587 replies to this topic

[Adiuvo]

So much misinformation in this thread.

The banned party was not part of NKVA. However, she was friends with their unit.

She was banned for wallhacking, not for aimbotting.

She was banned after she played in the MechMasters tourney, which was shoutcasted with the spectator tool. There were numerous indications of a wallhack being used, and that data was collected and sent to PGI. She was banned about 4 days later.

Apparently there was a ban wave, however she was the only person banned who played competitively.

If you really want to know who the banned player is, /r/OutreachHPG has had multiple topics on the subject both before the cheater label was added and after.

Oh yeah, best bit is that the banned party loved to talk herself up in game, on reddit, and on somethingawful. It's really quite funny looking back and her bragging about honestly mediocre stats (only a 3ish w/l, and you were wallhacking? lol)

Edited by Adiuvo, 12 May 2015 - 12:23 AM.

[KursedVixen]

Glad you are on top of this PGI. Don't want anybody cheating in this game where we already have problems.

[Clownwarlord]

FlipOver, on 12 May 2015 - 12:18 AM, said:

Although I agree the use of cheats might tend to get smaller, be advised it might get much higher when the game hits Steam.
Just something you guys might already know but nevertheless it's better to point it out anyway

That is probably why PGI is addressing the issue now in a more open way then they ever have. Heck in the past (about 2 years ago) if you talked about cheating and trying to report how people are getting the ability (like websites with the information) you would get ingored, emails lost, and threads removed.

[Sky Hawk]

I just don't understand, how can PGI "see", what programms are used on a players PC...

[Whatzituyah]

Sky Hawk, on 12 May 2015 - 12:33 AM, said:

I just don't understand, how can PGI "see", what programms are used on a players PC...

This does concern the privacy of MechWarrior Online I guess they should say something about atleast that but anything else on what they use to do it is a no go because otherwise people will work around it.

[Suzumiya Haruhi no Kerensky]

Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?" - MechaNagato

Edited by MechaNagato, 12 May 2015 - 12:41 AM.

[OMGUTOOL]

Coordinator Aigis Kurita, on 11 May 2015 - 11:59 PM, said:

My index finger is smoking from sending emails to Valve, EA, Activision-Blizzard about this one simple trick from a mechdad on how to catch cheaters. insurance companies lawyers obama hate it!

you guys have to understand one thing....
companies don't have the leisure to check every bit's and bite's of the data which goes through there server.
but when they are pointed to it then it is easy......
most games run's on UDP protocols.
which if you google will show that it is a unverified form of data transportation for less load on the data traffic.
but it will still carry every bit of info of what is has done and where it has been.....
oh and yes it can be changed.....
and it takes time to find the changes or should i say Hidden data.....
but when PGI or any other company know what packet's to looks for then its simple to find the history of that packet.
and stop kidding your self if serious hackers will actually spend there time making hacking program's just for a game......
hiding and modifying data on packet level is high level hacking......or programming and takes lot's of time...
and effort....
128bit encriptions......
or 256bit.
if you understand what it takes to break a 128bit encryption then you would not mention these kinds of dumb questions and arguments.......

"128-bit encryption" means that the secret key is a sequence of 128 bits. It tells nothing about the password length or contents.
To break such a file, two possible paths: try all possible passwords until the right one is found, or try all possible secret keys until the right one is found. "Right one is found" means that "decryption works and produces something meaningful / expected.

There are 2 to the power of 128 = 340282366920938463463374607431768211456 possible keys of 128 bits; that's a lot and trying all of them will take millions of years.

Edited by OMGUTOOL, 12 May 2015 - 01:01 AM.

[Thomas G Wolf]

Me likes this and me suppports this 250% good job PGI!

[Asmosis]

Sky Hawk, on 12 May 2015 - 12:33 AM, said:

I just don't understand, how can PGI "see", what programms are used on a players PC...

Your running the game client on your computer, that should give you some indication of how they might detect other programs, using a program that is running on your computer, designed by them.

PGI doesn't need to state how they are going about detecting cheats, you can just google it to find common practices in the industry.

[Sirius Drake]

10/10
would read again.

[GateheaD]

OMGUTOOL, on 11 May 2015 - 11:56 PM, said:

omg guys......
you guys a disputing something which can not be disputed.
if any of you ever worked in networking.
then you will know.
the data which travels back and forth from your PC to server and back is called a packet.
you see this packet is very small but it carries many info...
such as when a data travels through the many programs it leaves a history as to where it has been.
do i need to say more????????
PGI knows because it has the DATA that the packet has been through a program that it shouldn't have.......
it's simple........
and aimbot is not a texture mod.......
sure texture mod is very hard to detect due to it being a colour where the detection program looks for the name and size of the file and compares to its correct list.
but aimbot is different.
it leaves a trace in the packet and shows that it has been through a program or a shell that it should not have....

hey dude,
I can do all sorts of **** to a packet without leaving a trace, and regularly do for my job.
on a hardware level even modified home switches will enable port mirroring to a software level - non intrusive packet inspection is very easy and this isn't the fix you're looking for.

[OMGUTOOL]

so guys i think its like this..
i don't think PGI would have banned him if he really didn't do anything wrong since he was like a free advertising for the game....
he got the boot because he did something wrong....
and very uncool for the community...

[OMGUTOOL]

GateheaD, on 12 May 2015 - 01:06 AM, said:

hey dude,
I can do all sorts of **** to a packet without leaving a trace, and regularly do for my job.
on a hardware level even modified home switches will enable port mirroring to a software level - non intrusive packet inspection is very easy and this isn't the fix you're looking for.

and i work with ppl who can find what ever you did to packets even if you hid them/modded them of what ever.....
how many layers in a packet??
7 and you can mod all 7 layers of a encrypted packet??
if so then what ya doing there when you could be making 100 thousands as a ITSec officer....
oops make that 300K+ a year as a ITSec officer..
oh one thing to clear up..
hacking and modding the data of a encrypted packet is totally different level...
anyways BTW..
the issues was some high profile player got busted and got banned...

Edited by OMGUTOOL, 12 May 2015 - 01:21 AM.

[Clownwarlord]

Wouldn't it be easy for PGI to have a system that takes a packet on your client when it is being processed to have the same thing checked on their servers with what it should look like? Hmmm sounds easy to me and wouldn't take much except a string checker line by line and once it has an error it says hey tag for check the battle recorder.

Sorta like the patcher and repair tool except they have one only run the packets getting used when they get used.

[KursedVixen]

GateheaD, on 12 May 2015 - 01:06 AM, said:

hey dude,
I can do all sorts of **** to a packet without leaving a trace, and regularly do for my job.
on a hardware level even modified home switches will enable port mirroring to a software level - non intrusive packet inspection is very easy and this isn't the fix you're looking for.

No matter what you do you still leave something behind.

Edited by KursedVixen, 12 May 2015 - 01:26 AM.

[IraqiWalker]

MadWOPR, on 11 May 2015 - 10:18 PM, said:

It's so weird that only one player in the entire playerbase is banned and publically labelled a cheater after these super advanced cheat detection tools have been implemented, and not because a completely embarassing witchunt erupted

so weird

ONE player? Dude, where have you been the last 3+ years? This isn't the first ban. This is the first ban of a COMPETITIVE player. That's it.

Kiiyor, on 11 May 2015 - 10:23 PM, said:

ARGH, FLASHBACK

And not just that, but coding something big that is constantly evolving. Oh sweet jesus, my hands used to tremble before I started compiling, thinking about all the crap that could go wrong, and how much re-factoring people would throw at me because I made the tragic mistake of being good at it.

SHOTGUN SURGERY.

The phrases "ALL THEY HAVE TO DO IS ________" or "THEY SIMPLY HAVE TO PROGRAM ________" or my personal favourite "HOW HARD CAN IT BE" when paired with any statement about coding on these forum pages always makes me chuckle.

Oh God, I'm having flashbacks too. I hope to never go back to coding.

Sky Hawk, on 12 May 2015 - 12:33 AM, said:

I just don't understand, how can PGI "see", what programms are used on a players PC...

One of the simplest things I can think of, is them piggy backing on your connection, to literally stream your games to themselves, and see everything you're doing, in real time.

OMGUTOOL, on 12 May 2015 - 01:07 AM, said:

so guys i think its like this..
i don't think PGI would have banned him if he really didn't do anything wrong since he was like a free advertising for the game....
he got the boot because he did something wrong....
and very uncool for the community...

Her, not him.

[Rushin Roulette]

Mystere, on 11 May 2015 - 07:03 PM, said:

Tarring and feathering people, it seems humanity has not evolved much at all. <smh>

Nope... guess not

[ShinVector]

clownwarlord, on 12 May 2015 - 01:23 AM, said:

Wouldn't it be easy for PGI to have a system that takes a packet on your client when it is being processed to have the same thing checked on their servers with what it should look like? Hmmm sounds easy to me and wouldn't take much except a string checker line by line and once it has an error it says hey tag for check the battle recorder.

Sorta like the patcher and repair tool except they have one only run the packets getting used when they get used.

The problem is not players modifying packets.
Is that the 3rd party tools sniff packets and displaying to players in the form of visual data that they are NOT supposed to see.

--

Anyway message to cheaters... Remember PGI is monitoring... Sooner or later if you keep using your hacks, they are going to perma BAN you and forever be branded a cheater... Better uninstall your hacks and quit your cheating now while you still have the chance !!

[Nik Reaper]

Adiuvo, on 12 May 2015 - 12:22 AM, said:

So much misinformation in this thread.

The banned party was not part of NKVA. However, she was friends with their unit.

She was banned for wallhacking, not for aimbotting.

She was banned after she played in the MechMasters tourney, which was shoutcasted with the spectator tool. There were numerous indications of a wallhack being used, and that data was collected and sent to PGI. She was banned about 4 days later.

Apparently there was a ban wave, however she was the only person banned who played competitively.

If you really want to know who the banned player is, /r/OutreachHPG has had multiple topics on the subject both before the cheater label was added and after.

Oh yeah, best bit is that the banned party loved to talk herself up in game, on reddit, and on somethingawful. It's really quite funny looking back and her bragging about honestly mediocre stats (only a 3ish w/l, and you were wallhacking? lol)

So, just to clarify, PGI may or may not have cheat detection tools, but the relevant case here was detected and brought to PGI's attention by a 3rd party after wich they analysed the data ( even though there is no auto record function from there side ) ?
I mean if you spectate someone and have a recording with fraps or some other video capture program and you send a video of a person spending most of his time looking at walls in the direction of the enemy wich you see by using the spectate tool but they shouldn't be able to detect, that is something, but the way this statement by PGI sounds as if they have competant automated tools that detect cheating.

Now if they do send a message to the banned party that can be appealed to by them that is fine, thing is most of the things PGI does inspire a feeling of incompetence ( wich they more or less address and fix at a later point ) , for ex. that guy that verbaly assaulted a dev on a stream, personally I too would ban a person like that, thing is a lot of people get that kind of treatment in game and the ones doing it do not get instant permabanes unless a dev is the target of it, also those who do get bans are usually not permanent, but for attacking a dev they are... so assaulting a ruling politician is somehow worse than assaulting a random civilian? ( I mean I realise in reality it is but not in the eyes of law )

Thing is, it's good that they are doing something about cheaters , and they don't need to say how they detect them, but in light of there previous "professional" behavior , island ... and such , I don't find it strange that we want some transperancy from them.
This mostly stems, at least for me, from the fact that pgi is trying to be double faced, as I see it, they seem like they want to cozy up to the players as the small in house friendly types that in fact can not survive in a competitive enviroment by there talents and efforts alone ( double that developer count and more testers and quality assurance people! ) but like to pull the corporate face any time they find it convenient to fight criticism.

Edited by Nik Reaper, 12 May 2015 - 01:46 AM.

[IraqiWalker]

Nik Reaper, on 12 May 2015 - 01:42 AM, said:

So, just to clarify, PGI may or may not have cheat detection tools, but the relevant case here was detected and brought to PGI's attention by a 3rd party after wich they analysed the data ( even though there is no auto record function from there side ) ?
I mean if you spectate someone and have a recording with fraps or some other video capture program and you send a video of a person spending most of his time looking at walls in the direction of the enemy wich you see by using the spectate tool but they shouldn't be able to detect, that is something, but the way this statement by PGI sounds as if they have competant automated tools that detect cheating.

Now if they do send a message to the banned party that can be appealed to by them that is fine, thing is most of the things PGI does inspire a feeling of incompetence ( wich they more or less address and fix at a later point ) , for ex. that guy that verbaly assaulted a dev on a stream, personally I too would ban a person like that, thing is a lot of people get that kind of treatment in game and the ones doing it do not get instant permabanes unless a dev is the target of it, also those who do get bans are usually not permanent, but for attacking a dev they are... so assaulting a ruling politician is somehow worse than assaulting a random civilian? ( I mean I realise in reality it is but not in the eyes of law )

Thing is, it's good that they are doing something about cheaters , and they don't need to say how they detect them, but in light of there previous "professional" behavior , island ... and such , I don't find it strange that we want some transperancy from them.
This mostly stems, at least for me, from the fact that pgi is trying to be double faced, as I see it, they seem like they want to cozy up to the players as the small in house friendly types that in fact can not survive in a competitive enviroment by there talents and efforts alone ( double that developer count and more testers and quality assurance people! ) but like to pull the corporate face any time they find it convenient to fight criticism.

They have recording data. A lot of matches where infractions are reported have the infraction happen only during that match, and so that match is always examined on their side. They retain the telemetry, and data from all matches for a long while, probably.