Dealing with Hackers

[Ratas]

Because once FDEV swings the banhammer most people will think twice before burning another 50 EUR?

I think major problem is, there is currently no reliable system to catch the hackers. So no banhammer either. I'd expect the cracked version to only run offline, but considering whole p2p issue, wouldn't actually be that surprised if it could connect online too.
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Elite: PC gaming at it's best and worst same time.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

Another reason why I quit the game until they have time to get this out of beta. Don't even risk going online you'll only get grief.

 

[Briarée]

As I understand it, they are running in Solo at the moment.

apaprently onlight the caught one, there are at least a few able to run online since there aer some player complaining about very weird behaviour, i've myself noticed 6 of them since early january, 2 being hacker 100% the other 4 could be bugs either on my side or theirs as well as hacks so can't be 100% sure for them.

just today a player got his ASP 2-shot by a pulse laser sidewinder, 1 shot shield, 1 shot hull..... i linked the thread earlier

 

[babelfisch]

I think major problem is, there is currently no reliable system to catch the hackers. So no banhammer either. I'd expect the cracked version to only run offline, but considering whole p2p issue, wouldn't actually be that surprised if it could connect online too.
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Elite: PC gaming at it's best and worst same time.

We dont know that. FDEV are adding telemetry all the time.

On pirating, the game is not p2p only, you still need a connection to the servers to play the game. It might be that you could setup your own server and mess with localhost, but in this case you would be offline with a very limited galaxy. So no problem for me.

 

[OCD]

ED has relatively few hackers/exploiters, mainly because the game isn't predominantly a rapid fire first-person-shooter and doesn't particularly appeal to the short-attention-span anti-social element. But ED hackers definitely exist and if you're unlucky enough to get destroyed by one it will seem to you the problem is severe.

Currently the only known hacks require the hacker to be in the same system at the same time as you, in the same instance, hence the element of chance. The current hacking attempts mostly (i) increase the ammo or shields of the hacker and/or (ii) increase the damage dealt by their weapons (there are others, but these are the griefers choice).

(1) There is no point screaming "hacker" with no evidence of any kind - these reports are so unreliable that even though *your* claim is certain to be 100% genuine it is buried in the noise of a hundred other claims with maybe an 80% error rate (if FPS claims are anything to go by).

(2) The best response is to report the player via the game menu, backed up with a video recording, so *before* you get nailed by a hacker install either ShadowPlay (for Nvidia) or Raptr (for AMD). Both of these products provide a 'loop' video recording of your past 5 mins (say) gameplay, which you can save with a hotkey *after* you've decided something is worth recording. A 5 min buffer will require something like 2GB of storage, and the recording can cost you 10% of your framerate.

To get the hacker CMDR info in the video stream I'm sure there are a few key-presses you should quickly do as soon as you think you are in the presence of a hacker, so maybe someone else can comment, e.g. bring up the contacts or comms panel. There's an issue in ED that 'death' kicks you out of any engagement with the game so you might not even know who killed you, with what weapon. If we get an API this would be an obvious add-on (your chat would scroll "Attacker: CMDR Bambam, Pulse lasers")

(* these comments are mainly based on experience gained during the development and use of an admin tool for the Battlefield series over many years, which has been significantly used in detecting and dealing with hackers in that game - the ED hackers are currently amateur in comparison *)

FDEV to sign a contract with the Thargoids to deal with them ...
watch this [witch] space

 

[Phoenix]

If it's so widespread, how come I, nor a lot of other people have not ever run into a hacker?

I mean, since it's so widespread as you say, surely they would be everywhere? And these forums would be littered with people complaining about them?

Sorry to say, but I believe that you're the one being naive here. Just because you may have run into a cheater or two (again, without valid video evidence, it's your word to take), it doesn't mean it's widespread.

Widespread would mean that they would be everywhere, and a lot of people would be running into them.

But I'm not arguing further. It's like trying to talk logic to a brick wall.
People can shout hackusations all they want, but those that do, I have only ever seen one video of actual suspected cheating. Which in itself could have been explained as a network issue.

I played COD4 at an amateur-pro level, and although being way far off from being awesome at the game, I was better than the average bear. The amount of hackusations that were thrown at me, even with "video evidence" sent to ESL admins, was just hilarious, because I knew that I wasn't cheating. In fact, I took it as a compliment.

I know it's different with a game like this, but the concept is the same. It's an online game, and something that can't be explained by the person on the receiving end, that person will first shout hacks, than try and think of a logical explanation before doing so.

Anyway, I'll carry on enjoying the game as it is. I've not met a cheater in the game yet, and I doubt I will. Again, not saying they are not there, just that it's a very low chance of actually coming across one.

I'll keep an eye for further hackusation reports, and watch video proof... if it's ever provided.

Let's put it this way: There are definetly hackers around. I saw that thread in the hacker forum too, and all is plausible.
That does not give a hint on how wide spread these hacks are indeed or how many people are using these hacks. They seem to be pretty sophisticated too, so that would reduce the amount of people actively abusing them to tech-savvy guys.

Of course, a lot of odd behaviour in the game can be explained with bugs, too.

However, in both cases a video of the event and a detailed ticket with description when what happened helps. It allows FD to either detect (and hopefully fix) a bug or to detect (and hopefully ban) a hacker.

So, no matter if its a bug or a hack, the counter-measures are the same. Ticket it, with as much of detailed information as you can provide. It only helps making the game better. In either way.

 

[shadragon]

I use raptr, works fine on my single monitor setup.
As in the OP, i find the quickest way to get your attacker info shown, is to a target nearest hostile. (if he is red) otherwise select next target. i have these bound to my joystick.

I use FRAPS. I got the paid version which was something like $8. I record from launch to touchdown in 1080 res. I use TEncoder (Free) to change the vid format into something Windows Movie Maker can recognize then use that program to edit into various vids I post online.

Last weekend I had 288 GB of vids from Sat and Sun alone so I do need to clean them up on occasion. However, it is an excellent way to record everything that happens especially for tech support tickets.

 

[shadragon]

I don't know but I know that people that is hacking the game are ED active players ( play the game, read forums, read news letters, read patch notes,etc), just google it.

I went and did a simple Google search. Within ten minutes I found fifteen user accounts on hack forums named identically to accounts on this forum. Two of them even had an identical signature block.

Just saying, it would not be hard to identify and observe those folks and see how they operate.

BTW - Calling them hackers is a royal over-compliment. Script kiddies is giving them more credit than they deserve as well.

 

[Herik]

That's because there is so much cheating in every online game, left, right, and center.

Then you get the cheaters (I'm not accusing anyone here of cheating) coming onto the forums to say anything to make people think there's no cheating...."you're just bad"..."it's a game flaw"..."you can't prove it"...and on and on.

I'll wait to see how FD reacts to the cheaters, but the developers in other games largely ignore it. Punkbuster? Laughable. Player reporting? Goes into black hole.

The only way to stop it is for devs to go after the top cheat sites by legal means. And that won't happen because it's not profitable for them to do so.

What we have is an endemic cheat problem with online gamers. It's so bad, people will show up to defend cheaters saying "they're not hurting anyone" or "why do you care" or "it's just a game", etc, etc. It's sickening.

For me, cheating is the primary reason I avoid Open. If some dude is a better pilot, or catches me with my pants down refueling at a star, so be it. But when he can download crap to take away fairness, that's when I'm out.

edit* BTW, the way to deal with hackers is to play Solo and pray they don't muck up the economy.

THIS! Yes a person in 'Open' soon knows when they're up against hackers; and they're response will be to go to Solo. Hackers/Cheaters will destroy 'Open'; and would destroy the whole game if they could 'muck' up the economy. All this kind of activity fits rather snugly into my understanding of FD keeping its fingers in the 'background simulation'. And YES they should...

 

[Oddity]

there is however a very EASY and low cost solution which would work with the way this game is currently implemented:
player side validation, composed of 2 components:
<snip>
remember there is no abuse since submission is automated, the player might not even have noticed he fought a hacker, the client did however.

a) firewalling out other players while keeping the server uplink defeats this way. Those scripts are around and pretty trivial.
b) ... "submission is automated": Yep, client-sided. Just like eg the routine "my ship takes x damage", which those skript-kiddies disable. Guess what happens with this client-sided report function. It'll eg. report the other player. The vulnerability to abuse pretty much outrules this. But hey, the same is true for client-side sim + p2p in semi-public gaming anyway.

I went and did a simple Google search. Within ten minutes I found fifteen user accounts on hack forums named identically to accounts on this forum. Two of them even had an identical signature block.
Just saying, it would not be hard to identify and observe those folks and see how they operate.

Excuse me while I create an account named 'shadragon' on the unnamed forum and copy-paste your sig... No, that doesn't prove much, unless perhaps you add IP-tracking and hope some1 simultaneously uses the client and that forum, and even then is just that pinned, forum usage. Much expense, spying on your customers, little gain.

BTW - Calling them hackers is a royal over-compliment. Script kiddies is giving them more credit than they deserve as well.

Amen, hacker is a compliment, cracker denotes the smelly variant, the majority just runs scripts.

 

[Briarée]

a) firewalling out other players while keeping the server uplink defeats this way. Those scripts are around and pretty trivial.
b) ... "submission is automated": Yep, client-sided. Just like eg the routine "my ship takes x damage", which those skript-kiddies disable. Guess what happens with this client-sided report function. It'll eg. report the other player. The vulnerability to abuse pretty much outrules this. But hey, the same is true for client-side sim + p2p in semi-public gaming anyway.

read the whole proposal i made, and think about the big picture

yes, it would be possible for hacker to forge report and send false, however, the idea is that one player cannot report another specific player more than once within a specific timeframe (say a week).

so should you encounter such a player, you get one "false" report.

however, how many report will HE have? 10 or 20 time more, since he'll get reported by EVERY legit player he'll fight

what are the odds that YOU, being legit, encounter enough cheaters to reach the threshold? and that is assuming they ALL and automatically send forged report


if on average, a player has 200 fight a week and say 5% of the players hacks.

assuming all cheaters also forge, a legit player will generate around 10 false report, while a hacker will generate 200 (since hack vs hacks generate a report too, albeit being false)

rather easy to filter......

and before you add anything else, this method as already been used with a great success, hence why i suggest it.....

the whole thing is to put the correct threshold, starting obviously rather high, then slowly lowering it. as less hack occurs

this drastically reduce the # of cheaters this method can detect, with a minimal implementation in code, and a minimal hardware requirement

also fire-walling the other player doesn't change the fact that said player will either send a report for abnormality, or both player will cease to see each other, giving the expected result: the hack is useless since cannot be used against another player, or leads to a report.

main goal is to get the hacks out, this doesn't means banning the cheaters, this also works if the hack is made useless, they will just stop using them

 

[Abil Midena]

Let's put it this way: There are definetly hackers around. .... Ticket it, with as much of detailed information as you can provide. It only helps making the game better. In either way.

Also @ Shadragon: Ticket it? Seriously? What do you suppose the ratio is for the "ticket to FD person reading them"?

Yeah, ticket it. Some time in 2017 you may see a reply. That's not a dig on FD really. They only have so many people to read the thousands of tickets.

 

[NewYears1978]

In any online game, you will get hackusations, left, right and center.

A recent one was for the community goal. Someone saw that there was an impossible amount of goods being handed in for a community goal by 2 players. Immediately hackusations and the likes were being thrown around.

I mentioned that it could well be just a display bug, but got "told off" (for lack of better words) because it seems that these people want there to be hackers.

Then in a recent thread, someone reported the same issue, but it was his amount that was reported incorrectly, not someone elses. Proving that it was indeed a display bug.

What tends to happen here is that people will explain the unexplainable by throwing out these hackusations.
Getting 1-shotted back in beta... people shouted hacks. Just turned out that missiles were incredibly OP.

There can always be a logical explanation for something that doesn't make sense. And instead of immediately pointing fingers and assuming foul play, people should start looking at these logical explanations before raging on the forums about cheaters.

I don't think any of us "Want" there to be hackers..but there are. Google it, you can find some very disturbing and specific information...some websites even directly explain how to use programs like CheatEngine and how to circumvent the ridiculous WatchDog and P2P methods of protection ED uses.

People who've gotten immediately destroyed in 1 second by fire..I'm pretty sure you are right that there is a logical explanation..which is, hackers.

 

[Spacey25]

Thing is as the game grows so will the hack population. Fast growing game communities are hack magnets. W will eventually need a second log in password to help stop these criminals from having a chance to steal our accounts. FD should start thinking about these things before it gets to that point.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I have no idea what the prevalence is, just hope it doesnt turn into DayZ. Permadeath+headshot from 10km is not that much fun.

 

[Sotapeikko]

Even one hacker can aggravate a lot of people in a busy spot which doesn't make estimating actual numbers any easier without actual data.

 

[Ancipital]

I use FRAPS. I got the paid version which was something like $8. I record from launch to touchdown in 1080 res. I use TEncoder (Free) to change the vid format into something Windows Movie Maker can recognize then use that program to edit into various vids I post online.

Last weekend I had 288 GB of vids from Sat and Sun alone so I do need to clean them up on occasion. However, it is an excellent way to record everything that happens especially for tech support tickets.

If you're using an SSD, constantly streaming video to disk isn't a great idea. Better and more efficient to use a program that encodes h.264 to a ring buffer in memory at a sensible datarate, and dumps it to disk on demand, giving you retrospective recording.

I went and did a simple Google search. Within ten minutes I found fifteen user accounts on hack forums named identically to accounts on this forum. Two of them even had an identical signature block.

Just saying, it would not be hard to identify and observe those folks and see how they operate.

Yes, and if people were stupid enough to pay lots of heed to that, it would be a really easy way to grief people. I could register as you, use your signature block. It'd be even easier than the famous Punkbuster memory scan/comms exploit for harming innocents.

 

[DaveB]

read the whole proposal i made, and think about the big picture

yes, it would be possible for hacker to forge report and send false, however, the idea is that one player cannot report another specific player more than once within a specific timeframe (say a week).

so should you encounter such a player, you get one "false" report.

however, how many report will HE have? 10 or 20 time more, since he'll get reported by EVERY legit player he'll fight

what are the odds that YOU, being legit, encounter enough cheaters to reach the threshold? and that is assuming they ALL and automatically send forged report


if on average, a player has 200 fight a week and say 5% of the players hacks.

assuming all cheaters also forge, a legit player will generate around 10 false report, while a hacker will generate 200 (since hack vs hacks generate a report too, albeit being false)

rather easy to filter......

and before you add anything else, this method as already been used with a great success, hence why i suggest it.....

the whole thing is to put the correct threshold, starting obviously rather high, then slowly lowering it. as less hack occurs

this drastically reduce the # of cheaters this method can detect, with a minimal implementation in code, and a minimal hardware requirement

also fire-walling the other player doesn't change the fact that said player will either send a report for abnormality, or both player will cease to see each other, giving the expected result: the hack is useless since cannot be used against another player, or leads to a report.

main goal is to get the hacks out, this doesn't means banning the cheaters, this also works if the hack is made useless, they will just stop using them

I'm not going to reprise everything said on the other thread, but, to add to your post...

The architecture of ED as currently designed CANNOT be made as secure as a client/server architecture can, there will always be ways to cheat. Hence the aim is not getting the hacks out but making certain that a persistent cheater is eventually caught, and that this can happen automatically, without needing FD staff to be constantly scrutinizing logs. The goal very much is to ban the cheaters. You don't even need a full combat log, just a mechanism where losing contact with another client generates a simple report of anomalous behavior observed during your session with them, whether that's "none" or a list like "took less damage from hits than should, inflicted more damage per hit than weapons capable of,..." and they will be generating a similar report for your client in their telemetry. (for rigor in the analysis the "no bad behavior" reports are as essential as the reports of clients behaving badly)

This method can be used to identify ANY cheat that changes how one player interacts with another, it won't be immediate because it will take time for a statistical anomaly on a single account to become significant enough to warrant a ban but eventually there is no escape from detection for anyone using cheats in open or group play unless they only ever play in a group containing only cheaters, reporting each others clients as behaving just fine. Eventually, they will cross the line and show up on the naughty list - it's a matter of solid math with hard numbers and can be completely automated. Any wet-behind-the-ears freshly-graduated statistician could do it, as could any scientist.

What this will NOT detect, however, is what most of the cheaters are doing at the moment. They are cheating in solo mode - farming credits by leaving a ship with infinite shields and laser turrets with infinite energy and boosted damage in a conflict zone and going afk, with another cheat in place to logoffski instead of exploding if something goes wrong. Then they come back hours later to fly off and cash in millions in combat bonds.

Handling the solo mode stuff is harder but the impact of it is much lower than where it directly has an effect on another player. Making sure that a player cheating in PvP is ALWAYS caught, eventually, would still be a huge plus.

 

[Keevan Vass]

(Removed as I do not agree with the forum terms and bully mods, I can take my contributions elsewhere thank you.)