DarkNecridrowrowEither way, you'd think there'd be an easy way to solve the issue of hackers with the vote system keeping track of their votekicks and notifying someone or something about it.
essay
Thank you for explaining VAC, I worded my post poorly when I mentioned "get vac to look at their system" but the bottom line is there would be an easy way to mitigate the issue of hackers if someone gets consistently voted for cheating.
It would overlook players that get votekicked for cheating just because they're half decent because there's no way a good player would get votekicked for cheating on a regular basis, whereas in a matchmaking server if they're getting voted every single time they join a server, there would be some red flags in the system to do the thing VAC does and take in the information from the user to extend VAC's known cheatlist, or maybe even have some more direct system to create some level of consequence for players being voted off as a hacker more than like 3 times in 24 hours.
[quote=DarkNecrid][quote=rowrow]
Either way, you'd think there'd be an easy way to solve the issue of hackers with the vote system keeping track of their votekicks and notifying someone or something about it.[/quote]
essay[/quote]
Thank you for explaining VAC, I worded my post poorly when I mentioned "get vac to look at their system" but the bottom line is there would be an easy way to mitigate the issue of hackers if someone gets consistently voted for cheating.
It would overlook players that get votekicked for cheating just because they're half decent because there's no way a good player would get votekicked for cheating on a regular basis, whereas in a matchmaking server if they're getting voted every single time they join a server, there would be some red flags in the system to do the thing VAC does and take in the information from the user to extend VAC's known cheatlist, or maybe even have some more direct system to create some level of consequence for players being voted off as a hacker more than like 3 times in 24 hours.
BBiA_duchessAll valve needs to do is take a lesson from Blizzard. if you cheat, your ip is perma banned for life. You can't get a new account or any of that shit.
I get your point and do not disagree because there are certainly more things Valve can do on this end like Blizzard does but fwiw Blizzard does not ban based on IP. Basically no one does that for a very long time since a lot of people have dynamic IPs and you'd just be banning innocent people. They ban with hardware IDs on the CPU end combined with using other information they can know like if you decide to save your credit card information with them and you hack and buy a game on another account with the same credit card you get banned because they can put 2+2 together. Sort of like how VAC now works across Family Share & attached Phone Numbers which the latter is actually in play when it comes to comp MM.
A really big problem with TF2 is actually just that there's plenty of hacks that just aren't even detected at all though. LMAOBox was just the most famous one that everyone knew about.
[quote=BBiA_duchess]
All valve needs to do is take a lesson from Blizzard. if you cheat, your ip is perma banned for life. You can't get a new account or any of that shit.[/quote]
I get your point and do not disagree because there are certainly more things Valve can do on this end like Blizzard does but fwiw Blizzard does not ban based on IP. Basically no one does that for a very long time since a lot of people have dynamic IPs and you'd just be banning innocent people. They ban with hardware IDs on the CPU end combined with using other information they can know like if you decide to save your credit card information with them and you hack and buy a game on another account with the same credit card you get banned because they can put 2+2 together. Sort of like how VAC now works across Family Share & attached Phone Numbers which the latter is actually in play when it comes to comp MM.
A really big problem with TF2 is actually just that there's plenty of hacks that just aren't even detected at all though. LMAOBox was just the most famous one that everyone knew about.
are mac address/cpu bans a thing? that might work
are mac address/cpu bans a thing? that might work
DiplomattTf2 needs overwatch
(the one from csgo)
after seeing their shitty attempt at replicating csgo mm in tf2 i really don't want to see them try to implement overwatch tbh
BBiA_duchessAll valve needs to do is take a lesson from Blizzard. if you cheat, your ip is perma banned for life. You can't get a new account or any of that shit.
blizzard actually does some form of hardware ban too which is very difficult to get around (motherboard/cpu IDs at least i think)
[quote=Diplomatt]Tf2 needs overwatch
(the one from csgo)[/quote]
after seeing their shitty attempt at replicating csgo mm in tf2 i really don't want to see them try to implement overwatch tbh
[quote=BBiA_duchess]All valve needs to do is take a lesson from Blizzard. if you cheat, your ip is perma banned for life. You can't get a new account or any of that shit.[/quote]
blizzard actually does some form of hardware ban too which is very difficult to get around (motherboard/cpu IDs at least i think)
BBiA_duchessAll valve needs to do is take a lesson from Blizzard. if you cheat, your ip is perma banned for life. You can't get a new account or any of that shit.
Iirc it's in steam's ToS that VAC bans are linked to the account and are only intended to block that specific account, and not the user. You don't break any terms of service by making a new account after you've been banned.
Idk if there's a legal reason, or if it's just to stop all those people arguing about their friends using cheats once, but we're not going to see any ip/mac/hardware-id bans any time soon unless valve makes a U-turn in their banning philosophy.
[quote=BBiA_duchess]All valve needs to do is take a lesson from Blizzard. if you cheat, your ip is perma banned for life. You can't get a new account or any of that shit.[/quote]
Iirc it's in steam's ToS that VAC bans are linked to the account and are only intended to block that specific account, and not the user. You don't break any terms of service by making a new account after you've been banned.
Idk if there's a legal reason, or if it's just to stop all those people arguing about their friends using cheats once, but we're not going to see any ip/mac/hardware-id bans any time soon unless valve makes a U-turn in their banning philosophy.
JarateKingIirc it's in steam's ToS that VAC bans are linked to the account and are only intended to block that specific account, and not the user. You don't break any terms of service by making a new account after you've been banned.
Idk if there's a legal reason, or if it's just to stop all those people arguing about their friends using cheats once, but we're not going to see any ip/mac/hardware-id bans any time soon unless valve makes a U-turn in their banning philosophy.
That section of their terms was changed awhile ago since they introduced applying phone numbers and Family Share, as those both can propagate VAC bans.
[quote=JarateKing]
Iirc it's in steam's ToS that VAC bans are linked to the account and are only intended to block that specific account, and not the user. You don't break any terms of service by making a new account after you've been banned.
Idk if there's a legal reason, or if it's just to stop all those people arguing about their friends using cheats once, but we're not going to see any ip/mac/hardware-id bans any time soon unless valve makes a U-turn in their banning philosophy.[/quote]
That section of their terms was changed awhile ago since they introduced applying phone numbers and Family Share, as those both can propagate VAC bans.
time to wait for the next pay2cheat banwave i guess
time to wait for the next pay2cheat banwave i guess
I played against him yesterday, he was playing scout on granary. It didn't seem like he was cheating but when he started losing he abandoned so I didn't get any exp for winning :/
I played against him yesterday, he was playing scout on granary. It didn't seem like he was cheating but when he started losing he abandoned so I didn't get any exp for winning :/
MR_SLINI played against him yesterday, he was playing scout on granary. It didn't seem like he was cheating but when he started losing he abandoned so I didn't get any exp for winning :/
I was doubtful at first too, but after playing 15 minutes against him and his buddy we realised the meatshots he got on us weren't lucky meatshots and actually some sort of hack. His movement is REALLY crappy compared to his aim and he gets meatshots whenever he really needs to get them.
[quote=MR_SLIN]I played against him yesterday, he was playing scout on granary. It didn't seem like he was cheating but when he started losing he abandoned so I didn't get any exp for winning :/[/quote]
I was doubtful at first too, but after playing 15 minutes against him and his buddy we realised the meatshots he got on us weren't lucky meatshots and actually some sort of hack. His movement is REALLY crappy compared to his aim and he gets meatshots whenever he really needs to get them.
BBiA_duchessDarkNecridrowrowEither way, you'd think there'd be an easy way to solve the issue of hackers with the vote system keeping track of their votekicks and notifying someone or something about it.
There is no easy way of "solving the issue with hackers". Any solution that actually solves the problem would be extremely complex and would require basically invading privacy and consumer choice on a level not really seen in any other entertainment market. (e.g. forcing people onto specific systems that monitor literally everything you do ever on them) Considering the massive shit storm Valve received when VAC checked DNS history for a very short time, this is pretty much never going to happen. Even in games where pretty much all important information is server sided (which to keep this short this isn't very easy to do in an FPS), people still cheat with stuff like macros. Cheating is a war that no one realistically can win against, just massively slow it down.
Even if your idea was a good one (and I'd argue it really isn't, I got votekicked on Valve pubs before for being a "cheater" and I'm not even that good at this game mechanically, just being decidedly mediocre at DM from a competitive standpoint is still being a god in Valve pubs, and comp MM isn't much better), it still wouldn't ban anyone instantly because not banning instantly harms hackers more than banning instantly benefits players. The only time VAC instantly bans is if it detects a hack that has been VAC detected for a very long time (like years).
Now looking at your original post, that's just not how VAC works. Valve employees have very little to do with VAC. Employees only real interaction with VAC is adding signatures of cheats to the ban list and reviewing code of anomalies that VAC uploads to their engineers to see if it's a cheat or not.
VAC also doesn't "need a break" to check anyone out, any time you're on a VAC enabled server it is checking you out. The tl;dr simplified way of how it works is every account is assigned a "Challenge Level", and then when you connect to a server you download a specific piece of VAC3 related to your Challenge Level which gives your client a challenge. If your client fails the challenge it is considered an anomaly, will upload that data to Valve for them to determine if cheating is going on via the code it uploads of what triggers the anomaly and cross references it with their already existing cheat list, and then your Challenge Level is increased and it will do increasingly more thorough challenges. If you are determined to be a cheater you are flagged and then banned an indeterminate time afterwards whenever Valve feels like it basically. This is on top of a heuristics RAM/process scan that is always on-going that attempts to detect an anomaly that way to send to Valve and can increase your Challenge Level further. In fact, banning someone like this would actually prevent VAC from checking them out with harder challenges or trying to figure out what they are running (although it is most likely something not detected yet since there's still plenty of private cheats better than lmaobox floating around), since you need to be connected to VAC for it to check you out, which only happens when you're on a VAC Secure server in TF2.
So your suggestion would actually be counter-productive and result in them getting detected less because it's preventing VAC from even searching them and Valve doesn't do manual checks.
All valve needs to do is take a lesson from Blizzard. if you cheat, your ip is perma banned for life. You can't get a new account or any of that shit.
They didnt do ip bans they did cpu id bans. Ip bans are useless and can potentially ban an entire neighborhood using that same public ip. As well as proxys esit
[quote=BBiA_duchess][quote=DarkNecrid][quote=rowrow]
Either way, you'd think there'd be an easy way to solve the issue of hackers with the vote system keeping track of their votekicks and notifying someone or something about it.[/quote]
There is no easy way of "solving the issue with hackers". Any solution that actually solves the problem would be extremely complex and would require basically invading privacy and consumer choice on a level not really seen in any other entertainment market. (e.g. forcing people onto specific systems that monitor literally everything you do ever on them) Considering the massive shit storm Valve received when VAC checked DNS history for a very short time, this is pretty much never going to happen. Even in games where pretty much all important information is server sided (which to keep this short this isn't very easy to do in an FPS), people still cheat with stuff like macros. Cheating is a war that no one realistically can win against, just massively slow it down.
Even if your idea was a good one (and I'd argue it really isn't, I got votekicked on Valve pubs before for being a "cheater" and I'm not even that good at this game mechanically, just being decidedly mediocre at DM from a competitive standpoint is still being a god in Valve pubs, and comp MM isn't much better), it still wouldn't ban anyone instantly because not banning instantly harms hackers more than banning instantly benefits players. The only time VAC instantly bans is if it detects a hack that has been VAC detected for a very long time (like years).
Now looking at your original post, that's just not how VAC works. Valve employees have very little to do with VAC. Employees only real interaction with VAC is adding signatures of cheats to the ban list and reviewing code of anomalies that VAC uploads to their engineers to see if it's a cheat or not.
VAC also doesn't "need a break" to check anyone out, any time you're on a VAC enabled server it is checking you out. The tl;dr simplified way of how it works is every account is assigned a "Challenge Level", and then when you connect to a server you download a specific piece of VAC3 related to your Challenge Level which gives your client a challenge. If your client fails the challenge it is considered an anomaly, will upload that data to Valve for them to determine if cheating is going on via the code it uploads of what triggers the anomaly and cross references it with their already existing cheat list, and then your Challenge Level is increased and it will do increasingly more thorough challenges. If you are determined to be a cheater you are flagged and then banned an indeterminate time afterwards whenever Valve feels like it basically. This is on top of a heuristics RAM/process scan that is always on-going that attempts to detect an anomaly that way to send to Valve and can increase your Challenge Level further. In fact, banning someone like this would actually prevent VAC from checking them out with harder challenges or trying to figure out what they are running (although it is most likely something not detected yet since there's still plenty of private cheats better than lmaobox floating around), since you need to be connected to VAC for it to check you out, which only happens when you're on a VAC Secure server in TF2.
So your suggestion would actually be counter-productive and result in them getting detected less because it's preventing VAC from even searching them and Valve doesn't do manual checks.[/quote]
All valve needs to do is take a lesson from Blizzard. if you cheat, your ip is perma banned for life. You can't get a new account or any of that shit.[/quote]
They didnt do ip bans they did cpu id bans. Ip bans are useless and can potentially ban an entire neighborhood using that same public ip. As well as proxys esit
MR_SLINI played against him yesterday, he was playing scout on granary. It didn't seem like he was cheating but when he started losing he abandoned so I didn't get any exp for winning :/
He is 100% hacking. He switched to sniper when he wasn't winning and he didn't miss a headshot.
[quote=MR_SLIN]I played against him yesterday, he was playing scout on granary. It didn't seem like he was cheating but when he started losing he abandoned so I didn't get any exp for winning :/[/quote]
He is 100% hacking. He switched to sniper when he wasn't winning and he didn't miss a headshot.
JarateKingBBiA_duchessAll valve needs to do is take a lesson from Blizzard. if you cheat, your ip is perma banned for life. You can't get a new account or any of that shit.
Iirc it's in steam's ToS that VAC bans are linked to the account and are only intended to block that specific account, and not the user. You don't break any terms of service by making a new account after you've been banned.
Idk if there's a legal reason, or if it's just to stop all those people arguing about their friends using cheats once, but we're not going to see any ip/mac/hardware-id bans any time soon unless valve makes a U-turn in their banning philosophy.
Don't they ban all accounts linked by a phone number when one account is vac'ed
[quote=JarateKing][quote=BBiA_duchess]All valve needs to do is take a lesson from Blizzard. if you cheat, your ip is perma banned for life. You can't get a new account or any of that shit.[/quote]
Iirc it's in steam's ToS that VAC bans are linked to the account and are only intended to block that specific account, and not the user. You don't break any terms of service by making a new account after you've been banned.
Idk if there's a legal reason, or if it's just to stop all those people arguing about their friends using cheats once, but we're not going to see any ip/mac/hardware-id bans any time soon unless valve makes a U-turn in their banning philosophy.[/quote]
Don't they ban all accounts linked by a phone number when one account is vac'ed
Geel9BBiA_duchess
All valve needs to do is take a lesson from Blizzard. if you cheat, your ip is perma banned for life. You can't get a new account or any of that shit.
IP bans are useless
IP bans aren't just useless--they're worse than useless. Your neighbor could cheat today and you could be banned in a month because your modem needed to renew its DHCP lease and you managed to pull your neighbor's old IP. Also, contrary to what some people seem to believe, generating hardware IDs and banning with them is not a solution that is unable to be circumvented. Hardware IDs can be spoofed or changed with relative ease--it's just a process that is not nearly as well known as spoofing IP/MAC addresses.
The bottom line is that people cheat because they want to cheat and short of somehow stepping in front of all the cheat developers and preventing their cheats from working at all, you're not going to stop cheating. Sadly, that scenario is about as likely as world peace. Competent game developers don't want gobs of false positives (otherwise they'd still be using punkbuster like EA) so they'll err on the side of caution and risk letting cheaters through. In their eyes, 1000 rampant cheaters is better than one wrongful ban. I'm not sure they're wrong, but it sure seems like a lot more work could go into preventing cheating.
Being an AC coder is a pretty thankless job. Anyone playing against a cheater would think you're useless. Anyone getting falsely banned would think you're useless. Many people getting rightfully banned will attempt to publicly ostracize your work. Knowing you'll never catch flusha. Your employer might embed a bitcoin miner in with your code and then claim you did it. Knowing you'll always be behind the curve and even if you managed to catch up, someone would be curtailing your achievement immediately. I sure don't envy the job of an anti-cheat coder, although I do think it would be a very thought-provoking, mentally stimulating job.
Cheaters suck.
[quote=Geel9][quote=BBiA_duchess]
All valve needs to do is take a lesson from Blizzard. if you cheat, your ip is perma banned for life. You can't get a new account or any of that shit.[/quote]
IP bans are useless[/quote]
IP bans aren't just useless--they're worse than useless. Your neighbor could cheat today and you could be banned in a month because your modem needed to renew its DHCP lease and you managed to pull your neighbor's old IP. Also, contrary to what some people seem to believe, generating hardware IDs and banning with them is not a solution that is unable to be circumvented. Hardware IDs can be spoofed or changed with relative ease--it's just a process that is not nearly as well known as spoofing IP/MAC addresses.
The bottom line is that people cheat because they want to cheat and short of somehow stepping in front of all the cheat developers and preventing their cheats from working at all, you're not going to stop cheating. Sadly, that scenario is about as likely as world peace. Competent game developers don't want gobs of false positives (otherwise they'd still be using punkbuster like EA) so they'll err on the side of caution and risk letting cheaters through. In their eyes, 1000 rampant cheaters is better than one wrongful ban. I'm not sure they're wrong, but it sure seems like a lot more work could go into preventing cheating.
Being an AC coder is a pretty thankless job. Anyone playing against a cheater would think you're useless. Anyone getting falsely banned would think you're useless. Many people getting rightfully banned will attempt to publicly ostracize your work. Knowing you'll never catch flusha. Your employer might embed a bitcoin miner in with your code and then claim you did it. Knowing you'll always be behind the curve and even if you managed to catch up, someone would be curtailing your achievement immediately. I sure don't envy the job of an anti-cheat coder, although I do think it would be a very thought-provoking, mentally stimulating job.
Cheaters suck.
Umm, ban their phone number? They kinda need that to play MM.
I don't understand why Valve doesn't have an anti-cheat team that scouts for new hacks online and analyzes their code in order to constantly update VAC.
Seriously, they make a ton of money from TF2, they wouldn't really need more than 2-3 people for this job.
Umm, ban their phone number? They kinda need that to play MM.
I don't understand why Valve doesn't have an anti-cheat team that scouts for new hacks online and analyzes their code in order to constantly update VAC.
Seriously, they make a ton of money from TF2, they wouldn't really need more than 2-3 people for this job.
biskuitUmm, ban their phone number? They kinda need that to play MM.
Banning phone numbers will get rid of some cheaters, but nowhere near all of them. Obtaining a new number is quite easy (which could cause false positives on its own), and many services exist that will allow you to permanently or temporarily utilize a number that isn't your own.
biskuitI don't understand why Valve doesn't have an anti-cheat team that scouts for new hacks online and analyzes their code in order to constantly update VAC.
Seriously, they make a ton of money from TF2, they wouldn't really need more than 2-3 people for this job.
I don't know if this would be a viable plan of action for an anti-cheat team. It's somewhat unfeasible to expect them to analyze code for a number of reasons. They are unlikely to find any raw code. Any program they manage to find will likely be heavily packed and obfuscated so it would take a lot of effort to reverse-engineer, and much like how vac downloads and utilizes its internal components only when you connect to a VAC-enabled server, most modern cheat applications don't contain all code modules within the executable you're running. Typically it's something that would be difficult or impossible to access without purchasing an account with the cheat developer and logging in to their client or website. It would be somewhat counterproductive and unethical for an anti-cheat team to pay for cheats for their game in the hopes of understanding ways to circumvent said cheats.
I'd like to see lawsuits for cheat developers. The best ones are bound to slip through these cracks because it'll be much easier for them to be anonymous, but many would disappear very easily and the punishments would hopefully persuade at least some other developers to abandon their projects. It certainly wouldn't stop all cheating, and it would only work at all for a very short period of time while having a side effect of causing cheat developers to work hard to become more anonymous.
[quote=biskuit]Umm, ban their phone number? They kinda need that to play MM.[/quote]
Banning phone numbers will get rid of some cheaters, but nowhere near all of them. Obtaining a new number is quite easy (which could cause false positives on its own), and many services exist that will allow you to permanently or temporarily utilize a number that isn't your own.
[quote=biskuit]I don't understand why Valve doesn't have an anti-cheat team that scouts for new hacks online and analyzes their code in order to constantly update VAC.
Seriously, they make a ton of money from TF2, they wouldn't really need more than 2-3 people for this job.[/quote]
I don't know if this would be a viable plan of action for an anti-cheat team. It's somewhat unfeasible to expect them to analyze code for a number of reasons. They are unlikely to find any raw code. Any program they manage to find will likely be heavily packed and obfuscated so it would take a lot of effort to reverse-engineer, and much like how vac downloads and utilizes its internal components only when you connect to a VAC-enabled server, most modern cheat applications don't contain all code modules within the executable you're running. Typically it's something that would be difficult or impossible to access without purchasing an account with the cheat developer and logging in to their client or website. It would be somewhat counterproductive and unethical for an anti-cheat team to pay for cheats for their game in the hopes of understanding ways to circumvent said cheats.
I'd like to see lawsuits for cheat developers. The best ones are bound to slip through these cracks because it'll be much easier for them to be anonymous, but many would disappear very easily and the punishments would hopefully persuade at least some other developers to abandon their projects. It certainly wouldn't stop all cheating, and it would only work at all for a very short period of time while having a side effect of causing cheat developers to work hard to become more anonymous.
CHEATER ALERT [img]http://i.imgur.com/sftExSu.png[/img]
BurningSmileValve should implement a cpu id based ban system like over watch. You cant fake a cpu ID like you can IP bans. This would prevent users from just spamming alt accounts as there is no way to change your cpu id, its built into your cpu so the only way around it would be to replace your cpu. (Most hackers are kids that dont have the money to replace their cpu.
or just make the competitive pass more expensive, no one really needs an alt account and most people do have phones so matchmaking is free for them.
the only people that might need to buy it are people who chose not to have "decent" phones or cheaters who may need an alt account. and I doubt that cheaters will buy competitive passes just to get banned again, valve just needs to actually keep up with the cheaters so they will get banned after using cheats relatively fast and eventually they'll run out of money or will to cheat.
[quote=BurningSmile]Valve should implement a cpu id based ban system like over watch. You cant fake a cpu ID like you can IP bans. This would prevent users from just spamming alt accounts as there is no way to change your cpu id, its built into your cpu so the only way around it would be to replace your cpu. (Most hackers are kids that dont have the money to replace their cpu.[/quote]
or just make the competitive pass more expensive, no one really needs an alt account and most people do have phones so matchmaking is free for them.
the only people that might need to buy it are people who chose not to have "decent" phones or cheaters who may need an alt account. and I doubt that cheaters will buy competitive passes just to get banned again, valve just needs to actually keep up with the cheaters so they will get banned after using cheats relatively fast and eventually they'll run out of money or will to cheat.
there's definitely a way to get around hardware bans, even the rigorous ones that esea has - there was a guide on a forum i used to go to, not sure if i can find it again tho
http://puu.sh/q5sEd/a54c24563b.png
is some instructions on how to ban evade on either cevo or faceit but literally everyone gives bullshit advice except tristan and his way of ban evading was to fucking get a new everything and run ur system in like raid0 or some shit like that
if i recall correctly ur config also gets blacklisted too on either cevo or faceit or both so if you play again with the exact same config you get flagged at the very least or banned (idk) i'm not sure how this works if you decide to copy paste a pro's config though
so basically some things that can be done are
- flag ip, not ban
- save cc info to some extent to where you can at the very least flag players that repeatedly get banned and buy new copies of the pass
- flag configs, tho i'm not sure if this could work like cs since comanglia cfg and shit like that
phone numbers do in fact vac ban over multiple accounts, i got dicked hard and i got vac banned on an account i never cheated on and lost a decent bit of $$ ://
honestly being an anticheat dev probably blows cock because as much as you try to do to stop cheats, people can still get through - you're eternally one step behind, for cheat devs you're nothing more than another name to put down in the list of ac's they can bypass, and even the community that you help shit talks you.
even more for vac where i'm sure that valve / game devs would love to manually ban cheaters but it's really just not ok to do that because it's much better to depend on a system rather than heuristic ac. like for example within a league admins have the power to manually ban for cheating (at least for ugc, cevo, faceit, not esea) but having valve do it is on an entirely different level. like it probably makes huge sense for jill to ban people manually but it opens valve up to lawsuits where people will undoubtedly be upset at potential bias or whatever and sue because someone manually banning you from a game and dicking you out of the $ you put in isn't right, especially since vac is pretty much the end all of cheating.
@darknecrid i'm not sure if realize this because my understanding of vac is pretty different from yours but
can you explain how cheats get banned (with a entirely different signature, etc) immediately? for example platinumcheats was detected literally day one of release as a huge wave on a limited slot cheat, which doesn't coincide with your thing of "whenever vac wants to ban u lol" considering it had like no users prior to release day and everyone who used it got banned within a day. can you also explain how cheats that literally do not inject into the game process get vac detected? it's effectively a private since only developers have access to it prior to release and there's no way the signature can get detected. i'm not questioning you or anything, i've sworn off using p2cs since the vac and the only cheat i've used since is a custom private that i had made for me that another user in this thread also has
cross references it with their already existing cheat list,
please explain how lithium / wutStorm can remain undetected when lmaobox previously got vac detected and they're effectively pastes of each other. please explain how lmaobox can become "undetected" again when it has been on the same pasted shit base made by gir489 and stolen by tommie? how is miketf2 not vac banned when he used his darkstorm paste? darkstorm itself has been vac detected for like forever and people continue to make derivatives of darkstorm and remain undetected. is it because of unique signatures (doubt it)? null core was pretty much an insta vac for a super long time pretty much immediately after release and it wasn't even a paste.
like if i'm wrong please tell me, i'm legitimately curious about this. somehow i think ur wrong but i've also heard people tell me similar things to what you've said so maybe you're right idk
there's definitely a way to get around hardware bans, even the rigorous ones that esea has - there was a guide on a forum i used to go to, not sure if i can find it again tho
[img]http://puu.sh/q5sEd/a54c24563b.png[/img]
is some instructions on how to ban evade on either cevo or faceit but literally everyone gives bullshit advice except tristan and his way of ban evading was to fucking get a new everything and run ur system in like raid0 or some shit like that
if i recall correctly ur config also gets blacklisted too on either cevo or faceit or both so if you play again with the [i]exact same[/i] config you get flagged at the very least or banned (idk) i'm not sure how this works if you decide to copy paste a pro's config though
so basically some things that can be done are
- flag ip, not ban
- save cc info to some extent to where you can at the very least flag players that repeatedly get banned and buy new copies of the pass
- flag configs, tho i'm not sure if this could work like cs since comanglia cfg and shit like that
phone numbers [b]do in fact[/b] vac ban over multiple accounts, i got dicked hard and i got vac banned on an account i never cheated on and lost a decent bit of $$ ://
honestly being an anticheat dev probably blows cock because as much as you try to do to stop cheats, people can still get through - you're eternally one step behind, for cheat devs you're nothing more than another name to put down in the list of ac's they can bypass, and even the community that you help shit talks you.
even more for vac where i'm sure that valve / game devs would love to manually ban cheaters but it's really just not ok to do that because it's much better to depend on a system rather than heuristic ac. like for example within a league admins have the power to manually ban for cheating (at least for ugc, cevo, faceit, not esea) but having valve do it is on an entirely different level. like it probably makes huge sense for jill to ban people manually but it opens valve up to lawsuits where people will undoubtedly be upset at potential bias or whatever and sue because someone manually banning you from a game and dicking you out of the $ you put in isn't right, especially since vac is pretty much the end all of cheating.
@darknecrid i'm not sure if realize this because my understanding of vac is pretty different from yours but
can you explain how cheats get banned (with a entirely different signature, etc) immediately? for example platinumcheats was detected literally day one of release as a huge wave on a limited slot cheat, which doesn't coincide with your thing of "whenever vac wants to ban u lol" considering it had like no users prior to release day and everyone who used it got banned within a day. can you also explain how cheats that literally do not inject into the game process get vac detected? it's effectively a private since only developers have access to it prior to release and there's no way the signature can get detected. i'm not questioning you or anything, i've sworn off using p2cs since the vac and the only cheat i've used since is a custom private that i had made for me that another user in this thread also has
[quote]cross references it with their already existing cheat list,[/quote]
please explain how lithium / wutStorm can remain undetected when lmaobox previously got vac detected and they're effectively pastes of each other. please explain how lmaobox can become "undetected" again when it has been on the same pasted shit base made by gir489 and stolen by tommie? how is miketf2 not vac banned when he used his darkstorm paste? darkstorm itself has been vac detected for like forever and people continue to make derivatives of darkstorm and remain undetected. is it because of unique signatures (doubt it)? null core was pretty much an insta vac for a super long time pretty much immediately after release and it wasn't even a paste.
like if i'm wrong please tell me, i'm legitimately curious about this. somehow i think ur wrong but i've also heard people tell me similar things to what you've said so maybe you're right idk
#50
I mean I'm not a literal Valve developer but I just go off of what they've said in other articles / what I've seen others in the hacking community say from dissembling the parts of VAC that have been dissembled in the past.
can you explain how cheats get banned (with a entirely different signature, etc) immediately?
This is going to include most of your similar questions.
VAC according to Valve has functionality which uploads code/processes hooked into things it checks to Valve directly and Valve checks it for cheats, so this could be a possibility. They've said directly before that this functionality is at least good enough that they can tell a program affecting their game is just an Anti-Virus by its code they're sent and not flag it. Admittedly to the best of my knowledge this functionality and its limits are not very well understood publicly, as they do not talk about it very much for obvious reason. You also (last time I checked) automatically get kicked if you try to block the internet routing that creates the upload connection to Valve since it's a part of the VAC connection required to be maintained the whole time you're on a server. But I don't think you can preclude the human element either on a lot of these cheats of someone who has the cheat actually just giving it to Valve. Just coz it's limited slot or hackers try to vet people as not being rats doesn't mean there aren't any.
As far as how certain cheats don't get banned or whatever, there's two big reasons for that. 1) VAC isn't a sentient AI, it still relies on the employees to check (or receive) cheats and add them to the detection list manually which when you keep in mind that VAC is used for plenty of other games besides Valve games but VAC is solely managed by Valve employees, it is probably overwhelming to keep everything detected as hackers will always move faster than them. 2) It's not completely understood either so I'm not going to say this is a fact, but it would make a lot of sense to me with how their challenge system works it's possible some of these hacks are unknowingly triggering anomalies sooner than other hacks are which leads to them getting detected sooner even if they're kinda similar to other hacks.
which doesn't coincide with your thing of "whenever vac wants to ban u lol"
Valve's public stance has always been that they delay ban on cheaters, although you can historically see that they have a system where the longer a cheat has been in the wild the faster it bans you for it. Like if you bought CSS or whatever and loaded up a 2 year old cheat you'll get instabanned from VAC. I dunno about platinumcheats specifically, but Valve does seem to like doing ban waves where they set dates and ban everyone that has been flagged, maybe the signature was added on a wave day, then? There really isn't too much public info on this other than Valve repeatedly saying VAC doesn't ban instantly because they aren't going to talk about this much. Valve just pretty much bans flagged people whenever they feel like it, which is what I meant really.
can you also explain how cheats that literally do not inject into the game process get vac detected?
VAC doesn't check just the game process. This used to be a really big problem when it was still internally versioned VAC2 because on Windows Vista (woo showing the age of this) due to Windows Aero actually being rendered in DirectX people could window the game and inject a hack into the start menu's DirectX thread which VAC2 couldn't detect until they started checking more than just the process with VAC3, as people would just RPM the game and use that data in the start menu hack. This was like THE go to hack in Modern Warfare 2 on PC until it got detected.
I dunno what method people use anymore to not inject into the game tho, if that's still common or not, haven't kept super up to date on this since my interest in TF2 itself has waned.
#50
I mean I'm not a literal Valve developer but I just go off of what they've said in other articles / what I've seen others in the hacking community say from dissembling the parts of VAC that have been dissembled in the past.
[quote]can you explain how cheats get banned (with a entirely different signature, etc) immediately?[/quote]
This is going to include most of your similar questions.
VAC according to Valve has functionality which uploads code/processes hooked into things it checks to Valve directly and Valve checks it for cheats, so this could be a possibility. They've said directly before that this functionality is at least good enough that they can tell a program affecting their game is just an Anti-Virus by its code they're sent and not flag it. Admittedly to the best of my knowledge this functionality and its limits are not very well understood publicly, as they do not talk about it very much for obvious reason. You also (last time I checked) automatically get kicked if you try to block the internet routing that creates the upload connection to Valve since it's a part of the VAC connection required to be maintained the whole time you're on a server. But I don't think you can preclude the human element either on a lot of these cheats of someone who has the cheat actually just giving it to Valve. Just coz it's limited slot or hackers try to vet people as not being rats doesn't mean there aren't any.
As far as how certain cheats don't get banned or whatever, there's two big reasons for that. 1) VAC isn't a sentient AI, it still relies on the employees to check (or receive) cheats and add them to the detection list manually which when you keep in mind that VAC is used for plenty of other games besides Valve games but VAC is solely managed by Valve employees, it is probably overwhelming to keep everything detected as hackers will always move faster than them. 2) It's not completely understood either so I'm not going to say this is a fact, but it would make a lot of sense to me with how their challenge system works it's possible some of these hacks are unknowingly triggering anomalies sooner than other hacks are which leads to them getting detected sooner even if they're kinda similar to other hacks.
[quote]which doesn't coincide with your thing of "whenever vac wants to ban u lol"[/quote]
Valve's public stance has always been that they delay ban on cheaters, although you can historically see that they have a system where the longer a cheat has been in the wild the faster it bans you for it. Like if you bought CSS or whatever and loaded up a 2 year old cheat you'll get instabanned from VAC. I dunno about platinumcheats specifically, but Valve does seem to like doing ban waves where they set dates and ban everyone that has been flagged, maybe the signature was added on a wave day, then? There really isn't too much public info on this other than Valve repeatedly saying VAC doesn't ban instantly because they aren't going to talk about this much. Valve just pretty much bans flagged people whenever they feel like it, which is what I meant really.
[quote]can you also explain how cheats that literally do not inject into the game process get vac detected?[/quote]
VAC doesn't check just the game process. This used to be a really big problem when it was still internally versioned VAC2 because on Windows Vista (woo showing the age of this) due to Windows Aero actually being rendered in DirectX people could window the game and inject a hack into the start menu's DirectX thread which VAC2 couldn't detect until they started checking more than just the process with VAC3, as people would just RPM the game and use that data in the start menu hack. This was like THE go to hack in Modern Warfare 2 on PC until it got detected.
I dunno what method people use anymore to not inject into the game tho, if that's still common or not, haven't kept super up to date on this since my interest in TF2 itself has waned.
VAC detects based upon process name or process signature, known .dll injections into game files/engine, and also by memory signature where the hack will make changes to active memory shared by both the hack and the game.
The reason brand new or private hacks can sometimes be detected by VAC is because the person that wrote the hack probably used the same or similar method or exploit and that is already in the valve database would be my guess.
A guy I met a while back used to write hacks just for fun and he would report exploits to valve sometimes. He even got VAC'ed in one wave on an alt through code he wrote! He also showed me some crazy shit on a valve server. I'll not get into details but it was basically god mode. He was almost impossible to kill!
I'm not sure why valve doesn't try something more simple than their current VAC system and just do more game server side detection. Like implement random hidden hitboxes in maps that aim hacks will try to lock onto. If the cheater has a lot of false shots on these hidden hitboxes = ban. Or other time related detection. Scoping in and hitting a headshot within 200ms (faster than possible human reaction times) = 1 detection. Multiple detection = ban. It's an ongoing battle and I realize that, but really there are other ways to stop the full retard aimbot not trying to hide it hackers by using examples like I mentioned above.
VAC detects based upon process name or process signature, known .dll injections into game files/engine, and also by memory signature where the hack will make changes to active memory shared by both the hack and the game.
The reason brand new or private hacks can sometimes be detected by VAC is because the person that wrote the hack probably used the same or similar method or exploit and that is already in the valve database would be my guess.
A guy I met a while back used to write hacks just for fun and he would report exploits to valve sometimes. He even got VAC'ed in one wave on an alt through code he wrote! He also showed me some crazy shit on a valve server. I'll not get into details but it was basically god mode. He was almost impossible to kill!
I'm not sure why valve doesn't try something more simple than their current VAC system and just do more game server side detection. Like implement random hidden hitboxes in maps that aim hacks will try to lock onto. If the cheater has a lot of false shots on these hidden hitboxes = ban. Or other time related detection. Scoping in and hitting a headshot within 200ms (faster than possible human reaction times) = 1 detection. Multiple detection = ban. It's an ongoing battle and I realize that, but really there are other ways to stop the full retard aimbot not trying to hide it hackers by using examples like I mentioned above.
smakersbiskuitUmm, ban their phone number? They kinda need that to play MM.
Banning phone numbers will get rid of some cheaters, but nowhere near all of them. Obtaining a new number is quite easy (which could cause false positives on its own), and many services exist that will allow you to permanently or temporarily utilize a number that isn't your own.
biskuitI don't understand why Valve doesn't have an anti-cheat team that scouts for new hacks online and analyzes their code in order to constantly update VAC.
Seriously, they make a ton of money from TF2, they wouldn't really need more than 2-3 people for this job.
I don't know if this would be a viable plan of action for an anti-cheat team. It's somewhat unfeasible to expect them to analyze code for a number of reasons. They are unlikely to find any raw code. Any program they manage to find will likely be heavily packed and obfuscated so it would take a lot of effort to reverse-engineer, and much like how vac downloads and utilizes its internal components only when you connect to a VAC-enabled server, most modern cheat applications don't contain all code modules within the executable you're running. Typically it's something that would be difficult or impossible to access without purchasing an account with the cheat developer and logging in to their client or website. It would be somewhat counterproductive and unethical for an anti-cheat team to pay for cheats for their game in the hopes of understanding ways to circumvent said cheats.
I'd like to see lawsuits for cheat developers. The best ones are bound to slip through these cracks because it'll be much easier for them to be anonymous, but many would disappear very easily and the punishments would hopefully persuade at least some other developers to abandon their projects. It certainly wouldn't stop all cheating, and it would only work at all for a very short period of time while having a side effect of causing cheat developers to work hard to become more anonymous.
You're right. However, there isn't an infinite amount of cheats out there meaning that they can look for the most popular ones and analyze their code in order to update VAC. I mean, do cheats for TF2 get created on a daily basis?
Figuring out how to ban the most popular ones is certainly going to reduce the number of people who hack.
[quote=smakers][quote=biskuit]Umm, ban their phone number? They kinda need that to play MM.[/quote]
Banning phone numbers will get rid of some cheaters, but nowhere near all of them. Obtaining a new number is quite easy (which could cause false positives on its own), and many services exist that will allow you to permanently or temporarily utilize a number that isn't your own.
[quote=biskuit]I don't understand why Valve doesn't have an anti-cheat team that scouts for new hacks online and analyzes their code in order to constantly update VAC.
Seriously, they make a ton of money from TF2, they wouldn't really need more than 2-3 people for this job.[/quote]
I don't know if this would be a viable plan of action for an anti-cheat team. It's somewhat unfeasible to expect them to analyze code for a number of reasons. They are unlikely to find any raw code. Any program they manage to find will likely be heavily packed and obfuscated so it would take a lot of effort to reverse-engineer, and much like how vac downloads and utilizes its internal components only when you connect to a VAC-enabled server, most modern cheat applications don't contain all code modules within the executable you're running. Typically it's something that would be difficult or impossible to access without purchasing an account with the cheat developer and logging in to their client or website. It would be somewhat counterproductive and unethical for an anti-cheat team to pay for cheats for their game in the hopes of understanding ways to circumvent said cheats.
I'd like to see lawsuits for cheat developers. The best ones are bound to slip through these cracks because it'll be much easier for them to be anonymous, but many would disappear very easily and the punishments would hopefully persuade at least some other developers to abandon their projects. It certainly wouldn't stop all cheating, and it would only work at all for a very short period of time while having a side effect of causing cheat developers to work hard to become more anonymous.[/quote]
You're right. However, there isn't an infinite amount of cheats out there meaning that they can look for the most popular ones and analyze their code in order to update VAC. I mean, do cheats for TF2 get created on a daily basis?
Figuring out how to ban the most popular ones is certainly going to reduce the number of people who hack.
i need 5 of the finest warriors in the land, together we will smite this foe
i need 5 of the finest warriors in the land, together we will smite this foe
Since league badges are basically given to anyone who plays in the league, wouldn't it just make sense to allow people with high prestige league badges (i.e etf2l high, esea IM, ozfortress premier, UGC platinum) to use this overwatch-esque thing? That way we also know that the people with such power actually know: a) what they're doing, and b) the difference between skill and cheats?
instead of -fragging me tell me what's the problem with this proposition please
Since league badges are basically given to anyone who plays in the league, wouldn't it just make sense to allow people with high prestige league badges (i.e etf2l high, esea IM, ozfortress premier, UGC platinum) to use this overwatch-esque thing? That way we also know that the people with such power actually know: a) what they're doing, and b) the difference between skill and cheats?
instead of -fragging me tell me what's the problem with this proposition please
riotbzSince league badges are basically given to anyone who plays in the league, wouldn't it just make sense to allow people with high prestige league badges (i.e etf2l high, esea IM, ozfortress premier, UGC platinum) to use this overwatch-esque thing? That way we also know that the people with such power actually know: a) what they're doing, and b) the difference between skill and cheats?
a) valve wouldn't want to use a third-party accomplishment to qualify someone for overwatch
b) the number of people 'qualified' would be too small to be useful compared to the size of the general population of players.
[quote=riotbz]Since league badges are basically given to anyone who plays in the league, wouldn't it just make sense to allow people with high prestige league badges (i.e etf2l high, esea IM, ozfortress premier, UGC platinum) to use this overwatch-esque thing? That way we also know that the people with such power actually know: a) what they're doing, and b) the difference between skill and cheats?[/quote]
a) valve wouldn't want to use a third-party accomplishment to qualify someone for overwatch
b) the number of people 'qualified' would be too small to be useful compared to the size of the general population of players.
riotbzSince league badges are basically given to anyone who plays in the league, wouldn't it just make sense to allow people with high prestige league badges (i.e etf2l high, esea IM, ozfortress premier, UGC platinum) to use this overwatch-esque thing? That way we also know that the people with such power actually know: a) what they're doing, and b) the difference between skill and cheats?
instead of -fragging me tell me what's the problem with this proposition please
ESEA doesn't have badges because it's a pay to play league
[quote=riotbz]Since league badges are basically given to anyone who plays in the league, wouldn't it just make sense to allow people with high prestige league badges (i.e etf2l high, esea IM, ozfortress premier, UGC platinum) to use this overwatch-esque thing? That way we also know that the people with such power actually know: a) what they're doing, and b) the difference between skill and cheats?
instead of -fragging me tell me what's the problem with this proposition please[/quote]
ESEA doesn't have badges because it's a pay to play league
BarytaQb) the number of people 'qualified' would be too small to be useful compared to the size of the general population of players.
This
As much joy as I get from reviewing demo's for AC purposes I have to admit that the number of requests is extremely overwhelming. There are days where I just ignore requests :-/
I really want to response to some of the points being brought up in this thread as I do see a bunch of misinformation but as someone else pointed out it's pretty much useless for multiple reasons.
[quote=BarytaQ]
b) the number of people 'qualified' would be too small to be useful compared to the size of the general population of players.[/quote]
This
As much joy as I get from reviewing demo's for AC purposes I have to admit that the number of requests is extremely overwhelming. There are days where I just ignore requests :-/
I really want to response to some of the points being brought up in this thread as I do see a bunch of misinformation but as someone else pointed out it's pretty much useless for multiple reasons.
fade-can you also explain how cheats that literally do not inject into the game process get vac detected?
It's possible to detect unexpected hooking into game functions regardless of where the original process is running, I've seen cheats that try to hide in "protected" anti virus memory but it's more of a gimmick really. Vac could be more aggressive and effective than it is.
[quote=fade-]can you also explain how cheats that literally do not inject into the game process get vac detected?[/quote]
It's possible to detect unexpected hooking into game functions regardless of where the original process is running, I've seen cheats that try to hide in "protected" anti virus memory but it's more of a gimmick really. Vac could be more aggressive and effective than it is.