In 2000, Microsoft Gaming Zone started to become a target of continuous hack attacks, which targeted the Zone software. The hackers mostly left Ants alone to concentrate on Member plus frequented chat rooms and game rooms. This continued sporadically for the next several years, until 2003 when the worst hack-attack occurred by the use of social engineering, giving the intruders access to the administrator tools. The intruders used their new-found tools to ban players and other site volunteers. This meant bad news for Ants, as it soon found itself a vulnerable target because it was free, outdated (no major code changes had occurred since early 2000), and the fact that several of the people behind the attacks were regular Ants players. This led to Ants being used as an occasional testing ground for newer and more malicious assaults on Microsoft servers while the hackers attempted to stay one step ahead of the Microsoft administrators and system operators.