“TBYH owns YoVille that means all you YoVille snitches can go to hell“
On August 8, 2011, players found themselves welcomed by this note while trying trying to access what has become of the YoVille Community Forum. It has become apparent–the YoVille forum was experiencing an attack. It was hacked.
The YoVille Community
YoVille has been properly introduced to the online world as a ‘community’ since May 2008. A community has different groups that are combined to make it work as a whole.
Types of groups:
- Clubs- introduced into the Yoville forum August 27th, 2009
- Organizations- Fan sites, Design sites, Art sites, etc
- Gangs- Mafia and Police theme influenced this one stronger
Groups of people such as these, can make a community run as a fine well-oiled machine, but also certain groups can cause confusion and chaos within a community, but not without a cause.
TBYH
TBYH, which stands for The Best Yoville Hackers, is a group of people, within the YoVille community, that have gained a sum of attention for completely taking over the YoVille Community Forum on August the 8th, 2011. It is known that the group has tinkered with the forum on other occasions by adopting/taking over the accounts of certain YoVille Super Moderators, such as Pink Ninja and WhiteGold Ninja.
TBYH Interview
YoRehab decided to take a leap and go to the owner of TBYH, HKTheGolden, for a chance to try to understand their reason for existence, future goals, and simply just to hear their side of the story. In this interview, our aim is to get to know TBYH and their story.
What is TBYH and when was it created?
The Best Yoville hackers, And it was created 5/25/10.
How many members are in TBYH?
There are 38 members.
How old are most of the members of TBYH?
The members range from age 13 – 22.
Where have most of your members acquired their hacking knowledge?
Just packet edit and we learned programming languages from YouTube and Google, and test those programs on our own.
How many accounts have you personally had banned in game and on the forum?
I’ve had more than 400 in game banned, and on forums around 10. I don’t use forums much.
Recently, players logged onto the YoVille forums to find the forum completely gone and a message posted stating, “TBYH owns yoville this means that you forum snitches can go to hell.” Can you tell us what prompted your group to do this and when it was planned?
This was never planned. It was actually a 2 day thing wherein we figured out how to get in to the admin and decrypted some stuff, TBYH others kings – ZachofTheGolden1 and dudek13l i gave them the ranked.
Did the group take down the forum to make a statement? If so what is it?
Yes, yoville needs a wake up call and that’s a great one. We have done this before, but in the game. We hacked the admins and banned alot of yobabies and snitches, back in 2010.
Was your group upset with zynga, forumers, or both and why?
Yes, our group was upset with Zynga for IP banning us too much. They need to know changing IP takes 20 seconds. They won’t stop us form coming in the game, and forums for snitching.
How many individuals were involved in the forum incident and how long did it take to do it?
2. ZachofThegolden1 and dudek13l took 1 and a half day.
Did your group ever try to hack other YoVille related sites? Like YoRehab for example?
No, but we have hacked a yovillepolice site for snitching and copying codes from our site.
Do you think that the new fixes to the forum and scheduled maintenance on Yoville will keep your club from making future attacks?
No. Nothing no one does is perfect there is always a way around. There is no such thing as security.
Have any of your club members, that were a part of the overtaking of YoVille forum, been caught and disciplined? If so, what type of discipline was taken by Zynga against the member(s)?
They’ve been IP banned and that’s it. They changed their IP, and are now looking for another way around it.
If no actions from Zynga have been taken against any of your members yet, does the club worry about what may happen to its members if Zynga is able to track them down?
No, we use proxies and IP hiders. Good luck tracking us, and even if they did there is no proof we did it.
Are you afraid of any legal ramifications from the forum incident?
Nope.
What are your feelings on Zynga’s explaining the forum being down this day as “unscheduled maintenance”?
I honesttly don’t care they’re showing there players how much liars they are, and you can check my YouTube channel, and watch us getting in the forums here: http://www.youtube.com/HKTheGolden
Were your reasons for your actions against YoVille/Zynga based on a financial level to get back at Zynga for their greed or did you do it for some kind of fun (do you feel Zynga has become too greedy with so many of it’s items being YoCash)?
They’re greedy, but we are here for payback, and that’s not all that’s coming. I’m getting all my members ready to send another message to YoVille and Zynga.
Have you seen, on any level, your previous actions as having made a positive change within the forum or with YoVille/Zynga?
Just sending a message to Zynga that’s all.
What was your first initial response when you heard we were interested in knowing about TBYH in more detail?
We have been getting a lot of messages people asking to join–people asking why we did it, people asking how long. Well we did it because we want to show Zynga and YoVille that we are more then script kiddies. We are kids, we are smart, and we will keep giving Zynga hell until they unban our accounts.
Is there anything else you’d like to let our viewers know?
For the normal users, we are ok with everyone, but if you take it to the next level, and snitch, we are not ok. For the YoVille admins, keep up the lying. It shows how lame and stupid you are. I got it all on my YouTube channel. This is the link once more, and it’s YouTube only so don’t worry you can even scan it or whatever it’s not a virus.
While some may still be shaking their heads as to the reasoning behind TBYH’s actions, previous and recent, it is clear that there are two sides to a story and the YoVille Team has yet to even clarify or admit that the YoVille Community Forums was indeed taken over by the group TBYH.
Do you feel that TBYH is justified in their recent actions in dealing with their bout with Yoville.com? If so, why?
We sincerely thank HKTheGolden for giving us the opportunity to have a more in depth view into the TBYH group. We also want to thank one of our own YoRehab managers, for having the guts to reach out and talk to TBYH on our behalf for this interview.
