Medieval Total War <= 1.1 broadcast Connection expired

[Luigi Auriemma <aluigi@altervista.org>]

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                             Luigi Auriemma

Application:  Medieval Total War
              http://www.totalwar.com
Versions:     <= 1.1
Platforms:    Windows
Bug:          "Connection expired" message to server and connected
              clients caused by malformed nickname
Risk:         Low
Author:       Luigi Auriemma
              e-mail: aluigi@altervista.org
              web:    http://aluigi.altervista.org


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1) Introduction
2) Bug
3) The Code
4) Fix


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===============
1) Introduction
===============


Medieval Total War is a real-time strategy game available on PC and is
developed by Creative Assembly.



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======
2) Bug
======


The MTW's players have access to the server only in a specific moment
and not during the execution of the game.
This moment is the Lobby screen before the starting of the match where
all the players can join.

The bug is in the management of the nicknames sent by the clients, in
fact a malformed nickname (for example of a length of 0 unicode chars)
have a nice and interesting effect versus the server and all the
clients connected to it.

This effect is a message that will appear just in front of all the
players:

"Connection expired"

Then the server must restart the match and the players must rejoin
again.




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===========
3) The Code
===========


Use the following proof-of-concept specifying 0 as first command-line
argument:

http://aluigi.altervista.org/poc/mtwdos-server.zip



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4) Fix
======


No fix.
I have contacted Creative Assembly a lot of months ago but they didn't
have the resources to patch this bug.



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--- 
Luigi Auriemma
http://aluigi.altervista.org