Anti-Hack Idea

[EnEsCe]

Soldat should get an Anti-hack system like VAC2, its the greatest Anti-hack system ever.

And also costs a  **** load to have it licensed to your game (PunkBuster etc)

Its worth the cost if it gets rid loads of hackers.  How much does it cost?

I emailed the PunkBuster mob afew days ago asking for a quote, yet to get a reply though.

[Cube]

don't really believe that hacks start modifying Soldat's files. Well, to be honest, I know nothing about hacks and how they work, so someone enlighten me if I am wrong.

Very few hacks modify the Soldat executable. Most of them are just external programs that modifies the memory values. But nevertheless, a size check wouldn't be too hard to add in.

and mods? they sometimes have a different size then the orginal files, or are you talking only about the soldat.exe file?

[FliesLikeABrick]

I like the idea, but I think Soldat should also search for known hack symptoms, as in a change of file size in Soldat files.

I don't really believe that hacks start modifying Soldat's files. Well, to be honest, I know nothing about hacks and how they work, so someone enlighten me if I am wrong.

Another thing would be global banned IP list. Some people can change their IP's so that would not work very well. There is also another way of identifying a client tho, like machines MAC address or for example, windows serial-key.

MAC addresses can only be seen by the local network, they aren't seen by any computer beyond the gateway (router).

[GofT]

i didnt bother to read all the posts, since there wore too many for my reading skills
 But, when you make a anti-hack program this way, don't you think that people will do anything, again, to make hacks work
maybe they make the programs/trainers/hacks automaticly change the process name
there will and allready are hacking tutorials

[Clawbug]

i didnt bother to read all the posts, since there wore too many for my reading skills
 But, when you make a anti-hack program this way, don't you think that people will do anything, again, to make hacks work
maybe they make the programs/trainers/hacks automaticly change the process name
there will and allready are hacking tutorials

anti-hack programs does not only see if there is a hack running. It scans memory values. Like, lets say that I hack with unlimited jets. The program looks after my jet value, if it sees that I am currently using jets, and the value of amout of jet fuel does not change, it detects that I am hacking. It tells server to ban me, and then I am banned and busted.

[nub]

As far as can see, they only scan memory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punkbuster#Published_features
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Anti-Cheat#Delayed_bans.2C_criticism_.26_rationale
http://battleye.com/info.html

But I think that it's ok as it is right now on the server side, detecting suspicious behaviour instead of scanning ram on the client side. A hacker could use Polymorphism to protect his cheat from being detected:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Anti-Cheat#Polymorphism
if you just scan memory. The server could, for example, detect if you have infinite ammo, by looking at how many rounds you already shot without reloading or switching weapons. Or get your average speed to see if you are speedcheating (which it already does, if I got that right).

There should be a moddable anti-cheat engine, so that many people could write anti-cheat software. It needs of course much computing time on the server side. But everything can be optimized =) You could even already use the scripting engine to write anti cheat code. And there even already exists an anti cheat script against the spectator killing cheat.

[1221995]

smart.!.!

[wingless]

Well, what if people doesn't use the anti-hack client and bypass it? And there's no difference between banning someone from the server or banning through the program. Anyone could change his IP, delete or modify some files in the computer (if necessary) and continue playing.

Imo, we won't be able to make such program unless we develop another dedicated server. But then there would be 2 kinds of servers (wth?) ...

But i think there's a better way to do it (more harder aswell)
Steps:
1- You setup the client to play the game, cuz the server won't let you play without it.
2- The client gets your hard disk serial number (yes it can be get and it's too hard to change, it's also unique)
3- The client decrypts the serial number (because we don't want anyone to fool the system)
4- It sends the crypted value to the server.
5- The server decrypts it and looks if it's a valid number.
6- If you cheat, the server bans your serial number so you can't play anymore on these servers.

What we need is a good programmer and a good cryptographer.. ;p
Or we can just sit and wait for the next Soldat version ^^

[DePhille]

Hi,

Well I started a small program a few years ago basd on this idea. The problem was that when you change the .exe's name, the client won't detect the hack anymore. The second thing I've done is open up every running process and read the first X-Kbytes of the .exe file, if that corresponds to a hack entry then close soldat, close the program and remove the .exe.
Unfortunately, this won't work if the hack-prgoram is updated or not in 'the list'.
Also, you cannot really scan the memory for suspicious changes caused by hacks, it does need alot of computing power to do that. Also, there are always exceptions that will be considered as 'hacjking' and won't actually be hacking, Lag being one of them. If a packet gets lost, or is received alot later than the rest of the pckages some memory values change like they would when using a hack. Soldat then checks the values and compares them to the previous packages.

To make it simple; the only safe anti-cheat method can only be built in the source-code of Soldat. Sinde there are so many exceptions, the only way to get close to that is by having alot of people working on the source-code (like open-source projects).

It's not very easy to create a good anti-hack system, the best thing I think that can be done is some clever modifications in the sourcecode. Also, changing the memory addresses of specific values with every new Soldat version is a very good idea. This way hackers need to develop a program for every new Soldat version that comes out. It will not stop hacking but it sure will discourage the programmers.

I hope this post was useful to someone

Grtz, DePhille

[FliesLikeABrick]

no more posts about that other stuff you guys.  I'll ban whoever posts about it again.  I'm taking care of whatever needs to be taken care of

(I just deleted 4 posts, for anyone who doesn't know, don't worry)

[Grozzy]

What if, when you run soldat, soldat scans running all running programs, and if it detects any program with, a hack name or something, it kills the process 

Or does it break the privacy rule or something ?

[DePhille]

That's exactly the program I tried to make.
The only diffrence was that it scanned for running processes every x minutes (I think it was 5) instead of only scanning when soldat is opened.
It opened all running exe's and read the first X KBytes and compared it with a database. If the program found a proces with a bad name or with the first X KBytes corresponding to an entry in the database, it would kill the proces, kill soldat.exe and add the ip to an "international ban list". unfortunately, I never found anyone who was willing to keep up the hack database.
Keeping up that database requires alot of work, if a hacker modifies his program just a little bit (For example, instead of the text "Activate hack" change the button text to "Start hack") the anti-hack program wouldn't recognize the hack anymore and would require a new entry in the database.

The second reason why I didn't release it was because I only know VB6.0, which only runs on windows.
Maybe someone with C++ knowledge can take over this idea?

Anyway, having alot of updates on Soldat is way more effective and less time-consuming than running such a project. Also, with the new anti-hack system coming I don't think we'll need another anti-hack system specially developed for Soldat.

Grtz, DePhille

[PiMPUS1337]

Or you could just use the good ol' votekick. 

[Mangled*]

-.-

Well apparently there are hacks that prevent votekicking..

There are also arrogant players who don't know how to press F12.

Ideally you want something that prevents certain other applications from being run at the same time as soldat. But of course we don't want to restrict the use of all other applications (i.e internet browsers, irc clients, msn, aim etc..) that'd be quite extreme.

Perhaps something that is able to recognise certain applications that are 'allowed' to run with soldat, which closes all other applications on starting up soldat, and doesn't allow any other application to be started without terminating soldat.

[Grozzy]

What about, soldat targets every program (scanning every running program), and searches for program that targets soldat.

Soldat > finds programs targeting soldat > kills the process

 

[Mangled*]

That's more difficult than it sounds. I think...

[DePhille]

Yeah, you can't just catch all the actions a program is doing without severely slowing down performance. You can however implement such a thing in Soldat itself, that'd work well and I think that's exactly how our new anti-cheat engine will be working. However, I haven't had the time yet to find out what this new anti-cheat system will be doing exactly.

Grtz, DePhille

[PiMPUS1337]

-.-

Well apparently there are hacks that prevent votekicking..

There are also arrogant players who don't know how to press F12.

Ideally you want something that prevents certain other applications from being run at the same time as soldat. But of course we don't want to restrict the use of all other applications (i.e internet browsers, irc clients, msn, aim etc..) that'd be quite extreme.

Perhaps something that is able to recognise certain applications that are 'allowed' to run with soldat, which closes all other applications on starting up soldat, and doesn't allow any other application to be started without terminating soldat.

As far as I know there are no hacks that prevent votekicking.

[Mangled*]

I don't know if there are or aren't... Alot of people seem to think there are.

Personally I've never searched for or come across any.. so I wouldn't know. Only the hackers know for sure

[DePhille]

There were (or are, I don't know) hacks that tried to initiate a votekick against other players every second. This way other players didn't have the chance to start a votekick themselves.
I don't know if there are such hacks for the current version, there probably are, but there were such hacks for 1.3 and a few earlier versions.

Grtz, DePhille