Hacker forum and what I learned

Maolagin

M
Commander Danicus said:
This seems like you might have accessed a group that obtained the app, and not the authors. I applaud you for your digging - please keep going!
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I was inspired to go digging through the search engines too. If I've correctly sorted them out, the authors are quite competent game hackers and reverse engineering aficionados. Not clear if they even play the game much, as they seem to be in it mostly for the technical challenge and approval of their adoring users.

I would also note that as far as users go, it's mostly going to be script kiddie types posting on a publicly visible forum for game hacks. Obviously if organized groups and advanced PvPers want to use these tools there's nothing stopping them from downloading it and not bragging about it in public.
 

Bloodsign

Bloodsign
Vedmo said:
Did you actually see any images of the HUD improvements people are now claiming we've been lied to about? (Other than a picture of some sliders on a website)
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There's already a third party HUD color tool, does the alleged hack do anything differently from that?
 

Unknown Zombie

Unknown Zombie
Interstellar Overdrive said:
Yeah, except European privacy/copyright laws and DMCA and news articles. Bunch of things Google has to answer for :)

DMCA
This
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What exactly does that have to do with them "having to answer for" search results regarding cheat programs for a video game? That's what the discussion is about, not how they are expected to handle copyright claims or your personal info.
 

Bloodsign

Bloodsign
Maolagin said:
I was inspired to go digging through the search engines too. If I've correctly sorted them out, the authors are quite competent game hackers and reverse engineering aficionados. Not clear if they even play the game much, as they seem to be in it mostly for the technical challenge and approval of their adoring users.

I would also note that as far as users go, it's mostly going to be script kiddie types posting on a publicly visible forum for game hacks. Obviously if organized groups and advanced PvPers want to use these tools there's nothing stopping them from downloading it and not bragging about it in public.
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This sort of thing is pretty common. There are websites where gamers can petition for hacks and trainers, and then hackers will create those tools based on per-game demand. The end users are just chumps, the actual hackers are in it for the challenge and kudos and could care less about the game generally.
 

Bloodsign

Bloodsign
Anyways, a better solution than banning hackers on FDev's end would be a "kill-pill" solution: When a hacker is detected, they get put on a watchlist, and FDev surveys and verifies individually that the user is indeed cheating. From that point on, they get put on a "kill-list," which means whenever they play ED extra code gets run in the background whose express purpose is to overwork their PC to the point of actual meltdown and destruction.

I'm sure FDev has a disclaimer in the EULA saying, "we aren't responsible for any damage to your computer that using this software may cause, etc." ;)
 

Chaparral

Chaparral
Maolagin said:
I was inspired to go digging through the search engines too. If I've correctly sorted them out, the authors are quite competent game hackers and reverse engineering aficionados. Not clear if they even play the game much, as they seem to be in it mostly for the technical challenge and approval of their adoring users.

I would also note that as far as users go, it's mostly going to be script kiddie types posting on a publicly visible forum for game hacks. Obviously if organized groups and advanced PvPers want to use these tools there's nothing stopping them from downloading it and not bragging about it in public.
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Thank you for this. Makes me wonder about the appropriate response to these tools. Is it to ban the users, or use counter tools like Battle Eye, and possibly do central servers for popular instance locations...? It seems like a real mess.
 

rootsrat

Volunteer Moderator
rootsrat
Krash said:
It took me 10 seconds to find this user's forum of the Elite hacker tool that Ryan is raising the alarm about. Don't ask me to post a link to that forum here. I read a bunch of these posts, I'm up to January 2019, but here is the first one that really caught my eye:


Reading more of these posts, several things became obvious to me:
1. FDEV detects these trainers
2. Each new patch breaks them
3. Users are banned after 2 warnings
4. There are some users testing the limits to be "safe" without getting detected.
5. Comical requests for features like, "endless limpets" and "full pip everything?"
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Kudos for investigating this. In regards to "3. Users are banned after 2 warnings" - any mention what kind of ban? I know FDEV can issue a few (from what they were saying on a few live streams):

1) Ban to Solo
2) Shadow ban (you're in a special server ONLY with other shadowbanned people and with no ability to affect the BGS)
3) Temp game ban
4) Permanent game ban
 

DeathDingo

D
I don't believe Fdev has done anything to stop cheating/hacking/botting in this game. They need to be honest (for once) and tell us all what they are doing to punish cheaters and who has been caught and punished as well.

Otherwise I don't buy any of it!!!
 

znôrt

znôrt
Unknown Zombie said:
A program that modifies values saved in your computer's RAM isn't copyright infringement.
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depends. where law hasn't become agressive enough to prosecute plain reverse engineering it isn't rare for such cases to be made as copyright infringement. what jusrisdiction would hypothetically apply here ... i have no idea.

cheating in a game is of course no crime in any country/state i know of. unless you also show your genitals, or rip off people, or blaspheme or something :)

also, everyone on the internet has a lawyer, didn't you know? :D
 

Krash

Krash
rootsrat said:
Kudos for investigating this. In regards to "3. Users are banned after 2 warnings" - any mention what kind of ban? I know FDEV can issue a few (from what they were saying on a few live streams):

1) Ban to Solo
2) Shadow ban (you're in a special server ONLY with other shadowbanned people and with no ability to affect the BGS)
3) Temp game ban
4) Permanent game ban
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After further review, I think the worst that happens is a perma shadow ban.
 

Schmack

Schmack
Jaggid Edje said:
You are grossly over-generalizing. Once you are done playing a game normally, have exhausted all of the challenge and accomplishments you can out of it and are just plain bored with it, cheats, trainers, and whatnot can be fun to fool around with to extend the game's entertainment value for a little longer.

I was a huge fan of the original Privateer, way back in the ... i think 90's...and after a few hundred hours of playing it normally I started memory editing to modify ship parameters and got another hundred+ hours out of it. I'd have quit playing earlier if not for that additional gameplay that "cheating" opened up.

Yes, some gamers who cheat do so to bypass the challenge, and yes, for them they are cheating themselves...but it's over-generalization to say that is the case across the board.

That being said, in an online game where everything you do potentially impacts other players it is ethically wrong to use cheats and is against the ToS. And that's what this is about, whether it's "Fun" or not is beside the point.
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I did this with the cheat console on one of the CoD's campaigns. Bullet time was pretty cool, you could enter a building and shoot 4 or 5 guys before the 1st guy hit the ground. Like you said, after the campaign was completed multiple times... A bit like the developer or director mode on GTA V where you can shoot subgun grenades at police cars wearing a clown mask with insane jumping abilities.

But against other people who are trying to play using immersion and some sort of RW physics model? No.
 

Schmack

Schmack
znôrt said:
depends. where law hasn't become agressive enough to prosecute plain reverse engineering it isn't rare for such cases to be made as copyright infringement. what jusrisdiction would hypothetically apply here ... i have no idea.

cheating in a game is of course no crime in any country/state i know of. unless you also show your genitals, or rip off people, or blaspheme or something :)

also, everyone on the internet has a lawyer, didn't you know? :D
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Unless money is involved, then it is a crime.
 

Maolagin

M
J.States said:
This sort of thing is pretty common. There are websites where gamers can petition for hacks and trainers, and then hackers will create those tools based on per-game demand. The end users are just chumps, the actual hackers are in it for the challenge and kudos and could care less about the game generally.
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Yep, that's usually how it goes, at least with the hobbyist level hacking we're dealing with here. (Professional hackers are, of course, a different world entirely.)

Commander Danicus said:
Makes me wonder about the appropriate response to these tools. Is it to ban the users, or use counter tools like Battle Eye, and possibly do central servers for popular instance locations...?
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It seems pretty clear that FDev are doing both in tandem. Several people have already commented on what we know/infer/guess about the bans policy. But there are definitely also technical measures being used.

In particular, when I dug down to find earlier threads involving the developers of these hack tools, they discuss the evolving anti-tampering systems that FDev has added to the client over time, as well as their theories about what kinds of cheats the servers can detect. It sounds like FDev uses bespoke client-side measures, and are not licensing one of the existing anti-cheat systems. In my opinion that's totally reasonable, since the expensive licensed anti-cheat systems have also mostly been defeated by hackers, and are much more intrusive and performance-draining than what it seems FDev is doing. The cheat developers are more limited by server checks, as you can't avoid exchanging data with the server, and it sounds like FDev are policing for a variety of inconsistencies that would indicate cheat usage. So FDev is creating a moving target for them, at least. Apparently the switch to the 64-bit client was quite disruptive for them, which might explain why there was a lull in reports of cheating until recently.
 
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