The Spread Of Aimbots.

[Badger]

He may be wise, but he wouldn't make us pay for Tremulous!!!

Would he?!?  :evil:  

[Steely Ann]

Aside from consistent bannination, there's not really a solution to this; asshats will be asshats, ya know.

Plus, as the infamous jeff once stated, "You'll get over it."

[tuple]

He may be wise, but he wouldn't make us pay for Tremulous!!!

Would he?!?  :evil:  

You wouldn't be paying for tremulous, you'd be paying for a key from timbo.  Big difference.  Servers could require the key that's signed by timbo, require their own key, or require no key.  It's up to the server.  I suspect that many operators would have a high degree of trust in a system instituted by timbo, or many of the other devs as well.

My idea in the past was to allow servers the option to require usernames/passwords which could be stored in a mysql db, local or remote.  A server operator could have their own DB of users, or a bunch of server operators could share a DB IF they so desire.  Anybody could allow users to register a username/password on a web site that would be added to the DB (the web site would be easy to make, not part of the game ), and a ban from one server could be a ban on all servers sharing the DB (again, IF operators decide to share a db) or not, depends on the design of the db.  Each server adds a table to the db for that server and stores bans there.  Maybe even admins.

This would be a solution that is NOT centralized, but groups of servers that have some trust in each others decisions could centralize their information IF they should decide to.

[-:GoDz:-Devil]

"]

We should make the GUIDs hardware based, so re-installing Tremulous would not change it. This way, we would have a greater chance of banning cheaters. We should also implement an online database, which tracks all banned GUIDs. If a GUID is banned from several servers (with different IPs), the GUID gets globally banned.

It sounds very interesting, is it really possible ?

I dont think it is possible.  Cause if one GUID gets banned, how do you plan to set one server to communicate with another server to write to the admin.dat?  It might be possible if you can think of another way.
But other then that you cant right to the admin.dat file unless the person who ever hosting the server opens ports and make it a web base file and probley .php would be the best way.  But other then that I dont know what you guys plan to do about making them be banned globally.

[Nux]

I'm no tech-head, so please humour me..

Am I to understand these aimbots are inside the tremulous application when they're used? If so, why can't the servers check to see if the necessary modifacations have been made or not? Is that what is meant by an 'unpure client'?

[kevlarman]

I'm no tech-head, so please humour me..

Am I to understand these aimbots are inside the tremulous application when they're used? If so, why can't the servers check to see if the necessary modifacations have been made or not? Is that what is meant by an 'unpure client'?

the only way for the server to check if the client has been modified is to ask the client if it's been modified. if the client is modified it can lie.

[jit]

from the few aimbots i've seen while playin trem, they only work decently or at all with smaller servers. 3 aliens approach 1 player w/ the aimbot and he goes mad tryin to shoot all 3 simultaneously and getting killed by the 3 b4 he can kill just 1 of them. also, a skilled player: OPP, SGA, Xil, NT - could own a guy using aimbot anyways.

btw im back from vacation.

[n00b pl0x]

flux this is for you



<3

[BeerBastard]

Someone mentioned this, think it was lava. Using harddrive serial ids, Like some trial softwares uses to create locked guid's on installation.  Also creating a global ban list servers can contact for updates of who was banned.

Doesnt Cs have something like this? Steambans?

Everytime someone is caught they would have to reinstall on a new hard drive. Which would be annoying and slow them down in my opinion.

[kevlarman]

Everytime someone is caught they would have to quit and start their custom client again that assigns them a random guid on startup.

fixed

[Eeeew Spiders]

This is something i posted some time ago in this forum. Post again for relevancy:

karma system with global authentication system
Usage of a global authentication system.
We allready have a database for authentication, and that is this forum.
The idea proposed here requires changes to the client and server code of tremulous, as well as adding some PHP scripts on this forum server and adding tremserver specific user right groups in this forum.

Before a player signs into a tremulous server, he has to submit username and password. For convenience username (this already is) and password can be stored in autoexec.cfg.
The client validates the username and password directly with a php script on this forum (simple http request).
The password is not send to the tremulous server. This to make it impossible for illintend serverowners to collect user passwords.
The client reveives a temporary valid key from the forum server, which it uses to validate against the tremulous server it wants to join.
The tremulous server checks back this temporary key with another php script on this forum (simple http request)
The server software of this forum probably has a group rights management. Special groups can be created. These new groups have no special rights in this forum. But the tremulous server can query the groups right of the player that wishes to connect.

So, when the tremulous server validates the key from the client, and

• the key does not match, the client is refused.
• the key does match, but the username is in the group BANNED, the client is refused.
• If the key matches, and the username is in a group permitted by the tremulous server, the client is accepted

So schematically
[list=1]

• TremClient sends username and password to ForumServer
• TremClient receives a temporary key from ForumServer
• TremClient sends temporary key to TremServer
• TremServer validate temporary key with ForumServer
• TremServer receives the Groupnames of the User
• TremServer validates Groupnames
[/list:o]
Server owners are free to use this, but are not required to use it. And when they use it, they can decide themself in what way they use it. As a consequence, different servers are running different configurations depending on their usual player base and server purpose (you have public servers and match servers).
The Server owners can configure their server, what Groupnames it accepted and which ingame rights depending on Groupnames a player has.
Some example of configurations how they could work for trem servers.

1. No authorization is required
This is as it is now, players log in with any name they choose.

2. Special rights for registerd players
Anybody can play on a server. But only those that provided a valid user name and password have special rights, such as:
- the right to start a vote
- the right to talk in public chat
- non-registered players are kicked when a registerd player logs into a full server with no other open slots.
- right to build
(these are just ideas)

3. Only registerd users can play
You have to provide a valid user name and password to be able to log into a server at all.

Notes
In a normal scenario, you would have a mixture of servers running. Having no open servers at all will make it difficult for players that have just downloaded the game and want to try it out. If they like the game and are interested, they will find this forum and a note on the first page on how to log into register-required servers. This way, more experienced players also don't have the grief of having to pwn first time newbs, but are playing on servers with other more experienced players that were interested enough to sign up.

Example of Groups could be:

GLOBAL.BANNED
ALIENWRATH.PLAYER (default,but no public chat, only pm and team chat, and no build)
ALIENWRATH.BANNED (not allowed to join)
ALIENWRATH.TALK_AND_BUILD (in addition can talk and build)
ALIENWRATH.TEAMVOTE
ALIENWRATH.PUBLICVOTE

For match servers you could even set up spawn rights, so that you can make clan matches public viewable for spectators without the threat of non-clan members entering the game and messing it up.

The whole forum authentication needs a dedicated forum team to keep things operational and smooth. It actually all depends on how this is maintained. Granted, it does seem to be quite a job, but trusted serverowners and admins could help in the process. Many other things may evenutally also be automated.

Drawbacks
If someone gets banned from global login, it is ofcourse not very difficult to create a new login (hotmail, yahoo). But it is a much greater hassle already for evil minded server hoppers.

One solution to make it even more difficult is:

• to forbid certain email domain names like yahoo or hotmail, but still add them on special request
• track IP of registrations
  
• on registration the client GUID must be provided. registration could even be done from inside the client menu.

These are just ideas....i am sure that tomorrow i will think that half of the ideas are crap and won't work. But maybe they are helpful in getting a solution. And remember, its the free will of the server owner if he wants to use the authentication service or not, or for which servers to use it.

Eeeeeew

A last note: With an open source game, it will be impossible to have a failsave system. The only thing one can do is to make it as hard as possible.

[BeerBastard]

Everytime someone is caught they would have to quit and start their custom client again that assigns them a random guid on startup.

fixed

So their is no way to hardcode it in so it can't be changed?(doh thats right its opensource.) Well if that is the case than it goes back to keys and having to register to get one.  Than people would register for multiple ones specially if they were free.

Unless everytime you enter a server it compares your guid with your hard drive serial number, and does a check to make sure your guid comes from your hard drive number, But than again anyone who can hack the checksums for pure could get by this.

Being a server admin, only thing I know I will do is. Record the Ip of anyone aimbotting and ban. When someone is starting to look fishy, compare their ip for subnet match and similarities.  It works pretty well for catching ban dodgers with dynamic Ip's.


P.S. i am going on 40mins of sleep and have to wake up in 5 hours. Otherwise I think i would have caught that myself

[Caveman]

:sigh:
Back to my favourite topic... PunkBuster.
What makes you guys think you can implement something like it, without failing from the start?

But that would actually be the second step...
The first would be to prove that someone is actually cheating,   that is much more work...

[Eeeew Spiders]

A karma system is not only to track cheaters, but all forms of griefing.
Known deconners etc etc, even simply just players you don't want on your server.

Just having a master system and a karma system implemented doesn't qualify to be called PunkBuster. PunkBuster is a lot more, and a lot more of what I think Trem doesnt need. But a global registration/karma system I think will be unavoidable when the community grows. Also it makes it a lot easier for server operators. Unfortunately not all servers are as well maintained and monitored as the Wrath Servers. I can understand Caveman that you would be against that system, but again this is only true because you do a lot of effort already to ensure a trusted playerbase. If all server would be maintained that well, I agree that a global karma system would not be necessary.

[Lakitu7]

Registration systems don't work unless you have to pay for registration or there's some tie-in to real life: ie, must provide a working address, telephone number, credit card, etc. Eg.: gmail

This is largely what we need, but it has to either be pay (even some small amount) or the later, which requires resources that probably noone involved has.

[Nux]

This reminds me of when I used to play Gmod (Garry's Mod for HL2). From what I understand a karma system is, I'm pretty sure Gmod had one too. If you can't call it a karma system then at least take it as an example of how systems like it can fail.

You could give/recieve ratings from other players depending on their opinion of you. People could then judge those people by those ratings.

Gmod also had plenty of players willing to ruin the game for the rest. If ever you did anything to stop them, they'd give you a bad rating. With enough of these players, innocent players could get bad karma easily.

If a player saw another player with a bad rating, it wasn't uncommon for them to add to that score before actually seeing whether or not they deserve it first hand (Reminds me of the people in tremulous who vote because they see that person has a few of those votes already >.<)

You also got groups of trouble-makers who would rate each other good.

Maybe if you could stop people with bad karma giving ratings.. or if you could make it relative to all the ratings given, this system might work.

Though I can see the differences between this system and the one you propose, in both there seems to be a chance innocent people could be discriminated against because of the ratings/bans they have.

[Evlesoa]

Umm... what if it isnt with a GUID? What if its some random new player or something?

[Eeeew Spiders]

You could give/recieve ratings from other players depending on their opinion of you. People could then judge those people by those ratings.

Its a good point and hasn't been discussed here yet.
I agree it would fail if jack and pete are allowed to give ratings.
There are many interpretations of how a karma system should look like.
If you wanted to ban people for any reasons, you would have to know who's opinion to trust in any kind of implementation and interpretation of the system. How some other games work, is that administrators and referees of some of the servers are trusted, or atleast know how to interpret their opinion. This is just an example, likely there are better suggestions.

All in all, such a karma system would only globally ban a player in very extreme situations. For example, an extreme camper might be someone you don't like on your server, but would never be a reason to global ban a player. Using cheats or being known as a regular deconner might usually be a reason to global ban a player.
Local banning as it is now would still be in place for smaller offenses, violations of rules that only applies to that particular server (e.g. usage of strong language/extreme camping/one-time-deconning/noobing).

edit: Also there has to be rules about ban length. For example, for a one-time offense of using cheat clients may lead to only one month of ban time. If caught a second time, or when it has been observed that a player has tried to avoid the ban, the ban is extended to a much longer time.
Life-time bans usually just ensures that the offender tries with extreme means to sabotage a servers operation.
Note that the purpose of these systems is not to punish people, but is there to allow easy maintenance for trying to keep games and servers a lot more freed of trouble and troublemakers.

edit: Another point is, from some of the other threads i gather that there are quite some players around that would just try to use a cheat because of curiosity or 'investigative purposes'. For these occasions we could also have a cheat server, a server that explicitly allows cheats.
First plus is that it invalidates the excuse 'i just wanted to try it out' when caught on a server which does not allow cheats, and second it might be enough for those cases that really use cheats out of curiosity or 'investigative purposes'.

[Evlesoa]

You could give/recieve ratings from other players depending on their opinion of you. People could then judge those people by those ratings.

Its a good point and hasn't been discussed here yet.
I agree it would fail if jack and pete are allowed to give ratings.
There are many interpretations of how a karma system should look like.
If you wanted to ban people for any reasons, you would have to know who's opinion to trust in any kind of implementation and interpretation of the system. How some other games work, is that administrators and referees of some of the servers are trusted, or atleast know how to interpret their opinion. This is just an example, likely there are better suggestions.

All in all, such a karma system would only globally ban a player in very extreme situations. For example, an extreme camper might be someone you don't like on your server, but would never be a reason to global ban a player. Using cheats or being known as a regular deconner might usually be a reason to global ban a player.
Local banning as it is now would still be in place for smaller offenses, violations of rules that only applies to that particular server (e.g. usage of strong language/extreme camping/one-time-deconning/noobing).

Also there has to be rules about ban length. For example, for a one-time offense of using cheat clients may lead to only one month of ban time. If caught a second time, or when it has been observed that a player has tried to avoid the ban, the ban is extended to a much longer time.
Life-time bans usually just ensures that the offender tries with extreme means to sabotage a servers operation.

I agree! This would be a neat system... So if you get too many negative ratings, that contain the word "hack" you get banned globally yeah! BUT... how do you know people are honest... for all you know they could be bullshitting just to get you banned

[gareth]

simple solution: make the server browser show which servers have admins online (admins that can ban or at least kick), then i wouldnt play on a server without admins.

they have to be responsible admins of course

[Dracone]

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NSMCURBK

Just a little something some people might want to know. If you don't give a shit, please don't flame, I simply want those who are a bit curious about the huge amount of aimbots to at least see this...it may be all true, it may be mostly false, but you never know.  

Sometimes it's saying it's unavailable, don't worry.

[sleekslacker]

Distributing qkeys with a price tag on each doesn't really stop the crackers from looking at the open source qkey generator code and make their own valid generator. I don't really understand how this will be implemented. It will work depending on how you put the register<->lookup/confirm user system in place. But really, the solution is already here : private server.

[Eeeew Spiders]

Distributing qkeys with a price tag on each doesn't really stop the crackers from looking at the open source qkey generator code and make their own valid generator. I don't really understand how this will be implemented. It will work depending on how you put the register<->lookup/confirm user system in place. But really, the solution is already here : private server.

I think you misunderstood the price tag idea. You are only allowed to play when our qkey/username etc is registered at a global database, which costs to get it registered there. Only when your qkey matches with the one in the global database are you allowed to play. So you could generate all the qkeys you want, as long as there is no match for it in the global database, you cant play. Not that i am in favor of the price tag idea, but it atleast is one way how to make it work.

[PIE]

Any option that involves cost charges me for other people being assholes which in turn pisses me off even more. Not to mention a certain someone does like you and kicks you or bans you for no reason says your a hacker etc even if they are a trusted person on the karma system just having a bad day.. thats screwing with your money.

If you put your software on someone else's computer and they can do to it as they wish then there will always be problems. THE BEST SOLUTION is for people to quickly make patches for these bots and have an update system in tremulous. Thats the problem with the other games is they have aimbotters.. they see they do.. they sometimes fix the problem.. they just don't implement the solution quickly and just wait for the next version etc. We have a great community, and a lot of coders. We can patch this stuff in a reasonable time-frame i'm sure. This kind of solution deals with not only current problems but future ones.

As far as greifers etc... the best you can do is mac/ip/guid kicking... yeah they can spoof them but it still makes it less convenient and accessible. There is NO solid way to authenticate someone IS NOT someone else.
(maybe ask for it to generate a machine specific key on connection and send it instead of just storing it)

[Nux]

The handy thing about that system is if someone gives out their clean account to dirty people, they will make it dirty and it will be the original account holders fault for letting them use it.

There will always be ways of getting round measures. All we can do is make it as inconvenient as possible to do so.

[doomagent13]

This idea probably wouldnt be very do-able until trem 2...

Get the PROCESSOR serial# and build the guid from it.  Put the code to generate the guid in the CGAME, and make the pure-check less hackable.  REQUIRE that the CGAME and GAME be built at the same time and have each server op put some lock-string/what-not in one of the bg_* files to enforce it.

Still not fool-proof, but might work, although it probably would require each server to in effect be running their own mod. (might not be bad, as it would somewhat keep people to their favorite servers)

This also might turn the client into little more than the interpreter of the CGAME and UI qvms.

[null]

*sigh*

Punkbuster - crap, and since opensource game worthless
GUIDS - can be changed
Hardware based GUIDS - can change hardware ids, can spoof hardware ids. Ever heard of punkbuster hardware ban? Its been spoofed and broken, and it isnt open source.
Karma system - cheaters create a 'new player', so they have 0 karma. you cant ban everyone with 0 karma because then nobody new would play
pure check- easily hackable

if you try to make some sort of anticheat or fancy thing that isnt serverside but is clientside, the opensource aspect causes it to fail because you can just compile the client with protection removed and spoof crc or whatever verifies.

option? update game to change stuff so current cheat doesnt work anymore

<3

[Plague Bringer]

An updated game means an updated bot.

Now that the hack has been released, people will start to add on to the code, changing it and, most likely, frequently updating it.

[Eeeew Spiders]

A last note: With an open source game, it will be impossible to have a failsave system. The only thing one can do is to make it as hard as possible.

There will always be ways of getting round measures. All we can do is make it as inconvenient as possible to do so.

Yes, and I think that having to get a new email address to sign up to these forums for each time you got banned is one of the more tedious solutions:

- sign up to hotmail
- confirm hotmail address
- sign up to tremulous.net
- confirm signup to tremulous.net

The time difference between signing up to tremulous.net and for tremulous.net to send out the confirmation mail could be delayed programatically.

For those with not-so-dynamic-IPs simple IP subnet bans are still sufficient.

Most other solutions (except for the monetary solution) simply requires to restart the client after reconfigure GUID/MAC/HD Serial and the griefer/cheater is back after 5 seconds.

And to repeat, we can't do anything to reliable make sure that someone (cheater and griefers) cant play trem ever, even with servers which are monitored 24/7. We can only come up with a solution that give server operators a bit more control and the players less aggrevation.

If every day atleast one cheater/griefer in the wide world discovers Tremulous and signs up and cheats/griefs on a server, there will be atleast every day some griefing/cheating happening. No single system can get rid of atleast a low bias of regular griefing.

option? update game to change stuff so current cheat doesnt work anymore
<3

Good idea, or even more simpler, make trem so it gets rid of the griefers and cheaters But more serious, this just calls for a race between developers and cheat writers, and you will have smarter and harder to detect cheating. Atleast an aimbotter is very recognizable by an experienced player.

[Hxaltai]

Yes, and I think that having to get a new email address to sign up to these forums for each time you got banned is one of the more tedious solutions:

- sign up to hotmail
- confirm hotmail address
- sign up to tremulous.net
- confirm signup to tremulous.net

The time difference between signing up to tremulous.net and for tremulous.net to send out the confirmation mail could be delayed programatically.

Two first steps are easily removed by using a disposable email service like mailinator (you'd have to track them all and ban them).
Artificially extending the duration of the registration process isn't that useful, because you can pipeline requests (submit  a dozen registration requests and wait for all of them to complete).

Apart from this I wanted to reiterate that any hardware based UIDs are useless on current PCs, because they can easily be forged and the software modified to send forged UIDs. What would be needed is hardware that has cryptographically signed serial numbers (by the hardware manufacturer). TPM which will be included in future PCs may support that (but is evil for other reasons).