Cheating in Elite Dangerous

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Out of curiosity, just how many players do we think are cheating in this game? I find it odd that most people interested in a game like ED would then forfeit their opportunity to play by using cheats. It's not like we're talking about Fortnite here.
I don't have figures for ED, but an estimation from an article of gaming magazine. According to that you could expect at least one hacker per 64 player server in Battlefield 4. And that is despite the game using an anti-cheat system.
You draw your line in the sand, I'll draw mine. Habitually instance flipping to gain favourable odds is no different to the 5-for-1 engineering exploit which was punished by removing the affected assets, or mission board flipping, which was closed. It is another loophole that needs to be fixed.
There is no subjectiveness to that. FDev makes the rules. "Re-logging" is working as intended, while gaining a G5 roll for G1 mats was not.
In a p2p environment, each client maintains its own state and they somehow synch it together, but you have no control over any client nor what they do with their respective routers, (e.g. are they blocking each other?). from a security perspective this is a nightmare.
FDev could add random server checks for certain values. To not add any delay to the p2p system, they could use the data to find inconsistencies and take actions "some time" later.
 
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I don't have figures for ED, but an estimation from an article of gaming magazine. According to that you could expect at least one hacker per 64 player server in Battlefield 4. And that is despite the game using an anti-cheat system.
I remember those "good ol' days" of encountering cheaters in online PC games (back then it was COD and UT). It was very frustrating, and that was just playing quick "it really doesn't matter" matches. I can imagine how frustrating it is to encounter cheaters in a game like Elite, where losing is to lose a real investment in the game (be it rebuy credits, BGS work, etc).

I myself never understood the desire to cheat. I like games to be challenging, not "easy mode". I purposefully avoid building G5 prismatic "god-ships" in Elite (which is not technically cheating) because I want to keep the challenge. On the other hand, I admit I wish I could automate some of the grindy aspects of the game. If I were on PC, I'd be tempted to build an exploration script that would fly my ship and scan systems, letting me know if it actually finds something interesting... But I'm not on PC, so nobody needs to worry about me!
 
I remember those "good ol' days" of encountering cheaters in online PC games (back then it was COD and UT). It was very frustrating, and that was just playing quick "it really doesn't matter" matches. I can imagine how frustrating it is to encounter cheaters in a game like Elite, where losing is to lose a real investment in the game (be it rebuy credits, BGS work, etc).

I myself never understood the desire to cheat. I like games to be challenging, not "easy mode". I purposefully avoid building G5 prismatic "god-ships" in Elite (which is not technically cheating) because I want to keep the challenge. On the other hand, I admit I wish I could automate some of the grindy aspects of the game. If I were on PC, I'd be tempted to build an exploration script that would fly my ship and scan systems, letting me know if it actually finds something interesting... But I'm not on PC, so nobody needs to worry about me!
There's been plenty of hacks on consoles and consoles are more pc like than ever!
 
in a p2p environment, each client maintains its own state and they somehow synch it together, but you have no control over any client nor what they do with their respective routers, (e.g. are they blocking each other?). from a security perspective this is a nightmare.
True, but because a lot of information is saved on FDev servers, some mitigation code could be added:
A ship jumps 500ly? This is odd, let's investigate.
A ship jumps 100 ly but didn't use a neutron star of jumponium? Let's investigate.
Have Fdev server send the ship loadout to each computer on the instance and have the target and attacker calculate the damage / shield / etc values. They don't match? Let's investigate.

Bulletproof? No. But could be used to find out some.
 
FDev could add random server checks for certain values. To not add any delay to the p2p system, they could use the data to find inconsistencies and take actions "some time" later.

Random (or targeted based on intel from customers) spot checks is the way to go yes.

Reading through this thread I'm seeing an awful lot of theorycrafting & very little actual supporting evidence. Lots of things could be done (to hack or cheat the game in a way that adversely affects other players), lots of things that can & probably should be anticipated but how much does it actually happen?

Certainly I can understand that in PvP it can be a problem, but as the recent 3 of 7 Deciat video showed there can be false positives, or two sides to a story at least. It is important that this stuff is dealt with when it is identified, but it is also important not to get wound up in the paranoia of what actions might be the result of cheating.
 
Random (or targeted based on intel from customers) spot checks is the way to go yes.

Reading through this thread I'm seeing an awful lot of theorycrafting & very little actual supporting evidence. Lots of things could be done (to hack or cheat the game in a way that adversely affects other players), lots of things that can & probably should be anticipated but how much does it actually happen?

Certainly I can understand that in PvP it can be a problem, but as the recent 3 of 7 Deciat video showed there can be false positives, or two sides to a story at least. It is important that this stuff is dealt with when it is identified, but it is also important not to get wound up in the paranoia of what actions might be the result of cheating.
I believe they are actually looking for certain patterns in your memory and that's how the last hack has been identified.
 
What can frontier do about non-detectable hacks? Have they made a statement regarding it yet? Slightly worried about the future of this problem.
The question is if non-detectable cheats exist. Frontier is probably currently checking if they can detect them. There is no reason to tell the hackers about it.
 
Random (or targeted based on intel from customers) spot checks is the way to go yes.

Reading through this thread I'm seeing an awful lot of theorycrafting & very little actual supporting evidence. Lots of things could be done (to hack or cheat the game in a way that adversely affects other players), lots of things that can & probably should be anticipated but how much does it actually happen?

Certainly I can understand that in PvP it can be a problem, but as the recent 3 of 7 Deciat video showed there can be false positives, or two sides to a story at least. It is important that this stuff is dealt with when it is identified, but it is also important not to get wound up in the paranoia of what actions might be the result of cheating.
My worry is every unexplainable encounter will be chalked up to "hackerz!!1!". I had a session with a FDL last week, around Cleve Hub, that seemed strange to me. I got his shields down to 1 ring and then it just stayed there. After 3 separate frag blasts (950dps) in less than a minute his shields seemed to be stuck there. Without knowing anything else (SCB for example) I might be tempted to start throwing accusations. I know there are other explanations, so I keep quiet.
 
Reading some of these (rather technical) comments it would seem that finding people using these cheats is not impossible, although time and money will be needed.

In the meantime, why can’t fdev do a quick search through YouTube and find the people obviously using these programs?
Several videos are available showing the commanders actively using these trainers. Some even have links to the program itself.

Permanently banning and deleting these accounts and adding a statement to the comments section (posting as Frontier) stating that it has been done would be starting the ball rolling on the deterrent.

One pennyworth of example is worth a pound of punishment.
 
Reports from users can potentially be helpful in that they help the developers learn about new exploits circulating, but for exactly this reason cheat detection has to rely on automated data collection. To flesh out an example suggested above: when one player's ship fires on another, the clients should exchange not just the fact that it happened, but the variables behind their respective states. Then each client computes separately whether the shot landed and for how much damage. If they disagree, that might be flagged for investigation, and both clients forward some telemetry to the central servers.

The idea to all that is that it's reasonably easy to locate some values in memory and alter them, but it is exponentially harder to convincingly fake a whole sequence of events leading to the wrong outcome. For an exploit to be useful, it eventually has to do something inconsistent with the game reality, and if each client has to show it's work, that is very hard to hide.
 
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