcade.com
• Articles on developing for the casual gamer and targeting a game to a specific age group
• Free applications that will help improve your Game Making development.
• Guidelines to building a website for your game
• plus of course the usual game reviews and community news.

Issue 14 will include a YoYo Games exclusive where GameMaker users questions are put to CEO Sandy Duncan, this issue is apparently “comming soon” [sic].

GMKing’s sporadically released GameMaker Audcast Podcast is back with a fourth episode. Dan Eggers, a writer here and creator of GMTV, joins Robin Monks for a dicussion on GameMaker news from the past month.

Here are the topics covered in the second audcast of 2008:
Cage Match: 00:50
Loads of Game Maker mags: 02:18
G3D Effects library: 04:45
GMTV Merge with GMking: 06:26
Game of the Week: 7:27

This is the shortest ever podcast from GMKing and features background music for a short period of time - something not included in any previous episode.

Following a long absence following the release of their 12th issue GameMaker Tech have released a “sample (pdf)” issue 13.

This sample contains just a few articles of the many that will be included in the full release.  Writing on the GameMaker Community, gamez93 said “The content has not been fully checked, so don’t be surprised to find many grammar and spelling mistakes. I have picked out some bits of content that I think you would enjoy, you will find much more once the main issue is released.“

The GameMaker Affiliation Service has now served over 5,000,000 button impressions!

Here are some stats collected through the service on the way to 5 million button impressions. Includes browser/OS usage of people viewing the banners, country reach and total impressions per month.

This data is collected from a large number of GameMaker websites so the information gives an insight into GameMaker users worldwide.

Download: GMA-5M-Stats.xls