I’m a little worried about Funcom’s anti cheat systems

[Sooden]

It’s been a while since I worked on anti cheat stuff, but was shocked to see that the 50 stats cheat was a memory hack. Basic stuff (I know it’s fixed now).

This leads me to think, funcom is not ahead of the game when it comes to cheats and may not have a team who it experienced in this subject.

If you’re going to have data local (client side), you must take measures. Battle eye trying to detect memory access, and programs being run is not nearly enough. These are relatively easy to work around. (hacks will be back, and used till someone posts a video, or someone at funcom gains access to such a tool, and that would only be the public ones ><… but then it’s patch and the cycle continues… meanwhile people get to cheat, with small periods of time where they can’t)

I don’t like the idea that now I wonder if, when someone kills me, was it skill or a cheat.

Now, I have seen some nice measure for dealing with cheats, and yes, they add a little bit to processing overheads (but this is client side as the data is, could also move more of the data and maths to server, but that would cost more, i guess), but is worth it. And one of the best was, when values where verified over a time array, to see if vales where possible, if they were found to be out of bounds… insta-death for the player (and that was an anti cash cheat, that had to take into account all the legit ways cash would change, and only kick in when something was wrong… Conan has a much easier ranges to deal with)

Now, this is a wonderful way to deal with hacks. It puts people off the idea of trying out cheats (no all but a lot). And it does have to be handled carefully. Verifications have to be solid, so false positives don’t happen. Now the only reasons for not using such systems are;

-Process overhead: But –
Really not that bad… I bit of encryption, maybe even a ‘base’ from a key, from the server – so values change each time the key is changed*1. Some memory to create and array of data, and then a check process…

Yes, this can make quite a load in some games, where lots of values are at risk. So, you priorities the main values hackers would go for.

Now you just need to worry about a checksum and I believe steam and/or battle eye deal with that.

-false positives- People getting punished when they were not cheating But –
This should not happen if the team can code well you can also give larger error margins if you’re worried about your math skills… most cheaters will go for extremes.

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This is the basics, to deal with low level cheaters… mainly the people that use prepaid trainers and memory editors.

I could have forgiven funcom on current hacks, if it was due to internet traffic capture and decode(*1). That’s a hard one to deal with and need strong encryption and dynamic encryption.

What is funcom doing about memory hacking? Just blocking well knows program? Are the measure underway to improve this issue? Or is it a case of just patching out cheat/hacks as they are exposed?

[Sooden]

…and i think it important to add this

this one clan has used all the cheats at hand , and still seem to be using some unknown ones. I had requested that someone come look at the server, i had provided a video of them building in the mesh (That’s just a glitch/exploit, don’t know how they are still doing mem hacks)

now the server is nearly dead, after what felt like cheating from wolfgang, on a few of the players, players have lost interest. fed up and upset. Now the cheat clan have the server to them selves.

No one cared to look at this, and its left a bitter taste for players of this server. That others can cheat and exploit without anything happening to them… while we wait for a patch, that may stop the known issues.

I really like this game, why are you treating it like this?

ADDED: that was the players list about 1 hour into raid time (today/sunday)… people just don’t wanna play and can be bothered defending they’re stuff against cheater… entertaining the cheaters at great effort. So have no choice but to leave.

[Redrick]

@Sooden

this one clan has used all the cheats at hand , and still seem to be using some unknown ones

what exactly do they do?

[Sooden]

@Redrick

seem

nothing i can prove, this is why i say ’ seem’ and ‘felt’ but. while fighting members of this clan, while they are naked (no amour). at lest one member was hitting way above their weight.

Spend a good 5 mins toying with them, just getting hit now and again and healing up. putting in a hit or 2 into them. one out of the 3 that night was …hmm special

and how another member was outrunning my grit build + light armour, made for just scouting. they where in medium amour and swinging hits, and always running with a weapon out… they seems to have more grit and could run fast enough to get in-front of me… that meant even after putting in a swing, they could manage to catch up and do it again.

not talking about using jumping to regen stamina. they never jumped.

[Cauthey]

Weapon-out running versus weapon-stowed running used to have a speed difference. Since the combat pass at launch, that no longer seems to be a factor in modifying your character’s ground speed.

[Sooden]

still, i didn’t expect them to get ahead of me, or even keep up, with them swing weapons vs me with nothing but light amour and high grit

and this just in: reports of items missing from vaults that are locked, and solo players with no other clan members.

if funcom have made it so the client ask the server, is it locked… server says yes or no, then that message is used to give access >< that would be so easy to hack. hope that’s not the case

these are the sort of hacks that can be happening until someone notices it, and them it patch… This is not the right way to do thing