Coordinate exploit

A coordinate exploit is an exploit that allows players to locate other players, and consequently, bases and structures around the server. 2b2t has had several coordinate exploits with varying levels of severity. When a coordinate exploit is discovered, protective measures and remoteness cannot save a base.

List of coordinate exploits

Thunderhack

The Thunder Hack was a coordinate exploit that was used by popbob, although it was found by player _Atrika_. This hack allowed him and a select few to track down players and bases within months, weeks, or even days. The reason they have to "track down" players is because the hack does not specifically give exact coordinates of bases or players to the user but rather the relative area of the target player, in which lead the user of the hack to have to track the player's movements in order to find their base. It used the Minecraft mechanic where lightning strikes only in loaded chunks by a particular player and allowed the users to know exactly where that lightning struck and gain a relative idea of the player's location and such the location of potential bases.

Popbob used this hack to find many bases and caused several players to quit. The hack was eventually patched when Hausemaster disabled lightning from the entire server. The lightning later was re-enabled, as the hack is now blocked by NCP, likely due to being released to the public as a part of the Wurst Client, and as such readily available.

/msg coordinate exploit

James Rustles informs Hausemaster about the /msg coordinate exploit.

This exploit existed for only two days between May 28th and May 29th, 2015. Only a few people used it before the server was shut down to keep things safe. It involved typing /tell @a [coordinates] with 3 whispers on different quadrants, which were then used to triangulate the player's location. You could also use /me @p in public chat to locate the player nearest them. The /msg exploit was also used to leak the coordinates of Space Valkyria.

Block Rotation & Bedrock Exploiting

The coordinate exploit of this time is technically 2 exploits. Both were made by ChromeCrusher. The 1st exploit involved using bedrock patterns to find the coordinates of any base as long as a picture or video was provided. This exploit was used by Chrome to find Fitlantis, and for Fit to tour several bases on his channel. This exploit is available to the public.

The 2nd exploit is a bit more unknown in terms of how it's used. All that is known is that the exploit uses flowers (according to ChromeCrusher although this could be a joke or false information). This exploit is yet to be released and has been used by Chrome to find Fit's base that he never got to finish. The exploit (allegedly) relies on the positional randomization system that Minecraft uses to offset the stems of flowers. When you place a flower by hand, one is created by bone meal or generates naturally it does not sit in the center of the block. a randomization system is used to add some false variety visually to a large number of placed flowers. This random location is based on distance and seed (allegedly) and as a result, a large enough sample of flowers combined with using the sun to determine the image's direction relative to the world can allow you to determine coords. This is not fully confirmed. There is also a theory that the exploit reverse engineers Minecraft's "random" texture rotation function on things like stone and grass.

This speculation has lead to the creation of "static state" texture packs. This is accomplished by purposefully setting only one block rotation state in the resource pack to override default Minecraft's rotation settings. This is done via the block rotation `.json` files found inside the resource pack file structure at "/assets/minecraft/blockstates".

For example, the code for Netherrack.json corresponding to the rotational perimeters for Netherrack would be the following code.

{
  "variants": {
    "normal": { "model": "netherrack" }
  }
}

Again this is based on second party information and speculation.

Terrain Exploit

Using a program developed by ChromeCrusher and the world seed one is able to search the entire world for matching natural terrain based off any photograph or video that includes such and inputting in key biomes and relative information one can gather from said photo or video to find the coordinates of the place photographed or videoed

Debug Exploit

Heatmap of player activity from March 2020 to July 2020 created by leijurv using data collected from the Nocom exploit

The "Debug Exploit" is a coordinate exploit on all Minecraft servers which involves using the built-in debug crash. Whenever a player teleports away, or respawns at their bed, using the debug crash would result in the crash log listing the coordinates of where the player teleported. While its findings were first attributed to TheTroll2001_, the oldest mention of the exploit is from 2015. Cookiedragon234 attests that it was even used on servers running Alpha.

Nocom

Nocom was a severe coordinate exploit found by Nerds Inc in July 2018, and used up until its patch on July 2021. It gave them the ability to view any chunks with a player present.

Randar

Randar was a coordinate exploit used by the Spawn Masons after the patch of Nocom. Randar worked by exploiting Minecraft's randomization through LLL Lattice Reduction.