I just read those 2 threads about a guy attacking with 1000 giants on LIVE servors and because players responded to that saying they have been attacked by this guy too it seems likely to be true.
http://forum.supercell.net/showthrea...ve-1000-giants
http://forum.supercell.net/showthrea...ban-immediatly
Now let's try to understand how he did this.
If this is a client based ♥♥♥♥ ( very easy to do ) then it means he managed to avoid the servor verification when going online to attack. Doing insane stuffs in your base offline is very easy to do for ♥♥♥♥ers , but to affect another base through the only thing that links it to their base ( the SC servor ) is something else. This means he bypassed the "base and servor sync" verification.
TLDR: it means security of attacks is very poor but the main data ( gems gold elixir de values and base buildings and disposition etc ) is probably not touched yet ( i say yet bc with such a bad security code for attacks people will see that and think there is much flaws they can exploit now ).
If this is a servor ♥♥♥♥ ( hard to do ) then why display it so obviously ? It is stupid they might fix it now whereas they could have thought of a way to make money with changing the data. And why care to attack when u can just modify your trophies to get where you want immediately.
TLDR: very unlikely. They would have stay hidden and make money. And if it is a advertising strategy to sell gems showing they can it is a poor one.
SUMMARY : likely a client ♥♥♥♥ exploiting an obvious security flaw for attacks ( shame on you SC... )



