Name & Shame (possible) LOPE CHEATER

[Ice]

As far as the invisible issue goes with Taipans LockOn. We had the same problem pre 1.11 and we ended up solving the problem by installing the English version instead of the German Version on cd.

 

Im assuming what has happened is Taipan has reinstalled with the German version again. Forgetting about the problems we had earlier. I did ask Taipan to reinstall lockon after it not patching correctly.

 

On that point. Problems will be solved faster by clients complying to the Server admin instructions instead of arguing with the host.

 

Even if the Server admin is mistaken. It needs to be tested in a cooperative environment. Not one where "your wrong im right attitude" is paramount.

 

We are after all trying to create a virtual environment for everones enjoyment.

[TucksonSonny]

Big deal, I made a mig29 with 22 pylons (just discovered that the 12 pylon limit we had in 1.02 is gone). But then again, somebody can edit the .lua and have like 20 missiles on each pylon and spam away with those ARH missiles (surprisingly no one picks the mica rf). Big deal, play fair, play hard, fly low and fast. :p

 

We can easily detect a cheat like you describe.

Just count the missile launches between take-off and landing or crash in the briefing.

BTW, I am happy to hear that this is some kind of a language bug and Mr. Taipan is clean.

Later on in the evening he was using again real 120’ s:beer:

[zorlac]

VVS504 server, today, only player on the server at the time:

 

01/09:03:44 RED "testplane"(MiG-29S) entered the mission

01/09:15:11 RED "testplane"(MiG-29S) kill ship BLUE "Molniya" by Kh-29L (AS-14)

01/09:19:41 RED "testplane"(MiG-29S) land at NEUTRAL Anapa

01/09:19:43 RED "testplane"(MiG-29S) land at NEUTRAL Anapa

01/09:21:20 RED "testplane"(MiG-29S) crash

01/09:21:20 RED "testplane"(MiG-29S) exited the mission

 

Client Name: h2.cinet.novoch.ru

Client Address: 195.161.176.166

(RostovTelecom)

 

Bug? or cheat? How on earth do you launch a KH-29L from a MIG? The office Laser pointer taped to the HUD?

[504MrWolf]

screenshot "proof"

 

Playing on a 1.11 server is like playing BattleField 2 without Punkbuster......i wouldnt do it.

 

We are being told there willbe new options in 1.2 to lock the missions, but 1.2 is 6-12 months away !

 

Now we have to spend the next 6-12 months accusing and suspecting. It makes me feel sick thinking about it. Ive dumped many MP games that i loved because of cheats........i hope Lockon doesnt go the same way.

[Pilotasso]

I also had the invisible Missile problem. Recently and I wasnt credited for any of my kills. And I have inglish version. Howcome a simple language tranlstion to german could mess the game up??

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

That barcap nub, is a cheatin bastid no doubt, i caught him ages ago on a HL server, and i talking like 1 year ago, and he was using dodgy munitons then and also had ufo flight characteristics. he a cheating fux, and he lame but he probly think he's cool as f00k.

 

I say get his ip, and if its not dynamic or proxied up, then every HL server ban that ip.

 

faggot cheaters, i am sorry for the language, but its not cuz there good, its cuz they need to cheat to be anything but shit poor at the game.

 

this game needs something like sygate pro firewall, where it detects mac address for every ip connected, and also a ban by mac config panel.

 

^ that before any other stupid little fix would be great.

 

I dunno bout rest of you lot, but me personally, I think HL is a joke, private server are much better and much more fun.

 

I know a few real good squads have there own public HL server, but no matter how hard you try, there is always gonna be cheating on them all and ass munchers who tk for the so called "fun of it" and generally piss other clients off.

 

The admins do a great job of catching them the majority of the time, but its not permanent, this game needs permanent banning. ok granted there is other ways to ban someone from joining a server, but having it built into the game would be the simplest idea of them all, e.g. look at list of clients, which would show you ip, ping and mac addy, and you can ban by ip or mac addy. perfect solution, and unless the ghey offenders want to buy new hardware, then they fuxed from joining that server again.

[Ice]

I also had the invisible Missile problem. Recently and I wasnt credited for any of my kills. And I have inglish version. Howcome a simple language tranlstion to german could mess the game up??

 

It wasnt necessarily a language problem. But quite possible a corruption on the installation source. Using the English version may have just supplied a different source file to install from. Whatver it was it was a hard problem to isolate and fix.

[SUBS17]

So far I've found a couple of bugs pre v1.11 which caused problems online. One in particular where sync was lost between the host and clients and strange things happened such as vehicles hovering over the ground and not getting hit or in one case an aircraft getting hit by a missile and showing damage to everyone but the client in the damaged aircraft. The result was an aircraft that cannot be hit or destroyed but yet could destroy other aircraft. Sometimes lack of port forwarding can also produce this problem or Firewalls.

[SUBS17]

So far I've found a couple of bugs pre v1.11 which caused problems online. One in particular where sync was lost between the host and clients and strange things happened such as vehicles hovering over the ground and not getting hit or in one case an aircraft getting hit by a missile and showing damage to everyone but the client in the damaged aircraft. The result was an aircraft that cannot be hit or destroyed but yet could destroy other aircraft. Sometimes lack of port forwarding can also produce this problem or Firewalls. If someone is cheating just kick them out, problem solved.:D

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

you've found a couple of bugs ?

 

are they the double post bugs ? :p

 

post No 33-34 :D

[zorlac]

this game needs something like sygate pro firewall, where it detects mac address for every ip connected, and also a ban by mac config panel.

 

Sadly, MAC addresses are only ever used in the "last hop" of the network path. If you have two machines on the same subnet, then yes, you will be able to see their MAC addresses, but as soon as you have a router along the path, then all you will see is the MAC address of the last piece of equipment that passed the traffic through it. Its just the way that the IP protocol works. If I started banning based on the MAC address of the clients, I would actually ban the MAC address of my firewall at work, which would block everyone. :(

 

I whole heartedly agree that there needs to be better admin tool for Lomac. The MP _log file holds the info about the player's IP addresses, but there is no way to tie up the IP addresses with specific players at any moment in time. The only way is to kick someone and then immediately check the mp_log to see which IP got kicked. Please ED, give us a mp_log (or equivalent) that holds a sync'd copy of player names and IP addresses... PLEASE!!!

 

I would also like to see an option where the server can have an optional admin password that may or may not be used. Players who connect to the server without the admin password just play as normal, but players who connect and have entered the correct admin password will have the ability to bring up the player list and kick other players. These kicks should clearly be listed in some log file somewhere, stating date/time, current mission file name, the player and IP of the admin, the player and IP of the player kicked, with a text string created by the admin player to give a reason for the kick.

 

The same system should also give the option to ban the player by IP or player name (or both), and this information held in a text file on the server.

 

Come on ED, help the server admins keep this game free of "room-temperature-IQ" knuckle-dragging retards, and allow us to keep this great game cheat free.

 

(504)Zorlac

(VVS504 Server admin)

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

i know there is limitations, but say someone was using pc and had a ethernet router, now the hops back to him would goto his router first ? say 10.0.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 something like them, it would give us the address of his physical pc say 10.0.0.2 or 1.2 now, in between getting that info sygate shows you there mac addys and allows you to ban them from connecting to you, not you connecting to them, so doing that would allow us to ban his router thus closing him down from ever using that router.

 

how its done is a mystery to me, and i dont know how sygate go about doing it, but it allows you to ban by mac and ip, so if it can be done via syagte, it must be able to be done via some other type of code, also a program called netinfo i believe shows you the mac addys of every single port that is being used by your pc, so whoever or whatever is connected to your pc will have its ip shown, and any info and its mac address.

 

so say a nub messes up on the server, get his ip then kick him, then ban his ip and look at the firewall logs, and also in netinfo, he should be in the logs as being connected, then bingo enter his mac in the firewall and he cant connect.

 

I presume thats the way it would go, if its not then dunno, but sygate is definetly able to stop incoming traffic after you have blocked by mac.

 

If i remember its only sygate pro that allows you to do it, not just normal sygate.

 

in the end, we could ban either, router/modem or actual pc. either one will do, preferrable the router/modem

 

 

why would you ban your own firewall, if you entered a clients mac address, since your firewall and there mac is probably totally different ?

 

there is probably a better way to do it, but if games can guid ban , which is a hardware ban then that is physically the same as mac, its just a code on a piece of hardware. Starforce use it now, so why cant the code in starforce be used to some degree, so say when you create a server, SF starts loggin ips and hardware id's of every client for that session.

 

If you have to ban someone then SF saves there ip and hardware id's in a encrypted file. Everyone who wants to logon to that server must have there hardware scanned by the server just like many games out there now and if any of the banned codes match your pc, it will fail the scan and auto kick you from actually getting any further access to the server, and your name will not appear in the blah blah has joined the server msg. nice and easy, and since SF have already got that implemented for your pc now, a few tweaks is all it would take i would think.

[zorlac]

no, the MAC address is **ONLY** last hop...

 

PC - router - internet - my router - server

 

any traffic comeing from "PC" to "Server" will only ever have the MAC address of "my router". You will never EVER see the real MAC address of "PC" unless you are on the network next to "PC".

 

"PC" knows its default gateway, and ARPs to find the MAC address for that IP. "router" accepts packets from "PC", strips off the MAC encapsulation, works out where to send it, finds out the MAC address of the next hop in its path, puts the packet back inside a header with new MAC info in it, and sends it to there. The next hop will see the correct IP on the packet, but the source MAC address is now showing as coming from "router" and not "PC". The packet payload remains intact, but the outer encapsulation layer is created and stripped away every time it passes through a device. MAC addressing is only used where no routing is involved (direct connection between hosts, which may be firewalls, routers or PC).

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

ah, i get ya now, so wtf is sygate pappin on about then.

 

also would you think that since SF searches for hardware ids, that it could somehow be used to act as a guid bannable piece of software, if it was intergrated into the netcode ?

 

player joins server, server sends SF guid scan instruction to client, client transmits back his scan report, If the scan has found any code from said clients hardware that is duplicated in the ban list, then the client doesnt get any further into the server, and his connection is auto dropped.

 

When you install lockon SF scans your hardware and remembers all its code numbers of your hardware. If you get banned then you will have to change hardware in order to get around it and probably have to use another key for lockon. now even if you did use another key, some of your old hardware that you never replaced will still have same code and will still be in the ban list.

 

All this would work with a client list which will give you the option of kicking banning and scanning for the hardware ids, which is useless to anyone, so no one can say, i am not having SF scan my pc, as it has already did so when you installed the game. And numbers from hardware that the server has scanned is totally useless for anyone.

[zorlac]

you mean like a host unique ID? Thats how some games identify individual users, by player "ID" (like Battlefield2 for example, where you have to "log into" a central server to play on EA/Dice servers). User accounts can be blocked on their servers.

 

With ED, they could use the SF hardware unique "key" I guess. I think that would be quite effective... until SF gets hacked/bypassed (AFAIK that hasnt happened yet, but i have no doubt it will at some point). Also, dont forget that SF on the CD version never requires new keys when you change hardware, all its doing it checking that the CD is a genuine CD.

 

Then we get into the realms of false accusations... and thats where the problem really lies. Without undeniable proof of someone cheating, then we can only assume. With the bugs I have read about on here about players in one aircraft showing up on other systems in a completely different aircraft, how can we be 100% sure without screenshots? And the "having to save custom loadouts" is just dumb IMHO.... there are too many holes in the codes for mistakes to be made, and blindly banning someone because of hearsay of other players or because of server log entries or even from "end of round" screenshots that aparantly show who did what is trusting something that just cant be trusted.

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

similar but different to bf2, you can get your account banned by bf2 but you can always make another.

 

Take americas army for example, pb scans your puter, and it scans your hardware, so if you get caught cheating it will ban your account, if you get caught more than once, you get GUID ban. Which is as good as saying you will never ever be able to play online with AA again, as you would need to get a whole new pc todo so.

 

Its the same thing that SF does when it first install on your pc, it gets the hardware id of all components and genereates a key for all the values of those components. If you ever change hardware it will ask you to register lockon again, if you have went over a certain percentage of new hardware changes.

 

GUID is exactly the same, it scans your hardware, motherboard harddrives etc, and for everyone of them is a key that is in firmware cmos etc and it generates a key similar to SF, and when you go online with AA pb always knows its your pc, even tho one of your buddys may have used that pc with his account. If he got banned from AA using your pc, it would ban his account and sooner or later it would ban your physical hardware/pc if he kept on using dfferent accounts to cheat with and kept getting caught.

 

there is no way around a guid ban except new hardware, i have heard of ways but it involves more messing with fragile stuff in your pc than its worth.

 

if you ever play AA, and you see pb scanning GUID, then its just scanning your pc for known hacks, if it says you got GUID banned, say goodbye to playing that game on that pc ever again. thats what lockon needs. Something like that so the ban is unbreakable by dynamic ips, proxys etc, and if the admin wants to unban him, then he can, but at least while he is banned, he cannot access that server with that pc.

 

AA needs something like that tho, as more than 10,000 people a month were gettin banned at times.

[504 Wolverine]

Well you would not need to do all of that work if loadouts were simply hardcoded in like they are for the Su-25T. It is totally impossible to loadout any illegal weapons on it.

[zorlac]

I didnt know that... seems like the obvious answer to the problem.

 

ED - If there is ever going to be a v1.13 patch (probably to close to make it into v1.12), please do this "fix" for all the other aircraft. Even if you dont plan to do a v1.13 patch, find time to do this one thing for a mini-patch (even if it is just a "servers only" patch), or you will end up losing players (read: customers) before you even get to release v1.2.

[Woodstock]

Today JaBoG32 Command received the following screenshot taken by MrWolf on the famous VVS504 Public Server:

 

 

We highly appreciate Wolfie´s decision to inform us first before posting the incident here himself.

His effort to protect our good name in the community is to be commended! S!

 

We are taking the incident seriously and will put it under thorough investigation, taking into account all possible explanations.

We would like to express our commitment to the battle against cheaters and our apologies to anyone whose gaming fun was spoiled during the incident!

 

JaBoG32 Staff

[Force_Feedback]

AA's pb guid bans aren't great either, I had K-lite and RamIdle 2000 running, combined with a Sygate firewall equals a free hardware ban, but I heard pb has improved over the earlier versions. No I wasn't using any kind of hacks/mods/exploits :p

So a small percentage of the bans will be unfair, but, hey, playing AA 1.6 was almost impossible, as around 1.5-1.6 a big deal of hackers appeared :|

[SUBS17]

you've found a couple of bugs ?

 

are they the double post bugs ? :p

 

post No 33-34 :D

 

I was refering to incidents where the network has wound up out of sink. The only post I bothered to mention regarding this previously was the Subterrainean Mig23.

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

ahk

[Ice]

The invisible missile bug has been isolated and should be an easy squash for 1.12 or maybe 1.2

 

Thanks to Taipan for helping me isolate the problem.

 

It had nothing to do with network coding, something much simpler :-)

[Pilotasso]

I had just been fired upon by 10 AMRAAM's online from 1 guy in a single salvo. While I dont care too much because it was an isolated incident (I dodged 9 of them), I hope 1.12 will put an end to this?

 

I also choose not to say who it was keeping his anonimacy so dont ask, because it was some noob having some fun, as long is not reincident Im not too bothered by this, but it kills a bit of the realism.

[504 Wolverine]

Not asking for names here mate, but...Was it on our server?