It's a leadership failure.
Notice A statement on cheating in Elite Dangerous.
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It's a leadership failure.
this is embarrassing, i know nothing, cmdr.
all that sounds simple enough but could also be tricky or even useless depending on a lot of details we don't know. we discussed a similar approach with Micha in another cheat thread, where he proposed to have those values signed (by the trusted server, when they are created or change) and verified (by the clients). this is all possible and viable depending on how much those values change, how often they need to be checked (hull mass is different from ammo left, etc). also, this could detect tampering with 'ship stats' (what the current trainer seems to do) but ... what about trajectories of ordenance? synthesis? can a client fake hits? it can get complicated.
my preferred approach regarding security would tend to keep it simple and to be conservative: you don't have to worry to protect what you don't expose, and the more convoluted a solution is, the more weak spots it will have.
also, implementing this as an afterthought can be more difficult and problematic than a system designed from the ground up to prevent this. if the values are scattered all over the place, set and read from multiple places, if there are duplicate code paths, performance issues ... there might be a lot of work involved.
same caveats as above, but that should be the easy part.
see? i have no clue
my coarse guess (from the screenshots and type of cheats) is that they alter these values in memory. the classic infinite lives hack. this is one of the most common ways of compromising any program as spotting known values in memory is relatively easy (as tricky as reverse engineering is). you don't have to fully understand how it works: if you find the value, if you can change and it works ... bingo!note the same approach works for both options: you can tamper with values that are resident, values going out or values coming in, so wether you nullify damage or buff shield, same strategy. the only difference is that values going out will get verified (or not!) by other clients. i guess that's why you ask.
the next level is disassembling the client (e.g., reading machine language) and knowing exactly what it does in a specific scenario. since everyone has the same client you can predict how others will react and identify weaknesses. this can help you identify those critical values above, but also opens a host of other possibilities. this may also have been used to some extent in that trainer.
i really have no idea, danicus, this is all theory and generics.
As a Powerplayer you can't understand how much I can feel this matter. Just to make a practical example. I will talk about my Power, wich is a rather small one, with only 42 systems controlled, but you can easily see how much this IS a problem).
First some numbers:
- The total amount of theoretical merits for Archon Delaine systems to be completely fortified is 185,000 merits: a Power would no need such an amount to feel safe (especially us ), but let's say we want a "fortify-all-the-things" scenario
- A T9 or a Cutter can haul up to 750 tons in a single trip (I'll use 750 as a number to match the top tier allowance of 50 tons of Powerplay Commodity), yeah, some systems have only M landing pads but they are a minority, so we'll assume there's plenty of L landing pads
- A human player can easily run 4 hauls per hour, but for this example we'll assume that a bot can just do 3 of them (this is to consider distances too for example)
- a bot can haul 24/7, it feels no fatigue, no borethom, nothing at all
185,000 / 750 = 247 (rounded up of course)
We said that we can do 3 runs per hour so...
247 / 3 = 83 (always rounded up)
83 hours: 3 days and a half.
So: a single bot could easily cover the job of a community in 3 days and a half. How much would it cost to this bot to do so?
1,850,000,000 : a sum that's not a problem at all considering void opals.
So Paige, let's try and tell us again that bot and automation are not that much of an issue for the game because the vast majority of players don't use them. I've just showed to you how much a SINGLE bot could do. Just imagine how much damage could deal just a couple of them.
Imagine how much could do TEN bots: they could even prepare systems with MILIONS of merits, with a constant ratio during the 24 hours for seven days, as it happened many many times by the way. Because ten would be not such a terrible number for you developers. But for us, the players, even a single bot (with cheats of course to make it most efficient) is a tremendous problem. And your corporate answers are the worst kind of anwser a customer would like to see.
The answer you guys from FDev gave is the worst possible: you are basically asking your customers to trust you with a matter that, numbers in hand, you've never been able to even minimize, and what's even worse you are asking people to NOT talk about cheating and botting because more people could use them? Just to save what, your face in this matter that, finally, came public?
No, thank you.
Oh and dedicated to the "hardcore white knight fanboys" that are defending FDev no matter what in this matter: I'm as much as a fan as many others in here. I invested time as many other did in the game, but unlike the most I did it to organise communities and activities too, not because I like to show off or something, but just because that's the kind of gameplay I like and most importantly I like the game itself, but because of that I think that we can't tolerate this behaviour anymore: I honestly feel like we've been played for all these months, because either they can't do really nothing for this phenomenon and they can't tell us to save the apparences or they just don't consider it a priority because they have a different idea about the direction that Elite Dangerous should take as a game, and cheating is a matter just when there's competition, and competition is a MMORPG thing and I suspect that the developers have much more of a "cooperative single playerish" game in mind but, again, they just don't tell us because we'd probably just go playing something else.
So: cut it out with the corporate answers, we are asking for solid data to show us that you are doing something for real, not just when some guy decide to go out public to show how much a problem is cheating.
Oh and by the way: yeah, the guy was banned because he used cheats many times before.
But he was banned only when he went public. Not before, when he tested it.
Another proof that security in Elite sucks, it's only done when there's an active report by another player.
So private and solo botters/cheaters are not reported, and they can do whatever they want, ruining the game for everybody.
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Amazing how someone, anyone really, can type all those words and say literally nothing of merit. Or substance.
I fully expect FDev to ignore this until the damage is too great, and only implement the barest bones, most asinine of ideas and fixes to try and 'solve' the issue, when it gets to that point.
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Fdev.. please.. less corporate male cow poo.. Its utterly transparent as male cow poo and patronising to our intelligence.
I think they do understand, but simply do not want to say anything more concrete anyway. We asked for concrete info and numbers, they said they do not want to give it. That leaves either not responding or boilerplate responding. They tried both.
should be easy to test ...
Yeah the current cheat trainer yes, but if this is possible with ease I really don't wanna know what goes on under the hood. (Actually I do wanna know) The point being that I really don't want some insecure software on my computer because the exploits and impacts are certainly not limited to in-game assets and annoyances.To be honest, if I had to chose between 'base building + spacelegs' or 'cheat detection/prevention' I'd go for the former any day of the week. I am unhappy with cheats on general principle, but the actual impact on my gaming in ED has been absolutely zero. Worst case scenario is that support gives me my insurance back and I put the cheater on block. Annoying for sure, but it isn't the end of the world for me. I can imagine it is different for people who focus on the BGS (but there botting is a bigger issue than shield hacks and such), but for most people who just bumble about in their space ship cheating is 'potentially annoying'. And the overwhelming majority of players not on the forums don't even know there is an issue.
I do want FD to take action where possible (and frankly, I dont know what they can do, and neither can anyone else here given the limited info available) but there is a limit to how dramatic one can be.
Can you provide some proof for this certainty, and be explicit about what this other impact is?
Goose4291
Banned
No need to test. We just have to look back to the 1t transaction malarkey for verification.
Yeah, but please don't. This is a game, not war. The ends don't justify the means and may be different from what you hope for on top.
Being censorious takes little to no effort. Actually being proactive, and fixing a problem often times requires a great effort .
Tremendous difference between the two.
I always love how moaning whiners complain in public about how they are unable to complain in public. Whether it is about politics, gaming or whatever, it is always funny.
in practical terms i'm in the same boat. since i don't pvp and fly seldom outside solo i couldn't care less about these cheats.
the thing is, me being mostly in solo is 50% due to how awful the pvp implementation in elite is, which traces back to many of the causes that make these cheats a thing in the first place. for me this was already crisp clear with combat logging: the effect itself is barely consequential. what it means, not at all.
the other 50% is engineers which, funnily enough, several have compared to cheating, which it isn't ... at least not legally.
so, with this premise: yes, they should just apologize, publicly disqualify pvp, reclassify the game as the family game it is, maybe compensate players in some clever way and move on concentrating on keeping fleshing out the galaxy ... oh wait, they aren't doing that anyway.
i even see some poetic justice in all this, though i do feel sorry for all those who had hopes. yeah and who could resist a bit of drama! it gets lonely in solo ...
Just so we're 100% clear here.
I have removed posts that are off topic/trolling and flaming etc.
At no point have I or any of the other moderators been instructed to remove (censor) posts.
In fact in the many years I've been part of the moderating team I've never been asked to do anything like that.
I'd suggest not making comments that you've no proof of in the future.
Thanks.
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This entire topic is what obvious proof that you are allowed to snarkily bash FD...
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nice try, but it's your fault anyway.
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