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Cheating in Multiplayer Games
millertime3250 writes "Tom's Hardware is running an interesting article on cheating in multiplayer games. In an issues that has gained increasing notority, it is a great read for those Counter-Strike players and others alike. It defines the different types of cheats like Client Hook, OpenGL Hack, and Hard-Coded Hack, and cheating's effect on gaming."
I think common cheats should have a forum where they are documented. That way, if someone at a LAN party gets noticed using them, they can be kicked out.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
I'm surprised that the article didn't mention hlguard, also developed by united admins. It runs on all sorts of hl mods and is likely one of the most used anti cheat tools available. In case you are not familiar with it, it contains tools to check for aimbotting, common cheat cvars, and manual ogc detection. If you run any type of hl server (and it's interesting they don't mention the hundreds of other hl mods) hlguard is definitely a server side addon you should look in to.
http://www.unitedadmins.com/hlguard.php
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Somebody I know from school is constantly being accused of using aimbot and wallhack, and booted. He doesn't, he just has ridiculously good reflexes (which also transfer well to real, physical sports) and a great pair of surround-sound headphones. He's a world-class player, but he can't play on public servers.
I heard that, but at the same time I actually kind of relish trying to kill cheaters. There's nothing more satisfying than finally wasting some little turd with an aimbot. Working against impossible odds sharpens one's skills, I think, because sometimes after an hour of playing against obvious cheaters, I log onto a new server full of decent players and rule (or at least don't suck too badly).
Cheaters don't want competition. That's why they're cheating.
Yeah, you would probably see a little traffic, but the primary drive for cheaters is to beat the other guy (and usually rub it in their face.) That doesn't work on a level playing field. Remember, those people who cheat are mostly (1) those who are hell-bent to run the fun of the legit players, and (2) those who want to win the game at any cost. This, unfortunately, caters to neither.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
...well, assuming I were a cheater. Which I'm not. Really. But anyway...
I'm a big fan of the cheat which allows you to tweak its effect. There's an example given of a BF:1942 cheat which will double your fire rate and driving speed. This suggests something interesting; the incremental cheat. Just use the cheat to up your fire rate and driving speed by 5% to start with. If no one responds; up it a bit more, and more, until someone starts calling you a cheater. Then you can turn it back down and then tell them that they're making false accusations, whilst still having perhaps a 20% advantage over other players.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Not all client hooks are cheat programs though. There are a few good examples of non-cheat hooks like sparky's utils for Team Fortress Classic.
Also, opengl wrappers/hooks can do more than just remove walls. They generally can also sniff the memory structures from the game client and do most of the stuff client hooks can do as well, whereas the article seems to think they can only remove walls.
bananas like monkeys.
There was a guy who dominated the entire Purdue CS scene until he came to a PUGG (shameless plug, there ya go andy) party and everyone saw his secret: a touch screen. I don't think that's cheating, just lame.
The only cheat I use involes being able to empty an entire clip and not hit a thing.
Thus, my favourite FPS becomes Team Fortress, Yay HWG.
Seriously though, how much satisfaction can you get out of killing someone with an 'aimbot' and a wallhack. Personally i'm extatic (too lazy to check spelling, prob spelled wrong) when, in Couterstrike i have 1 kills and 12 deaths because hey, with pure luck i just killed the top player on the other team. Top that Mr. Cheat!
An interesting point and something I myself have been worried about for quite some time. More frightening to me than a cheating person (usually a lamer using someone else's scripts with poor or little understanding of how they actually work), is the eventuality of an admin who decides to use a server maliciously. It seems to me that with the power server admins have over the clients in some games, it would be feasible to use a server to distribute a virus, etc.
Imagine how many unique gamers go to a well-populated game server everyday...
For Netrek, there used to be (dunno if there still are -- I haven't played for years, although I think I still have my .netrekrc somewhere...) at least one or two servers which had turned off RSA authentication. This way, you could use any Netrek client to connect, not just one of the precompiled binaries "blessed" as legitimate.
Therefore you could take, say, the BRMH client and add features such as a torpedo data computer, automatic updates of army counts on all known planets, keys to turn... you were still restricted to the limited information and abilities the server gave you, but you could work around the interface limitations if you chose.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
IFAIC, the only possible way to spot a cheater is by spectating. Ignore how fast his reflexes are, and look at his strategy. Does he do a route that runs by all the pickups? Does he look behind himself a lot? Does he play smart? Then he's probably not cheating.
To get a cheat free server, admins should find players that visit a lot and arn't jerks and give them admin rights. Simple.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I play a MMORPG called Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC). A major part of DAoC consists of realm vs. realm combat, where players from opposing realms clash in epic battles (a.k.a. lag fests). There is one well known form of cheating in DAoC, known as radar, which allows the radar user to see the positions of enemy forces in realtime before he can be seen himself.
The most popular radar program for DAoC is Excalibur, hosted by your very own Sourceforge. The troubling thing about Excalibur is that it does not fit any of the definitions of cheating, although it clearly gives players using it an unfair advantage. It does not modify the game binaries, or modify memory areas or graphical output when running. It does not interfere with or modify data streams between the client and server. In fact, it doesn't even run on the same computer you play the game on. Excalibur runs on a Linux / *nix computer on your local network, and works by passively sniffing packets, decoding them, and constructing a detailed overhead map of the player's surrounding area. Thus it is, and always will be, undetectable whether someone is using radar or not.
It really is a rather clever hack, but it's ruining the game for us honest players. (And no, I have never ran Excalibur, even to try it out.) The question is what can be done about? It would seem that the only two options are:
1.) Encrypt every packet sent between the server and client, which would undoubtably slow everything down.
2.) Send less information to the client, by implementing some kind of server-side clipping, whereby the server determines what objects are visible to each client and sends only those. Again, this would slow everything down, on the server side because it requires more work, and on the client side because when the player suddenly encounters the enemy horde, his computer will be forced to load hundreds of character models all at once.
So, any other suggestions?
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Seems statistical analysis could find cheaters, the same way Baysean Filtering finds spam. It doesn't look for particular known signs (Viagra or a .dll mod); it analysizes trends in general.
If an auto-shoot aimbot is used, the time between when the enemy is on the perp's screen and the time the gun is shot should be nearly constant -- by screen I mean either entire screen or some radius of the pointer. If it's a human making the decision, that time would have a wider distribution with a larger variance.
For auto-aim but no shoot, take notice of when the pointer moves across the screen rapidly. Yes, there'd be type I and II errors (both not catching all auto-aims and recording simple things like turning around), but with enough analysis, it might be doable. Further analysis could be done on mouse movements prior to headshots. If a significant number of headshots (or killshots in general) came immediately following a rapid mouse movement, than an aimbot is rather statistically likely.
For wallhacks, consider a graph that connects all hallways to other hallways... if a player is consistently converging on enemies out of view, ie the shortest distance between the two players is constant or decreasing, statistically speaking, a wallhack is likely.
Of course, for all of these, the confidence intervals could be set arbitrarily close to unity -- and so it would give server admins the ability to risk overall Type I or II errors. This insures against being lucky some of the time, or doing the logical or rational thing in certain situations.
While cheating could overcome these methods by introducing errors (intentionally miss sometimes, walk around randomly some of the time, etc.), it would reduce the impact the cheater would have on the game, thereby making it less interesting for the cheater... perhaps to the point of not worth his while.
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Templates. I play America's Army, and on some stages one can shoot a 203 (rocket launcher) into a window that is obstructed by some intermediate object. Blindly firing into a window that the enemy is likely to be inside due to its strategic importance from the other side of the map -- blindly -- clearly detracts from the game.
The easy fix: introduce random errors in the map draw. Make the location of trees in an area a function of a random distriubtion. Make hallways marginally shorter, longer, wider, or narrower, in an effort to prevent people from using natural markings as methods of aiming (ie put your thumb three pixels below the lowest tree leaf to throw the grenade into the hole in the ground from maximum possible distance away).
It's not a cheat (no modifications, etc) but it clearly is in conflict with the spirit of the game. Game developers -- fix this!
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It's ALL of the problem. The only way to eliminate cheating is to rigidly follow two simple cardinal rules:
1. Place no reliance on the trustworthiness of players.
2. Place no reliance on the ignorance of players of any fact.
To adhere to these rules while ensuring fairness to all players will require that you:
1. Design the client-server interface such that no more information is provided to a client than you want any client and/or player to be aware of and take advantage of, including storing information for later recall.
2. Make the interface bullet-proof. No buffer overruns, etc.
3. Publish the complete interface definition. Hold back nothing.
4. Publicly announce and adhere to the policy that any and all clients are legal.
That leaves the really hard problem, one that will require great creativity and skill: designing an interface and gameworld mechanics that will prevent robots from playing better than human beings.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
This only works on servers where the people have to sign up. When you sign-up are are giving a starting raking, say Rank:1. As you play the system keeps track of your success and if you're good enough ups your rank (i.e Rank:2). Then it only allows you to play against people of the same rank as yourself. So all the cheaters (Rank:17) get to play against all the other cheaters (and those rare individuals with God-like skills) and us non-cheaters can play against other non-cheaters (and really really lame cheaters). Everyone gets a challenging game and who cares who's cheating anymore...
You could even start a game (as an example) at Rank:7 +/-2, then people who are Rank:5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 can join.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
In fact, one of the best cheats for an FPS is "wallhacking". You install a modified graphics driver that negates the Z value of drawn objects.
That way, distant things appear in front of nearby ones, instead of the reverse. So you can prepare to fire at an enemy before he's even in view.
Here is a possible partial solution: have the server issue multiple randomly moving false images behind the "opaque" area. Normal people would never see them, but the cheaters would have to deal with many fake targes, making the illicit information less useful. Going a little farther, the server might even be able to move a fake image into the cheater's view (but somehow still invisible to normal players) and ban the cheater when he tries to shoot at it.
A dingo ate my sig...
I used to waste my time trying to convince cheaters they're on the wrong path, cheating is evil etc.
Unfortunately it was all to no avail. Many are old and educating them is hopeless; others are still young, maybe, but, as a father, I know from experience it's very hard to pass on moral values. Inside the game, this is even harder.
Playing fair is a passing fad.
Everybody talks about only playing at Lanhouses... I'm too busy for that. Internet playing is my only option. Or better, was.
Everytime someone calls for a game to be ported for Linux, I ask myself: What for? I simply don't intend to buy any multiplayer games anymore. While I regret Loki's destiny, I can only blame people who make games for not acting responsibly -- at a very minimum!
Maybe you can put gore, amputation, beheading, ambush, camping, blasphemy etc. into a game... but you can't go without assuring fair play, evenhandedness and respect for the loser.
If game servers become more and more empty, as I have observed, and if this means the fading of the multiplayer genre -- it will be pity but well-deserved.
Counter-Strike isn't that good. I doubt anything would be.
Just curious, but how hard would it be to confirm the physics of most cheating server side? I mean, wall hack for instance. Couldn't one easily build in some sort of check and balance to see if the shot is possible or not? Same with the head shot deal. Create a routine that audits "outstanding" players. Axer05 just got his 4th strait head shot. Audit program cuts in and monitors him for a bit, judging whether the shots are even possible. I imagine such an audit program could judge a great number of attributes on specific players if they bring attention to themselves, or even at random.
I specify one at a time as I imagine it'd take too much processing power to double check everybody, but the principle would be sound. No checking everybodies files, HD, whatever. Safe, non-intrusive and fairly difficult to spoof since the auditing relies on the server side mechanics, not the peer-hacked files.
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Set up a lot gameservers with broken or nonexistant C-D.. maybe with some drone players that periodically go nuts in order to make the cheaters happy... suck the cheaters aware from the real games.
Oh, and the other idea was to create more games where cheating is part of the game. I would think that games based on The Matrix should encourage "hax"... if you cant find the mod that makes you run fatser.. you lose. That'sthe point of the game.
nonsig. unsig. desig.
A simple solution, at least for FPS games, would be to have invisible bots in every server, that don't shoot, don't get in anyone's way, and don't pick up weapons, health, etc...
This way regular players won't have any idea the invisibots are there. However, if a cheater should happen to have one in his field of view, his aimbot will take over and frag the poor unsuspecting invisibot.
If a player frags an invisibot, they get kicked.
It's not totally foolproof, but it seems to make sense. at least for aimbot cheats.
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This is among the many reasons I like to hang out in arcades, and why I mourn the seemingly inevitable death of the arcade in general (I'm certain there were articles on it before, but I'm too lazy to check). For almost any game in an arcade, you've got your opponent(s) standing right next to you. It's obvious to see if they're cheating or not (Whenever it's actually possible to cheat on an arcade box), and if they are, you have the easy ability to punch them in the face.
Well, okay, maybe not quite that, but you get the idea. You're live right next to the people, so they're far less likely to cheat.
You can keep your online games with your cheaters and the like. I much prefer arcades and other manners of live interaction with your opponents.
Okay... that got real preachy near the end. Whoops. Sorry.
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
If someone is shooting through walls, then the server can detect this simply by replicating the action (player A in position X shoots player B in position Y) in its own trusted space. If A couldn't possibly have shot B from X, then A must be cheating. If server performance is a concern, then this check doesn't have to be done immediately or on the server. The server could spool all shots to a trusted peer which tries to replicate the action and detects cheaters.
This won't be able to stop certain cheats like those which change the texture of players to bright green or enable wall transparency. You'd need a trusted client for that, and that's not feasible unless (until?) PCs can run signed software that cannot be altered by the user, which isn't going to happen anytime soon (but may be possible on future consoles, as they may have hardware checks).
One thing you can't patch is the human condition. There will always be griefers who just want to ruin everyone else's fun. The best way to stop them isn't to lecture them on proper game etiquette or make them see the error of their ways, it's to make them accountable for their actions by de-anonymising them. Make them sign up with a credit card to get their name and address. If there is a clause that says your credit card will be charged $100 if undisputable proof is found that you're cheating...