Powerbot, What Really Happened?

Hi All,

During a bout of insomnia last night I found myself deep in the rabbit hole of RS cheating and their surroundings scandals.

One event that really stuck out to me was the schism between the Powerbot team, which eventually led to the hacking of thousands and thousands of accounts- one of, if not the, largest 'hackings' in RS history. For those who don't know Powerbot was a very popular botting client.

With a little bit of googling it's pretty easy to get a general idea of what happened, but the available stories are from opposing sides of the split and things get blurry fast.

Here is what I understand:

Prologue:
Devs of Powerbot are unhappy with current profit-sharing plan, they present the current owner with a quasi-buy-out offer in an effort to restructure the profit-sharing agreement with a greater percentage going to the devs. Owner declines.

Devs are upset and instead of sticking around letting the fruits of their labor go to the owner, they decide to leave and form their own company.

Shortly after, thousands and thousands of users of Powerbot are hacked.

Here is where things get blurry.

Powerbot Owner Story:
The devs uploaded malicious files into Powerbot which gathered user credentials. The devs hacked thousands of accounts in an effort to damage the name/product of their former employer and now competitor as well as to attain funds for the formation of their new venture.

Dev Story:
Powerbot owner hacked his own users and attempted to frame the devs in an effort to discredit their new company.

Gh0st's Role?:
A large uncertainty is the role of an individual going by the name Gh0st. Some accounts pin him as the individual who masterminded the entire hack- created and uploaded the malicious content, while other accounts describe Gh0st as a script-kiddie used by the Devs as a patsy to carry out the actual 'looting' of the hacked accounts in an effort to distance themselves from the act.

Aftermath:
Here is where things get less blurry. The owner makes several posts stating that he is cooperating with authorities and Jagex and that he has incriminating evidence. It seems that one of the devs accepts some sort of plea deal which (maybe?) stipulates that he work Jagex on their counter-botting software.

While the details are a little hazy, here are the facts:
Thousands and thousands of Powerbot users hacked.
Owner of Powerbot blames former devs and says he has information which will lead to their arrest.
Former Powerbot dev joins Jagex's anti-bot team as Mod Jacmob

Loose Ends:
Gh0st - Script Kiddie or Puppet Master? Single person or alias?
Other Dev - Most of the accounts play it out that Jacmob did not do this alone. Was the other dev identified?

What's your take? Can you clarify/add anything?

 

What's the point of posting this now? We're taking years and years ago lol.

 

I have a few, I'll post the ones I found concise & relevant. Keep in mind that the sources are one side of the story and that each has an agenda.

Powerbot Owner's Story

'Gh0st's' story

Kaii, I have no motivation other than curiosity. I think this story of deception & hacking is pretty interesting stuff, especially since one of the alleged hackers went on to become a Pmod.

 

Jacmod got a job at Jagex because he won a competition set up by Jagex.

 

Jethr0x
This is also him and some information regarding this can be found here:
Gh0st
All of this may not be accurate but I think for the most part it is, not sure why someone is making a topic about this now seeing as Powerbot is still around and this old, old, old, old news.

To answer OP's question i'm pretty sure Gh0st had far more to do with anything than Jacmob who i'm not even sure did anything and he is in fact a singular person who, as Yoshiki pointed out, now uses the name "Matthew" and is the head developer of OSBuddy.

 

Does anyone still use Powerbot for OSRS botting? I saw they have some scripts.