How to combat hackers

[Moneypennie]

I propose that rather than just requiring a "real" email address to create an account, you should also require a "real" phone number. When you register your phone number, either a text message or an automated voice message is sent to you phone with a 4 or 5 digit number. Then you must validate your phone number by entering the code that was sent to that number.

That way, if someone is band from the game because of hacking, the person will have to register a new phone number to create a new account. This means that if the person has a cell phone and a land line, then he/she could only be banned twice unless he/she is willing to change their phone number or use a friend's.

Since there is a limited number of friends most people have, and changing your phone number is a pain, hopefully the hackers will eventually get weeded out (or at least the obvious ones).

If there account gets banned for hacking there should be a system where they can get their account back if they pay an extra "hacking fee" and then for the next six months, all their in game characters will have to wear a large pointy "dunce" hat to signify their offense and make it harder to cheat again without others noticing.

[Bags]

Require a real CC. If any account using a credit card is banned for hacking don't allow that credit card to be used again for planetside.

[Wrath]

I propose that rather than just requiring a "real" email address to create an account, you should also require a "real" phone number. When you register your phone number, either a text message or an automated voice message is sent to you phone with a 4 or 5 digit number. Then you must validate your phone number by entering the code that was sent to that number.

That way, if someone is band from the game because of hacking, the person will have to register a new phone number to create a new account. This means that if the person has a cell phone and a land line, then he/she could only be banned twice unless he/she is willing to change their phone number or use a friend's.

Since there is a limited number of friends most people have, and changing your phone number is a pain, hopefully the hackers will eventually get weeded out (or at least the obvious ones).

If there account gets banned for hacking there should be a system where they can get their account back if they pay an extra "hacking fee" and then for the next six months, all their in game characters will have to wear a large pointy "dunce" hat to signify their offense and make it harder to cheat again without others noticing.

cant see anybody wanting to register phone numbers to accounts and to be frank how hard is it to pick up a prepaided mobile number you can get a sim card for like £2 and a new phone number to boot

a properly maintained game with patchs should keep the majorty of hackers out and banning there accounts is a very justable punishment for hacking.

[Bags]

cant see anybody wanting to register phone numbers to accounts and to be frank how hard is it to pick up a prepaided mobile number you can get a sim card for like £2 and a new phone number to boot

a properly maintained game with patchs should keep the majorty of hackers out and banning there accounts is a very justable punishment for hacking.

Gmail requires phone linkage if you want to be able to recover your account in the case of hack / password loss.

[Valverde]

I am usually a very private person, so giving out my phone number even for a secure sign up is still uncomfortable to me. I do think the email bit excluding when having the initial sign up is useless. I think a simple Username password is just best. The reason I say this is, if someone wants to get your information they will. Hackers don't so much hack as they socialize. The best Hacker is a social master. Not only do people lie but they are willing to tell you their deepest secrets if you can just get underneath their skin. Most account hacks are do to giving someone to much information.

I personally have never had an account hacked, but I do a few things.

I sign up for services through email address that I make for junk mail specifically. I never use real information unless it comes to a credit card. I never put my real age in. I also never ever give information about myself that relates to specifics or general specifics. I am not saying I haven't said where I live, but I never give exacts. Like I live in Tampa FL, But I do not really live in Tampa FL, I live in a city near it. Also nobody really cares, name a specific city and they are fine with it.

[Hamma]

They need solid, real anti cheat methods in PSN

[Sirisian]

Are you against the valid CC option? It stops hackers as long as SOE has a few in game GMs to track hackers and verify claims. When someone is banned for hacking their CC would be banned and their account and their work. Usually that's enough to stop people.

This also enforces trial accounts.

[Hamma]

I think that is one good countermeasure.

But honestly, putting in an anti hack system (see VAC or Punkbuster) is another line of defense that a modern FPS needs. You can argue how good these systems are but in the end it's another deterrent that could stop little Joe Asshat from pwnsaucing an entire base with his wallhacks.

There needs to be a multi tiered defense against hackers in game and out of game in the form of account controls.

[Bags]

Punkbuster is a horrible anti-cheat. Thought I'd throw that out there. It's a resource hog comparatively, a pain to setup, and it doesn't even stop hacking.

I've never seen a blatant hacker in TF2 or L4D so I'd say vac does its job.

Warden (Blizzard's) is another fairly good tool.


anyhow, the key to low hacking is:
1.) Require legit CC for accounts and any trial, ban CC from paying if an account on it is banned for hacking.
2.) Actively patch game to prevent exploits / hacks
3.) Have active GMs.

[Traak]

Punkbuster is a horrible anti-cheat. Thought I'd throw that out there. It's a resource hog comparatively, a pain to setup, and it doesn't even stop hacking.

I've never seen a blatant hacker in TF2 or L4D so I'd say vac does its job.

Warden (Blizzard's) is another fairly good tool.


anyhow, the key to low hacking is:
1.) Require legit CC for accounts and any trial, ban CC from paying if an account on it is banned for hacking.
2.) Actively patch game to prevent exploits / hacks
3.) Have active GMs.

Add detection for number of kills per second. A sniper weapon killing five in the space of two or three seconds? (not all simultaneously)? Nah, that should raise a flag.

Further, we should be able to ALWAYS have the last few seconds recorded, on a rolling scheme, so that if we die to some hacker, we can just submit the video of the last few seconds to Sony. LOLZOMGUSUCKTR or whoever can be seen sniping you when you are in a basement in Sanctuary, or wherever.

Or flying tanks, or whatever other glitches. Just make the last ten frames before you died automatically recorded just in case.

Now, this may be too resource-intensive, of course, but just an idea. There are shooter games that let you replay what you died from or killed with.

Another angle is automatic flags going up for high scorers. Gee, SnerdlyTR or whatever has scored 50 kills with no deaths in six minutes. How did he do this? Then a dev can watch through his eyes or third-person watch him, and see what he's doing. If he sees him knowing when exactly to step out, when it wasn't humanly possible to know an enemy was there, then he gets banned for using two accounts and two computers, and two empires, for example.

JPMonr0e or any of his 0-for-O aliases he uses would be without excuse then. If someone is seemingly clairvoyant, always seeming to know where the enemy is the exact second he is going to get there, they would have to explain to Sony why they know whatever they know.

Timers for last shot before reload until first shot after reload would indicate the hackers who are speeding things up. Time to empty a clip. Time to switch weapons. Overall speed, such as when running. REXo's should not be able to outstrip surging cloakers, and the positional data of the game makes it easy to find that.

Another angle is using code right in the game engine, all compiled and very difficult to reverse-engineer, that will allow a Sony server to talk to the possible cheating computer and see if it filters out "damage packets" more than other packets from the data stream. If 27 shotgun blasts at point-blank range (as sent by the Sony computer) don't lay a guy down, then he is damage-packet filtering, especially if any other packets have seemingly less trouble getting through.

People who cloak and use SS a lot see a lot of the crap you HA's don't see so much, the "miracle" of them being able to zero in, in a forest, on you, as you run with SS on, and they couldn't have seen you from 2km away. Being sniped while cloaked and crouched. It goes on and on.

There are a few ideas. Anything that uses them precious clock cycles could be invoked only if certain flags were raised.

In short, make it so the cheaters have to keep THEIR heads down, not the honest players.

Oh, and on the identity angle: Why not just ban the cheater from PS. Not his credit card, but himself. Then it doesn't matter what credit card he uses. If his name is John Doe, well, that could cause some difficulties.

I believe Sony values its paying customers enough to really tackle the cheating this time around. Up until PS, there was never an MMOFPS of this quality at all, so they were blunting a lot of shovels breaking new ground. I still remember exactly where I was when I first read about PS. It had an article in Game Informer with an NC pointing a sweeper. It informed us that there was an open beta, which I swiftly volunteered for.

I believe PS:Next will be a big hit, and that Sony has worked hard for all those years we were wondering where the devs were. I figured they were working on the next PS. I was right.

[CutterJohn]

Having a font that distinguishes between lower case L's and upper case I's would be helpful, so that people can't name themselves IIIIIlllIlIIlIIlIlI and be almost impossible to report.

In fact, just have names be right clickable on kill spam, so you can right click, report. If that person is in a vehicle, everyone in the vehicle is reported.. GMs can sort out who did what later.


I've always wanted to see a game that didn't ban accounts caught cheating, and instead just put them in a permanent jail area in game that you can't get out of. In fact.. Here we go.

People caught hacking, when logged in, spawn... Outside the shooting range in VR. They get access to all the weapons, and all the certs, but are forever locked inside the target area. They can't even shoot in. Forever destined to be target practice for noobs. If they aren't logged in, their name is forever honored by having a target dummy named after him.

[Sirisian]

Having a font that distinguishes between lower case L's and upper case I's would be helpful, so that people can't name themselves IIIIIlllIlIIlIIlIlI and be almost impossible to report.

In fact, just have names be right clickable on kill spam, so you can right click, report. If that person is in a vehicle, everyone in the vehicle is reported.. GMs can sort out who did what later.

Tab complete has always been needed in this game with name highlighting or something. :)

[Valverde]

Punkbuster is a horrible anti-cheat. Thought I'd throw that out there. It's a resource hog comparatively, a pain to setup, and it doesn't even stop hacking.

I've never seen a blatant hacker in TF2 or L4D so I'd say vac does its job.

Warden (Blizzard's) is another fairly good tool.


anyhow, the key to low hacking is:
1.) Require legit CC for accounts and any trial, ban CC from paying if an account on it is banned for hacking.
2.) Actively patch game to prevent exploits / hacks
3.) Have active GMs.

I agree with you. I also noticed it isn't a self updater so when there is a game playing with a newer version you have to manually update it. I also have had punkbuster become corrupt before.

[Hamma]

I was just using that as an example - I am honestly not a fan of PB either.

[Raymac]

I thought they used VAC for Modern Warfare 2, and that shit became a hackfest. Also, you couldn't even report hackers, which I felt made absolutely no sense. Let the community police themselves a littlebit.

Frankly, I don't know much about hacker tech, but Planetside Next better have a good system in place, because 1 hacker can ruin the fun for dozens of people.

[Bags]

I thought they used VAC for Modern Warfare 2, and that shit became a hackfest. Also, you couldn't even report hackers, which I felt made absolutely no sense. Let the community police themselves a littlebit.

Frankly, I don't know much about hacker tech, but Planetside Next better have a good system in place, because 1 hacker can ruin the fun for dozens of people.

I would assume Valve doesn't update VAC themselves for non-Valve games.

[Wrath]

I thought they used VAC for Modern Warfare 2, and that shit became a hackfest. Also, you couldn't even report hackers, which I felt made absolutely no sense. Let the community police themselves a littlebit.

Frankly, I don't know much about hacker tech, but Planetside Next better have a good system in place, because 1 hacker can ruin the fun for dozens of people.

MW2 became a hack fest not because of VACs failings but because IW pissed off the PC community removing server support bringing in x box style match making. and in doing so claimed it was going to make the game hacker free.

that basically threw down the gaulet to every hacker group out there to go hack the game which they did with glee.

and to be far with both VAC and Punk buster there the lazy way to combat the cheats, banning people who use the cheats isnt the fix patching out the cheats that they use is. if a games properly maintained and patched regular it should never get over run by cheats there will always be a few in the game. but its something you've got to live with since no anti cheat program in the world will catch em all.

[Bags]

and to be far with both VAC and Punk buster there the lazy way to combat the cheats, banning people who use the cheats isnt the fix patching out the cheats that they use is. if a games properly maintained and patched regular it should never get over run by cheats there will always be a few in the game. but its something you've got to live with since no anti cheat program in the world will catch em all.

Valve properly maintains their games, plus people run their own servers.

[Hamma]

Yea COD is a very bad example from a hacking perspective. Those jackwagons thought it would be a good idea to do match making similar to Console's on a PC.. that's just dumb.

Hacking is a huge problem in FPSs but one thing that SOE has an advantage on is people are paying for the game. If they hack they just simply ban their account and thats about it. What hacker is going to spend all the time to create more accounts requiring more billing information?

I think PSN needs good hack detection, solid CSR's, and a solid banning system in place to prevent repeat hackers.

[Moneypennie]

What about prepaid credit cards that you can get at the grocery stores? Or SOE game cards?

If you're willing to put in credit card and billing info, why not a phone number?

[Wrath]

Valve properly maintains their games, plus people run their own servers.

i'm fully aware of that fact thats why valve games arent over run with cheats even after 5-6-7 years in some cases of there release I was talking about VAC as a anti hack system not valve as a company.

[LordReaver]

This discussion only makes sense if it is F2P. If it's subscription again (as it should be), then simple banning should be enough.