PBBans.com

(Ben) #1

Im working with the team at www.pbbans.com on a new ban system, its similar to punkbusted, but shows promise of being much better.

Heres a quick description:

PBBans is an online community for gaming server administrators running Punkbuster enabled games. Our goal, through sharing and dissemination of information, is to educate administrators and stop online cheaters in their tracks.

PBBans works as a centralized meeting-place/library where server administrators can come together and pool their experience and information about cheating players. As cheats are caught by each individual server admin, through Punkbuster violations, screenshots or demos, they are added to the Master Ban Index (MBI). This MBI can then be filtered and downloaded to suit each registered server admin. The result being that cheats can be traced and banned from all servers administered by registered members. Allowing players to enjoy playing, without the aggravation of unfair competition.

PBBans are striving to create and maintain a reliable and comprehensive ban index that you can trust. PBBans will never place a ban on the MBI without proof from confirmed server administrators. Whether it be Punkbuster logs, screenshot or demo, the proof is indexed and stored at PBBans for future reference. There is even an appeal process in place for those that feel they have been incorrectly banned. Using our Master Player Index (MPI) you can look up any player and see a cross index of GUID’s, Aliases, IP,s and bans as well as proof of any ban.

Well, what im after is as many RTCW or ET server admins as is possible to sign up and start submitting logs to the system. the more peeps that submit the better the whole thing will work.

Pop along to http://www.pbbans.com/forums/ or #pbbans if you want to ask any questions or find out about us

(senator) #2

won’t work because cheaters can easily generate a new GUID and because most players have a dyn. IP banning by IP won’t help either. As long as there is no reliable way to identify a specific computer or a true GUID that can’t be changed such a global list will be of little help, I am afraid :frowning:

Also: if PB is able to detect a specific cheat, there is no need for other server admins to download that ban-info, because as long as their PB is up to date it will also detect the cheat should that player join their server. As for cheats undetected by PB: it takes a great amount of trust because otherwise a server admin could easily blackist a player by submitting a manipulated log file.

(Ben) #3

Actually, works are in process for fixed GUID system.
The Majority of cheaters dont know how to change basic CVARS let alone GUID
Our alias tracking system links players after name change or IP change
Proof is kept for each ban, even if its not PB, so each server admin is able to view it before they decide whether to use it or not.
There are useful FAQ’s and help tools being added to the site that will help admins to detect and minimise cheating
The system also applies to RTCW, which does have a permanent GUID system

Instead of slating a good idea that will help make the game better, why dont u give a little support

(senator) #4

I question your argument that cheaters have no idea how to change the GUID, 99% of all cheater have probably downloaded the cheat from a website and although I don’t know any cheat sites I think the cheater will also find informations there how to generate a new GUID.

And the only way you could trace a cheater if he has changed his GUID is by the name he used… now THAT would really create problems, just imagine cheaters going online using the name of a prominent clan player!

OK, you keep a proof, but as I said, if it’s a PB info there’s no need to include that info into a DB because every PB enabled server will detect that cheat so the only use of such a DB would be for cheats undetected by PB… now, again, you’d have to trust the server admin because he could have manipulated the evidence. And in cases of an undetected cheat it’s probably better to directly contact evenbalance so that they can update their product.

This might work for RtCW were every user has a unique GUID, but as long as such a system doesn’t exist for ET you’ll never find a way to globally ban cheaters. And I can’t support your idea because I know it won’t work, so convince me that it can work and I’ll immediately support your project :slight_smile:

(Ben) #5

Im not saying the system is perfect in any way, what im saying is with support it will certainly reduce cheating.
Im also saying that educating server admins about cheats is good

You are right if a person changes GUID then the only way to trace them to a new GUID will be via IP, even that may be tenuous, however with alot of server admins submitting logs any cheat who changes IP or name can be traced to other servers. Its by no means a good solution, however it is the best at present.

By your argument its pointless banning anyone at all? if PB will detect it why should anyone be banned? well most server admins ban users for using cheats, now most cheats after being banned from enough places will go and update their cheats to the very latest PB undetectable version, the idea of the ban is that they cannot come back. So yes the cheats they have been banned for are detectable, but when they update they may not be.
Basically If you cheat once you’ll never be welcome again

As i said previously evidence is posted for server admins to plainly see, the banfile is customisable so each admin can choose which sorts of bans he wants to use, eg PB and screenshots only. this way, if you dont trust the evidence you dont have to use it.
At the end of the day tho, you do have to sometimes trust admins. Ive personally had dealings with an american admin who had setup an ET server that used the auto download system to place a virus/bug that caused virus alerts on clients computers, he was using the same name as our server, so i recieved the complaints for it. my point is, does this mean that we should never play online again because this might happen, of course not, we trust the servers are safe for our computers to play on.

The whole system will be available for every PB enabled game, ive posted here for the RTCW?ET community, however if you run one of the other PB supported games you are also welcome to sign up and help.

Im not asking for YOUR support, you obviously dont like it, im asking for you not to slate hours of hard work that WILL benefit the ET playing community

(ildon) #6

Just because something isn’t perfect, doesn’t mean it won’t at least help. Look at PB: there’s no way for it to catch people with private/personal cheats, and it can take up to a week to catch new versions of public cheats. It’s not perfect but you don’t see everyone throwing it away as useless. Plus there are 3 items of information to copmare: alias, IP, and GUID. And while two of those can be changed pretty easily, even with a dynamic IP the first 2-3 numbers of the IP are unlikely to change. If enough server admins submitted their reports, you could probably track someone as they changed GUIDs or IPs to some extent.

(ToeD) #7

i say make a guid only available by email verification

(senator) #8

Absolutely correct, but the question is: can PBBan do something PB cant ? Frankly the answer is no. Is there a need to exchange pb-ban lists ? No, because PB will detect a cheat when a cheater connects, there is no need to first compar the players GUID against a DB with GUIDs of caught cheaters.

But what’s with the cheaters with undetectable cheats who are caught by a clever server admin and whos GUID is uploaded to the PBBan DB ? Now, these are the privately coded cheats because all public cheats are quickly detected and banned by PB. OK, guys who are able to code their own cheat ar definitively clever enough to change their GUID should they ever get caught and banned, so there’s no use in banning them globally unless we get persistent GUIDS !

So, a global GUID DB with GUIDs of caught cheaters is useless beacuse a) PB will detect these cheats anyway, so there is no need forthis DB and b) against cheaters with PB-undetectable cheats this glabal list won’t help at all.

We can only start working on such a project once we get a GUID that can’t be changed by the player locally. Before that all work is futile.

Plus there are 3 items of information to copmare: alias, IP, and GUID. And while two of those can be changed pretty easily, even with a dynamic IP the first 2-3 numbers of the IP are unlikely to change.

Alias: no way to identify a player because it can be changed in a matter of seconds
IP: no way to identify a player unless he has a static IP, but most players have a dynamic IP (and about the similar IPs… my ISP has 3 Class-B subnets, thats roughly 50 million possible IPs… so what are you going to do, ban them all and thousands of regular players just to catch one cheater ? Oh, and I could easily use other ISPs aswell… hopeless!)
GUID: can be changed by the player so again no way of identifying a specific cheater.

If enough server admins submitted their reports, you could probably track someone as they changed GUIDs or IPs to some extent.

maybe, but once they discover their mistace all they have to do is change their GUID again, only to make sure that their IP is different when they reconnect. So this won’t help us.

(^POTATO) #9

Personally I like this idea, I always thought that if a cheater got caught on one pb server, they should be banned from all pb servers. Basically if all of the server admins used this list, than someone that has been blacklisted would not be able to play on almost any server, which might discourage him to cheat. And that would be a very good thing. Sure they could always change their guid/ip, but I think that would be a small minority of the cheaters.

(senator) #10

well, I’ve never cheated and I’ve never witnessed anybody got caught cheating, but how long does it take PB to detect that a freshly connected player uses (known) cheats ? Probably just seconds. So once the cheat is known cheaters can’t use it any longer on PB servers, no matter whether PB does the checks or whether the GUID is compared with a DB of known cheaters. No advantage here, or am I missing something ?

(Ben) #11

yes, if they cheat on one server ban them from all…

also, it dpeneds on the cheat, some ive seen take upto 8 mins to catch, and when your getting between 4-8 cheats per week caught by PB and maybe 2 a fortnight caught by Screenshot its a big problem, just leaving it to PB isnt the best solution, sure it detects the hack (after a while) but it doesnt ban them, the player can go elsewhere, the player can update the hack, or as youve so rightly said he can change GUID and IP.
ET atm as you so rightly said doesnt have fixed GUIDs, however if doing this will only make cheats lives harder its a start.
looking at submitted bans so far alot of peole are being duplicated, eg caught on multiple servers or more than once, they havent changed GUID, just name or IP or moved on. this accounts for between 15-20% of submitted bans, so there is a fair proportion of cheats out there that could be banished to PB off servers.

(KingJackaL) #12

While I’m all for anti-cheating measures ( I admin 5 ET servers ATM ), I must say that senator’s concerns are valid.

From what I can see, the only advantage offered from your system is:

  • if a cheater is caught on one server, he’s banned from all of them.

senator is correct in that if a cheater is smart enough to get a PB undected cheat, then they’re smart enough to get a new GUID. Getting a new GUID can be done in < 1min, and is VERY easy. Admittedly I’m an admin - but nobody told me how to do it, I just guessed the most obvious way and it worked ( :frowning: ). The only use a new anti-cheating system would have for somebody like me would be to get rid of the troublesome cheaters. I know of several, and some of the characteristics of them are:

  • use proxies heavily
  • use dialup/dynamic IP ISP’s
  • use multiple ISP’s
  • change GUID quickly
  • have late-version, PB-undetectable cheats

While I see that you want people to sign up to add weight to the threat of your anti-cheating system, you’d have to:

  • show that you can out-do PB in aiding removing people with the above characteristics
  • show the security and integrity of your database to be top-notch
    …before I’d use it. Don’t forget, if you have a DB with all these GUID’s in it - somebody’s gonna look at it and only see a big juicy target for a hack.
(pgh) #13

10mins top on avg before pb picks it up. By that time a server is emptied, teams one sided and loads of specs.

(chr0nicles) #14

Actually this is a very good idea, don’t just think about ET think ahead with the upcoming games (key out the box) or the new punkbuster hardware generated key… oops…did i just spoiled the new pb suprise?, then this system should work just fine :wink:

Thumbs up!