Question about PB Violations

(Englander) #21

Of course I did think of that SCDS thats why iam not going to say anything when i see them & thats why I never put their names in my post,theres a good chance someone might have stole their name then again theres the same chance they didnt aswell,only time I wouldnt think of playing with them again is when I can match their IP.Ive played RTCW & ET long enough to know what some idiots get up too.

Still doesnt take away from the fact that I was/am shocked & disgusted at the possibility they MIGHT have resorted to use cheats ,I still am grateful that the list is shown.Ive also spotted another name since having another look as well.

(Sauron|EFG) #22

Querying a Whois database can sometimes help clear a suspicion (doesn’t work the other way round though) by revealing the nationality of the cheater.

European Whois query:
http://www.ripe.net/db/whois/whois.html

Links to all databases:
http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/about/regional/

(ColdBackHAND) #23

I saw 4 names. One stood out the most for me. I can honestly say from looking at the date why it happened but that is not my place. Only he can defend himself.

c-ya

(Spookstah) #24

Does these 20005 warning mean they “hacked” the protected cvars or is it a general error if PB finds something suspicious but doesnt know what?

Because my logs only show #20005 errors, also on 1 of my admins (if it is really him that is) :slight_smile:

(ND80) #25

Game integrity errors mean nothing. It occurs when people go 999 and other reasons. If I banned everyone who showed up in my logs for 20005 violations, no one would be playing on my servers, including myself :slight_smile:

(DG) #26

(ignoring the #20005’s) … the codes to ban for usually have a fairly obvious description - WALLHACK, GAMEHACK, AIMBOT and so on. If it leaves anything to ambiguity, just leave it.

:wink:

“20005 violations are still buggy, that’s why we do not kick for them.” said the bloke from EB. If youre concerned about cheat cvars use pb_sv_cvar (my suggestions).

(RivrStyx) #27

I started doing this also on our 2 servers about a month ago. Not as long a list but only 2 servers

I notice the dude [KyA[Blackice is on your list few times. I got Ace Ventura and hedge hog also…lol. Some are making there rounds

http://www.team-resurrection.net/hacks.html

(FstFngrz) #28

BAN BY IP.

some www.planetwolfenstein.com news:

Tony Ray - PunkBuster Interview
Community News | 04:15 | Jube
Game Force One chats about The War on Cheatingwith Tony Ray of Even Balance Inc.'s PunkBuster fame. They cover a lot of turf in the interview, including how Tony Ray began busting cheaters, effectiveness of PB, false positives and plenty more. …
Hit Game Force One to read the full interview with PunkBuster’s Tony Ray. (Thanks RtCW.co.uk)

Anyways, it has a good page on pb_logs linked to it- kinda cool, Especially the punksbusted log parser.

Picture is from the article at http://www.gameforceone.com/fp/pb.shtml
it weeds out all the useless entries in the log.

:skull:

(ScreamZ) #29

wow its nice to see that someone smurfed my name royaly to screw me good. Dont know who you are but thanks loser.

I have no reason to cheat in RTCW/ET or any online game ive ever played. I can’s stand cheaters and the way they need to use exploits such as wall hacks and Auto aim scripts to play cause they would normaly get owned if it wasnt for those cheats to help them. Ive been playing online games since Quake 1 and ive seen cheats left and right but ive never sunk that low to use em.

Ive seen my name Smurfed tons of times. its just amazing how things like this happen.

(bulletcatcher) #30

Finding more info on the video driver hacks is a catch 22. If PB releases to the public what it is they are catching could lead people to variants of the hack. If they don’t release we don’t know what they are banning for and taking their word for it. I guess I would rather take their word for it and not have them release exactly what it is they are catching. This may at least keep the casual hacker from exploiting something as simple as odd video driver settings. Security by obscurity is not great, but it can help.
With the state of online gaming in games without PB, I’d say that if it lists it as a cheat, then it probably really is. I understand your caution in not banning them without more info, but since PB is not bullet proof catching cheats, I too would not release to the public exactly what was caught. “quis custodiet istos custodus” – “who will watch the watchers” needs to apply to PB at some stage, but I think it is still early in the life of PB for full disclosure of all hacks that they guard against.
Just my two cents.

(ND80) #31

Good points.

My concern about banning due to pb detected video hacks is twofold:

  1. I know back in July PB posted that incorrect violations were being reported for the 90003 video hack and it’s difficult to discern from their updates when that problem was corrected.

  2. Other admins who I respect have told me that video hack violations can be caused by video card overclocking. As I’m not an expert in this area, I hesitate to ban these reported violations if it’s due to something other than true cheats.

It’s amazing how people respond to them being accused of cheating and being banned. Just today, I got an email from a player that one of my admins banned yesterday after they were kicked by pb for using a wallhack.

He claimed in his email that my admin had banned the wrong person and that he must have mistyped the wrong slot number. This has happened from time to time, so I figured I would give him the benefit of the doubt and check the pb logs. Sure enough, the admin banned the right person and I told him this in my reply. He of course insisted that this was a mistake and went onto to say that he had been able to reconnect to a couple of my other servers (my linux guru, SiiiconSlick, has it set so that a ban on any of my servers applies to all of them). For some reason, the pb task had not been completed and the ban not applied across the board. I told him in my next reply that we had corrected the problem of his ability to reconnect to any of the servers and that any more attempts to rejoin my servers would lead to a letter sent to his ISP’s abuse department. I/we have sent letters to ISPs of idiots who continually generated new guids and IPs after being banned and actually have received cooperation from the ISPs. In two cases, the abuse depts actually blocked their customer’s ability to join any of my ips.

Long story, but thought I might pass on the info.

(SCDS_reyalP) #32

I/we have sent letters to ISPs of idiots who continually generated new guids and IPs after being banned and actually have received cooperation from the ISPs. In two cases, the abuse depts actually blocked their customer’s ability to join any of my ips.

This is a good solution for persistant lamers. Once you have banned someone from you server, their continued attempts to use your server is a violation of most ISPs TOS, and is within the scope of various hacking laws as well. Unauthorized access to a computer system is a crime in the US. Coming back to a server after you have been banned is no different than returning to a bar after the bouncer threw you out.

pb violations being caused by video card overclocking sounds highly unlikely to me. It may cause crashes or hangs and thus give you a pb_init failure, but I don’t see how it would be falsely detected as a driver hack. Of course that is just my opinion as a software developer who doesn’t know anything specific about pb. I suppose third party tweaking utilities could be falsely detected…

(DG) #33

yeah, you dont even need them kicked off isp or whatever, I’d imagine a letter sent to account holder is liable to have desired effect in most cases. Cheaters and lamers seem to think they are totally anon on the intarweb, which is simply not the case.

Other option is to ban by IP mask etc, just redone my guide section on that yesterday.

(bulletcatcher) #34

ND80,
I certainly can understand the folks reaction to a ban IF they truly are not cheating. I myself would be crushed by being accused as a cheat and would try to clear my name any way I could. That being said, it is ironic that this is a game of war (ET) and in war there are always civilian casualties that no matter how hard an army try to prevent still happen. This can parallel the hacking scenario you are dealt with in that you are bound to have innocents banned, but is it worth the greater good? To let even suspected hackers play against legitimate players on your servers would be an injustice to the 99.9% of honest players that frequent your servers.
My last count on Pathfinder was 1,442 servers. All of these servers have “regulars� that play on them for one reason or another. If your servers are to be a Mecca for honorable players looking for a FAIR game of skill against EQUAL players then you must take the high ground for the sake of those “regulars�. There is no “right� to play on any server that is being paid for by someone else. I suppose unlike the United States of America, ET for the server admin is not an innocent until proven guilty, but prove to server admin that you were not cheating.
Once again just my POV and two cents on ET.

(bulletcatcher) #35

I suppose I should start a new thread for this question, but I think the people already involved in this thread are the opinions I want.
I have been thinking about the cheaters of the game and am wondering if certain c_vars are not a bannable offense. The train of thought here is that an individual must go in to these settings and alter them. This is a deliberate act. The one c_var I am thinking of in particular is the FOV c_var. A player is trying to gain an advantage over another by exploiting a setting in the game that allows them to see a “fishbowl� of the world around them. Is this considered “cheating� and bannable just for trying to get away with it or since the PB server settings catch it out of the “allowed� range of the server admin is it a case of “no harm no foul�?
These are not in the PB cheat logs but just in the violation logs. So does this mean in the eyes of PB it is not bannable and not a “real� exploit or should we pay more attention to these c_var violations even though they are stopped if you have that in your config files?

(duke'ku) #36

it’s not a c_var, it’s a cvar. and players don’t get fisheye views, they just get stretched out horizontally. It may give them an advantage, but meh, why a big fuss? it also makes targets smaller.

(SCDS_reyalP) #37

Like all other cvars, server admins are also free to restrict cg_fov to whatever they like using pb cvar checking. 120 is the usual value, AFAIK.

(DG) #38

bulletcatcher, you might like to read my take on cvars, tweaking vs cheating etc in this article. Bear in mind the point of the cvars given is to cover actual exploits and only overwhelming community view - a minimum if you like. its almost amusing sometimes seeing extreme restrictions that dont actually include the exploitable cvars, or when someone argues about a given cvar should be so-and-so as this is “how it was meant to be played” until you point out that you can set that within the game or whatever.

There is widely differing opinions on what should and shouldnt be allowed for cvar restrictions, some well informed some blatantly ignorant (on all sides). You can restrict cvar ranges with 100% effectiveness. Add the two together and its clear banning for cvar violations is way excessive, by all means set what restrictions you want on your own server, and ban who you like, but if youre interested in doing it remotely properly with any thought for players or “justice” then pernamently banning players for preferring a setting that they cant use on your server anyway, thats pretty silly.

(bulletcatcher) #39

DG that is a great article! Thanks for taking the time to put all of that together and give to the community. That really puts things in perspective for me. You are right about it being silly to ban for something that really is PART of the game itself and not an outside piece of code to gain an advantage. Since there is a way to control this and keep it in check, you are right in that it would not be wise to ban someone just for having a part of the game itself set to a different parameter than others.
It just feels like the wild wild west out there with thousands of web sites dedicated to nothing but how to cheat games and very few on how to control it and keep it fair.
Thanks again for the article and input.

(ND80) #40

I agree with DG’s thoughts on banning for cvar settings. I do however ban for one cvar:

cg_callingND80anasshole IN 0 :slight_smile: