Well, me and some of my clan members have gotten sick of finding hackers in all of the good servers. I was thinking about starting and Anti-Hacking group to help battle these guys. Some of the ideas I came up with are as follows:

Let's start out with the simple and obvious. I, or someone else, could make a site for it and host it. On the site, we could have descriptions of what certain hacks look like and how to tell if someone is hacking. Furthermore, we could record short videos of hackers in action to show people exactly what to look for. This would help server-hosters and admins to determin the difference between hacking and lag, and I know many of you are sick of being falsely accused of hacking and being vote kicked.

Another idea: We could have a select, trustworthy few people that have access to a certain area of the site where there is a PHP script where they can type an IP of a known hacker and click "Submit" and it would be saved to a file called "banned.txt" From there, people could periodically download that file to their Soldat directory, thus, updating their "banned.txt" which will keep all known hackers out of the majority of servers (assuming people actually utilise this).

Another thing we could do is to locate hacking sites and report them to Michal. I don't know that he could do anything about shutting down the site or not, but he could at lease download the hacks and find out how to create a fix for it, if he so desired. Since we're on the subject of helping Michal fix up Soldat (which, by the way, is already an AWESOME game), we could also record demos of big bugs/glitches that we become aware of. I, for one, know a very serious bug that, if it were to get out, would basically ruin the game until it was fixed. (Don't bother asking me about it. I refuse to tell anyone, for fear they might "leak" it).


Also, I'm going to need a name for it. Some ideas are "Anti-Hacking Legion" "Anti-Hacking League" or simply "Anti-Hacking Group" and some others allong those lines. Let me know if you come up with a better name.

Anyway, tell me what you think. Hit me with your opinions. HIT ME!

Well the third suggestion I believe happens already, the first suggestion may be too ambitious, and the second suggestion is perfectly fine.

There isn't any fool-proof method for catching hackers though. For instance, they can slightly tweak their speed so that they'll be going faster than everyone else but you'll barely notice.

Then there's also the fact that many hackers have ip-spoofers so that they can get right back into soldat or even circumvent the ban without changing their ip.

And finally, there will be tons of noobs who go to your site and think that they know how to spot hackers, when in fact they'll be easily confused as to what is hacking and what's just lag.

Instead of trying to catch and ban hackers, what you should focus on is trying to get MM to let you help him search through the code of the game to find potential weak spots that hackers can exploit.

Although, that will be very hard considering the fact that he is very protective of his game. You'd probably have to be established as anti-hackers for a while before he even thought about letting you look over his stuff. There's also the problem that he might be able to spot any weaknesses much better than you.

It's a good idea, but you would have to be much more specialized than just a hacker reporting site.

The problem with an Anti-Hacking group is that the casual Soldat player doesn't know anything about it, and for the most part, most people these days just don't care.

However, I'm all for it. I suggest that maybe we could create a list of all know hacker ID's/IP's and have servers download the list every time they're set up, and it would append to their own ban list, thus making it universally harder for hackers to spread.

Mmm, we could have some type of a trustable 'vigilante'-style group of people who would get administrative abilities to the big servers (U13, C'N'S, Hawtsecks, and Ownage: CTF) with the approval of the hosts, of course. The question falls down to who can be trusted with this power. The people I'm thinking of are ones that frequent the popular, high-end servers (such as the ones I've mentioned above), and are willing to accept the responsibility of banning hackers and kicking idlers, all while not misusing it to their own ends (such as kicking someone out for playing in a style that they dont hold in favor).

i can do it. if you ever find me [IMAGE]ing around you can ban me. no strings attached.

i don't know why this is so complicated - all you need to counteract cheaters are active admins.

I love this idea, especially the demos of hackers and whatnot. If you're worried about people not knowing about it, like Lapis Lazuli is, you could always ask for it to be put under the "links" section of the Soldat website. If your site's good, I'm sure MM would love to.
Also, may I suggest PMing or emailing Michal about the bug you mentioned? It seems fairly serious, so you should probably let him know if you haven't already.

Count me in. =D

Vijchtidoodah: That would be the point of the videos. A single video could demonstrate the difference between lag and a hack. And if the person still bans laggers rather than hackers, then that particular person is beyond help, IMO. At least it would make it less likely that they ban laggers. As for the source code, I really wouldn't know what to look for. That's just me, though. I guess someone could join who knows what to look for. But, like you said, it's probably rather unlikely that the "Big Double M" would hand out the source code.

Lapis Lazuli: Both of the issues you stated were addressed in my post. lol. I said there could be an area that teaches people what to look for in hackers. And only a few trustworthy people would be real members of the group that had control of who was banned. As for the second part, I mentioned something quite similar to that. Maybe you meant that the process of downloading the file could be automated. Not sure

that fuking sniper: That's a good idea. Thank you for your input.

Psyker: It's not up to me who gets admin rights. Talk to those servers' respective admins for that. =S

Jello: I'm already on top of that. ;)

Thanks, guys, for all of your input. Keep it coming!

i already told you my opinion on it on MSN, which simply was that the entire soldat community that cares at all is already anti hacking, and its kinda pointless to try and start some elite anti hacker group. might as well change this forum name to "Soldat Forum - btw we are anti-hack group too"

Alright, anybody that wants to reduce cheating (and perhaps exploitation use, but that's iffy) has my complete support. If you need any help at all, just send me a PM.

just tell us the bug already ;)

I'm all for it.

However, it is a pain in the ass when hackers keep coming back and back after being banned.

And we should look for things hackers will exploit before hand, but this idea sounds good as well.

SuS seems to be doing a good enough job already. I almost always play on SuS servers.

But why not? I dont see much bad sides...

very good idea. if you want i can do the site in flash for you.

maybe a new super-ban command? where the person who is banned is IP banned from the server. never again to connect.

I dont see how can this improve anything. If you have any information simply submit it to Michal or mods.

quote:Originally posted by Willvery good idea. if you want i can do the site in flash for you.

maybe a new super-ban command? where the person who is banned is IP banned from the server. never again to connect.


There are 2 kind of IP

1 You get a IP and you have it all the time but can be changed

2 These IP changed everytime you log on to the net you always get a new one.

So you cant really IP ban but for some it helps

You can't stop hackers unless the creator, MM, make a better anti-cheat detections, banning is also not a method. Even with static IP, it is simple to get a new one.

i have tonnes of footage of haxxorz :S

Well if there is an anti-hacker group then there must because a league of hackers. I would like to name this league:
Q.U.E.E.R.

Quality
Uber
Engineered
Extentions
Revised

maybe even D.U.M.B.A.S.S.

Dudes
Using
Maximum
Black
Arsenal
Syncronizing
Stupidity

or perhaps F.A.G.

Freakin
Awesome
GiantHackingOrganization

Looks more like FAGHO to me....

quote:Originally posted by Lapis_LazuliThe problem with an Anti-Hacking group is that the casual Soldat player doesn't know anything about it, and for the most part, most people these days just don't care.

However, I'm all for it. I suggest that maybe we could create a list of all know hacker ID's/IP's and have servers download the list every time they're set up, and it would append to their own ban list, thus making it universally harder for hackers to spread.


I have a list of hackers IP's. Not sure if they are dynmaic though.

It is a nice innitiative to try and stop hackers from ruining our game, but there are only a few effective methods to do so.

The first, and probably most succesfull method, is active admins. Basicly it's just having more admins on the soldat servers, this is mostly in control by the server admins, of course. Though, it's possible to stimulate those admins to add them:
- if Soldat would improve some admin related things as I suggested some weeks ago, including more detailed info on what admins do, and a certain level of admins "moderators" (Click).
- The players on it can help the admins do their job. It's impossible for me to watch the soldat admin 24/7 to see if there are any hacker reports. What users can do when they see one, and don't have an admin on, is trying to contact the admins through IRC or any other contact. I have been able to ban several hackers this way, and I highly appreciate it when someone does report.

The second would have to be done by MM: Adding code to stop cheating apps to work. Unfortunatly, it is almost impossible to make a system totally safe. Which is what makes the version hack free for a few days, till someone makes a new hack.

Thirdly, trying to stop the distribution of hacks. This is, according to me, the most useless thing to try. I compare it to a drugs network, you can get rid of some links, but never of the whole network. Hack-creators will always find a way to get their hacks to other users, and that's even easyer on the internet, than in RL.


About the IP solution on the first post, as told before, there are static and dynamic IP-adresses. The majority of internet users have a dynamic one, so don't even bother tracking IP's, it'll ban you more innocent ones(when they are assigned to an IP-adress that has been banned) than real hackers. Secondly, making one banned.txt that every server downloads certainly gives too much power in anyone who can ban IP-adresses, imo.

quote:Originally posted by Denackemaking one banned.txt that every server downloads certainly gives too much power in anyone who can ban IP-adresses


Very good point Denacke

then it must be extremely selective