OpenArena Message Boards

I know this is my first post, and you may think it's the classical noob accusation. But I've been playing OA for about 2 years and I'm a lot better than average. Usualy I play on CTF on IstantGib servers and almost ever end up with a 300+ score and I don't camp :)

A couple of days ago I saw a guy with a colorful name (I don't remember his name) that was not a really good player, didn't know how to move and made lots of mistakes, but he's aim was perfect. He never failed a shot, he could pop out of nowhere and kill everybody in less than a second, I only could kill him when I was quite far and he was distracted (killing others of my team). Anyway my team lost three games in a row, but my score was always 200+ and he never went over 150.

Then I started to spectate him, just to be sure if it could really be an Aimbot, I never saw one on OA, so I was very sceptical. He aimed everybody in the area he was with really weird moves, like he could guess everyplace I guy could be, automatic aiming, and never failing a single shot. And for no reason he challenged me to a 1 vs 1, I did some 1vs1 and ended up quite well for me, so I accepted.

We made two matches on the space maps (OA_CTFISH or something) and guess what, he never moved, and by the end of the game, both games ended after 30 minutes he never moved... and I couldn't shot him not for a single time 'cause everytime I spawned my lifetime was about zero seconds. In both matches he's score was 700+ and I did a wonderfull 0.

wow that guy is a complete and utter loser who should be sht

Demo?

MIOW, well I'm short of a noob where it comes to commands and stuff like that, so a Demo is suposed to be what?

you said 2 years OA now ?

Colorfull nick ? ... Which nick ?

EDIT : ok .... I've missed the part when u wrote u dind't remember ...

anyway :


IF ... and I say IF ... it was an aimbot , this action is expected since quite all type of aimbots can only lock on a single target.

Also spawnfragging is another characteristic : even if the spawn area is predictable in CTF ( the opposite side ) , he cannot predict quite all spawnpoints in which u respawn , since they are selected randomly in team games ( unless u had a slow computer/connection that adds a significant delay to your spawn )

:o This is record of game(s). How couldn't you know what is demo when you know of aimbots?

http://www.planetquake3.net/tweak/demoexp.html
or cl_autoRecordDemo "1" to record new demo authomatically on each map change.

There are 2 types of aimbots for oa now and yesterday i saw a modified version of the one aimbot - no demos needed, because it is to obiously :-(
If you do not believe me, you should play more often at an instagib server near you ;-)

btw: cacatoes kicked an aimbot (googlebot iirc) few days ago.

This is pointless talk like "i've found yet another aimbot, crap!!"
If you wanted to clarify things at least a bit you would better provide a demo instead of spamming.

I don't like iCTF.

I saw aimbots in OA.

Falkland, no my computer is not something big, bit it can handle OA with no problems (AMD Athlon X2 2GHz, ATI Radeon X850, 2Gb of RAM DDR, 250 Gb Disk and using Linux)

schlorri, it's not like I'm actually counting it, but I guess it's about 2 years.

MIOW, well you know, I never saw an aimbot on OA before, I did saw some in Call of Duty and Counter Strike, but never on OpenArena, if I see him again I'll do a demo.

Peter Silie, oh, wait I guess that was the guy, GoogleBot, that's it.

miow, few weeks ago someone posted a demo here.
i did not know that you have not seen it.
maybe the serach can help you finding the thread.

Reading fail.

You DO not have for sure any problem with respawn ... so ... ;)

Anyway , I've seen a demo downloaded from Evil clan forum ; there was a player using an aimbot that printed a colorfull mex like this just everytime killed someone :


Or shit like that ...

Actually, I have been seeing a rise in AIMBOTs in OA lately. The thing about AIMBOTs is that not all of them are easily spotted while some arent. Some have autoaim, autolock, some just help keep the aim steady on the opponent's brightskin model, etc...As a player, you can tell when someone is using a AIMBOT when their MG and LG kills alittle too quickly and it cannot recover fast enough. It appears that since ver8.0 has begun, AIMBOT use has slowly began to rise and sadly, its not going to go down. I hope in the next version there can be a way to prevent or display who is using such applications.

Here it goes the Demo, I got a guy called All (to avoid being kicked) on All rockets, I was using the laptop and the contection was quite laggy but I guess it's pretty obvious:

http://www.divshare.com/download/7891395-3f2 (http://www.divshare.com/download/7891395-3f2)

It's inside a Zip file.

I don't think prevention is possible without a PunkBuster like system, which is something that the ioQuake3 developers and OA developers have said they would never do.

An idea used in Cube (iirc) is to include some extra code in the official binaries that only allows them to connect to pure servers -- any binary you compile yourself will not be allowed to connect.  Naturally a determined skilled hacker would be able to circumvent that measure, but it would prevent most of the current aimbots I reckon.

andrewj,

Well on COD2, sorry if I'm refering to this game too many times, but I played it for quite sometime, there was PunkBuster and I actually tried to use a couple of cheats to really see how easy it would be, and on pure servers with PunkBuster I was allways kicked after 2 minutes, so it works quite well to reduce the problem, but it won't be complete solution, 'cause there is allways a way around.


That's an excelent good idea, at least noob-like cheaters would need to be very skilled on hacking to use the aimbots.

I'd like to ask if anyone has already saw an Wallhack, I'm affraid there maybe some stuff like that around.

This is the worst solution : in this way u can only stop the practice of recompiling binaries and this WILL STOP also active DEVELOPMENT since I'm the first lurking on ioquake3 bugzilla and other q3/ioq3 derived games for patches and improvements to be applied to the engine. One way development is never a good thing IMHO.

And u miss also that who codes aimbots has enough skill to circumvent every kind of protection ; at least an aimbot can be attached to the engine process _ONLY_ through the in-memory binary pointers without having to recompile the engine binary  ( like q3-*hook*-series did and do )

OA needs a detect method like PB that checks for cheats cvars/vars/particular key binds from a list that can be updated as new cheats will be out (and known ): http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=1908.msg25602#msg25602 since u need and u can ONLY stopping the USE of the cheats

Once u have a detect system u can decide which policy u would like to implement ( a broadcasted mex on the console , a kick , a silent disconnection , a ban .... a code injection in the guilty PC that freezes the PC :D ... )

There was an interesting discussion on ioquake3 mailing list about cheats some time ago :
- http://lists.ioquake.org/pipermail/ioquake3-ioquake.org/2007-May/thread.html
- http://lists.ioquake.org/pipermail/ioquake3-ioquake.org/2007-May/001701.html
- http://lists.ioquake.org/pipermail/ioquake3-ioquake.org/2007-May/001706.html

Oh... Ok, just forget about it. :P


But the people who use them ain't usually skilled on anything, and it seems to me that it's becoming quite easy to cheat.


The last option! Something like an BSOD for Windows and a Kernel Panic for Linux :mad:

prevention isnt even possible with punkbuster, there are many ones which work with latest punkbuster.  there will always be something ahead of the automated stuff.  having a good set of admins would help more.  combination could make stuff easier for them though...

Prevention doesn't deal anything with a detect system : an active prevention system is sending massive cheaters to one ( or better more )  psychiatric session(s) .

The "undetected cheats" will work until a unique detectable characteristic will be discovered/added to the list . And the main goal of PB is to stop massive use of cheats , not to make the game cheat-proof.

UrT 4.2 will have a detect system ;
NoGhost mod has a detect system and the experience they had with that is extremely positive :
- http://forums.noghost.net/cgi-bin/ib/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=3;t=1619;st=0
- http://forums.noghost.net/cgi-bin/ib/ikonboard.cgi?s=dfd5153e2049af660658d8c5f0325502;act=ST;f=9;t=4466;st=0


yeah of course ... the automated stuffs go ahead with their own legs.


Sure ... what I've seen is that having the rcon authorizes many "(pseudo)admins" to use cheats themselves ... I've experimented this very well around some OA and Q3 servers .

A detect system is a guarantee for players also in this "border" situation : detect system ON -> less cheats abuse for sure.

On the other side of course , ALL the "Admins" ( with capital A ) know ALL the cheats , old and new ones ,  that work with OA ... they ALL know every cheats unique cvar ... and they detect every single cheat in less than a millisecond. OMG .. YES , THEY CAN

detect would be useful yeah.  can they detect cheats which don't use cvars or injection though?  those are the ones i'm seeing being a problem to detect without doing some stuff which i think players would object to.  as in list all processes check for names and get a checksum of them all and check it against a list of checksums for known binaries floating around like 'surrealaim' which some have been caught using recently and hopefully not again since they are in a clan and actually like some members of that clan would hate to see it go down hill because a few decide to try it out..  of course a problem with this is can just hide the process lol

http://www.team-oan.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=108 (http://www.team-oan.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=108)

Sometimes this happens too ...

http://www.youtube.com/v/MshNt6IQoko&hl=en&fs=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MshNt6IQoko (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MshNt6IQoko)

If this is not an aimbot i dont know anymore.

His IP is 86.32.10.62

yes it is



EDIT : and I think he used dynamic IP , so banning the single IP doesn't solve the problem but banning all the ISP range will give no access to your server by any other player using an IP in that range ... anyway if there are other players and they will want to play, they could join other servers.

What about pic number one? Whats ur point? What if Prizzle was kiddin?

And was/is Prizzle kidding also when at the beginning of/middle of the game started/starts to kill himself/herself apparently without any control over it ?

And since it happened/happens also to other players ( not few players ) is it a new trendy mode for playing ?

Yes that looks like an aimbot to me, and a bit of a wall hack to i believe.

I think:
The weird trembling with machinegun is the aimbot correcting to hit every single bullet, not because of the color. It could be though, because he also fires on the rocketlauncher/ammo (but you dont know if he uses simplemodels like the maker of the video.)

Yes ... because the machinegun doesn't fire exactly over a single point (at least when it's fixed on a point , not while aiming over a target while moving ) and the aimbot predicts where the next bullet will be fired - the aimbot reads the same value that is passed to the "normal" game engine - and adjusts aim. You can clearly see this while spectating a CPM bot at level 100 while using machinegun : the target will be finished in few seconds because it places quite all the available mg bullets over target.

Other bots solve this problem by firering bullets not in auto but with single bursts over the machine gun fire rate ( eg , for example if the firerate is 1 bullet every 100 msec , the bot fire 1 bullet every 120msec : it's not counted as the next autofired bullet so the direction between the first bullet fired and the next will be not changed ) ... so the bullets are quite all fired over a single point and the bot doesn't need to adjust aim.

its because its a simple color aimbot and always moves towards the color even if its over it.

Do u mean that it acts exactly like your test aimbot ?

Nice ... I'm not an aimbot expert but for sure I'm not in the range of ppl that are destroying the game.

how nice of you to imply i'm cheating again as per usual, and to imply i'm one of the ones ruining the game?  thats too far for what i have done by just strafing left when you go left and pointing lighting at you and not releasing any cheating stuff or using it for other than example...  anyway back to the topic.  its because someone posted the aimbot used there in their forum and thats how that one works.  also try to remember he tried it out for a short time and hasn't used it since so there is little point fussing over it more unless its used again.  also requires brightskins because of it having to aim at a color.

yeah , that's OK ... you are right and I am wrong.

@ jessicara:

I dont think you should take too seriously Falkland's comments, lets go back to the past... last year for example... Nemesis server... EVERY SINGLE night Falkland connected to Nemesis he pointed at least one player and thought/accused about the using of aimbots, when NOBODY was using an aimbot. Do you want me to give you names of some 'pointed' players? I can, since I was treated like a cheater too. Good luck for us, the admin of nemesis talked to Falkland and LOTS of other players too, to TRY to make him understand WHAT IS TRULY AN AIMBOT and WHAT IS NOT.
So, I guess that u should not listen to a guy/girl like that with some stupid obsession about aimbots, saying that creating or modifying an aimbot is 'destroying the game'  ppppfffftt... REALLY? ok then, lets exterminate all those THOUSANDS of ppls who created an aimbot or cheats for every single game of every single console. Is that fun to you? a medieval attitude like that? If you are scared you kill it?

(http://z.about.com/d/atheism/1/0/J/0/3/WitchHang1678-e.jpg)

So lets reconsider this

Are you sure? mmmm maybe Im wrong or maybe thats why Nemesis players dont like you there ANYMORE??

not sure how interpret a post from someone named sarcasm :D

As ususal many words ( against me ) , so much smoke in the eyes of who reads ... u have learnt well the lesson .

Anyway ... u are right : coding ( and using ) aimbot ( or bots to aim, to win ) is not ruining the game and ruining the work of who makes map , of who tests them , giving suggestion for weapon balancing , item placement ... ruining the work of who spends time making/revisioning code for giving the best possible experience of the end users , finding bugs ... etc etc etc  all for free , in the few spare time they have .... NO ... this is a Falkland's mind mystification , distortion and twisting of the reality. He lives in his own world , back on the screen awaiting for the next ( he thinks he is ) cheater.

The masquerade knight have discovered the truth and made it available for u all .

Long life to the masquerade knight.

(http://archive.perfectduluthday.com/BadCat/VforVendetta.JPG)

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition... The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDqKiR5rNwY

lol and what does killing himself have to do with having an aimbot?
sarcasm does bring up a good point.

People who kill themselves in the middle of a match just have a good sense of humour .. ;)

you are clever enough to know that it's not sarcasm ... the aimbot Prizzle and other illustrious players use/used/have used , has the defect sometimes of causing a random suicides' series to the players using it , apparently without any control.

I don't know if it's a bind problem or another kind of defect ... maybe the bot expert can answer to this , since he seems to know every single cheat for the ID Tech 3 engine.

I think it is a practical joke from the aimbot programmer.

It is very common. The best example of one of these practical jokes was a Diablo 2 map hack that occasionally dropped all valuable items for the other players to pick up and then left the game so you had no change to collect them yourself.

Uh ... you are right ... maybe it's the own programmer's signature.

Other aimbots have one ... eg ... the smile char ( :) ) emission in the chat when the aimbot is loaded ... the gesture behaviour when the player is killed ... the emission in the chat of a binded text and/or hardcoded text when the player is killed ... the gesture behaviour after the aimbot has killed a player ... the simulation of a quickly mouse rotation when someone is specting ... the emission of a smile when the player is dead because of falling ( like CPMA bots do )

UrT 4.2 will not have much of a detect system.
It will add a cvar with a pbid (*lol, a uniqueid as cvar lol*) and if it comes high, it will possibly check the cvars.

Apart from that, it's only a ban system, and the players need to get "Passports" and get trust levels (you can also buy it...).
So you can only play on an UrT 4.2 server if you have a valid passport, that is not banned.
If you're banned, you're banned from all servers...

Most of it is most-likely coded in python, and it doesn't check a checksum, nor the memory, nor the fov/speed, nor its own integrity, and the way they intend to stop automatic passport creating by bots is guess what - a reCAPTCHA *lol*

Never mind that such a system enables the server admin to cheat without problems ;-))

Yes Falkland, you need to understand that there are virtually no aimbots for OpenArena and that's why most players are playing fair, including my humble self ;-))



Present perfect (have used) is the correct english grammar, because it (silently) implies an UNTERMINATED action ongoing from the past 'till and with now, which is what you want to say ,-)
Adding used and use is a pure redundancy.

LoL, you can do that with an autoIT script... - very funny, if you haven't yet, you must try it ;-)

Sure , my list of "fair players" is not exactly empty.


Thanks for the english ( but it also can be applied to other languages ) grammar lesson , anyway better beeing redundant than running the risk of missing the main point ... btw, last night Prizzle has added a new notch to his/her graphic that shows the probability ( it's an euphemism ... it's almost close to certainty ) of beeing permanently banned.

Nvm about the quoting of all my post to point the focus _ONLY_ on Urt 4.2 detect system or presumed detect system or whatever else ...

anyway , what u are describing seems not to be exactly in sync with what I've read : it's rather closer to the urtevolution ban system : http://urtevolution.com/site/

Yea, but when it comes to really fair players it's a short list, especially if you exclude those noobs who don't know what an aimbot is.

the list of fair players is short? lol just because there was a couple aimbots doesn't mean that the majority are hacking. If you exclude the noobs, then yeah, the list is short. 90% of oa is filled with noobs. Less than 1% hack. Before you start accusing of hacking, bring a god damn demo and quit your newb paranoia rants, just because some people have better aim than you.

first picture of yours falkland means absolutly nothing, you have nothing to prove that he was just kidding. Second picture is the same deal. I have played against HD, and I can tell you his aim is sub-par. Bring a god damn demo or shut up.

Do what davidd did.

What I have learned so far:

There are about 1000 "UAA" game servers using 20 slots every 20 minutes...
this means:
=> at least 60 000 authentification requests every hour
=> at least 40 000 000 database entries by month
=> at least 500 000 000 database entries by year

They use a passport and ban system, which is stupid, because they will have to keep every information for every client.
So if they keep every information (at 10Kb per entry), they will have a monthly database of 400 Gb and a yearly database of 5 Tb !

Then they need to keep it in RAID to prevent data loss, so they need at least 10 terrabyte within a year.
At 100$ per terrabyte drive, this makes $ 1000, for a none senseload of superfluous data alone.


Assuming 60 000 hits per hour, which is 1000 hits per minute or 16 hits per second and a minimalistic traffic of 5 kb per hit, this makes 80 kb/s of minimally required data throughput.
If they transfer at least 10 kb, it's alread 160 kb/s.
Then, they have to communicate all the authorizations to the servers.
Making again at leas 160 kb/s, which means standard operating procedures alone require 320 kb/s.


Assuming a 5 terrabyte database, with standard hard-disk being cheap only if they can be bought as one terrabyte per drive,
and a standard computer being able to search a 1 TB database in an acceptable time, they will require about 5 computes and a distributed database.
This requries a load-balancing server.

Totaling 5 database servers, 1 load balancing server and one webserver, as well as a reserve of at least 1 computer for each of them as failsafe.

Makes 14 computers. 14 computers require 2 netgear standard routers and 16 cables, as well as 2 reserve cables.

Assuming a free Linux infrastructure, that makes about $ 14'000 in computers and some peanuts for routers and cables, additional to the 1000$ minimum for storage hardware.

Assuming 14 computers and no peanuts, at 80 Watts per second, or 80 wattshours per hour or 700'800 Watthours per year, this makes 14 times 700 kWh in energy bill. Assuming $ 0.13 per kWh, this makes 91$ *14 = 1274 $

And about 12* 50 $/month = 600 $ per year for an internet connection.


So we have 1000$ per year for storage, 1300$ for electricity, plus about 2 computers to replace per year, equal 2000$ and 600 for server bandwidth makes net operating cost of 5000 $ per year, and 15'000 $ for initial equipment  

AND ALL THAT FOR A COMPUTER GAME... SICK ! SICK ! SICK !


Additionally, they cannot just ban every cheater, because they we will have to think about what to keep and for how long, and how they want to keep it (and where to get/put the hardware) ...


Their passport system:

(Click to see full sized image)
(http://www.imgplace.com/img146/5833/64uaapassportscheme.th.gif) (http://www.imgplace.com/viewimg146/5833/64uaapassportscheme.gif)

(http://www.imgplace.com/img146/1098/67uaapassportscheme1.th.gif) (http://www.imgplace.com/viewimg146/1098/67uaapassportscheme1.gif)


Their Python code:




Their client Cvars:

UAA_client "1"
- 0 disabled
- 1 UAA Passport and functions enabled

UAA_rcon_in_say "1"
- 0 disabled
- 1 say message starting by / are used as rcon cmd


Client command
uaa-passport <passport>
Set the client passport and generate a new uaa-passport file.


Their Server cvars

UAA_verbosity "1"
- 0 no message
- 1 messages on top
- 2 messages on bottom

UAA_log "1"
- 0 no log
- 1 UAA info in game log

UAA_cheaters "1"
- 0 accept cheaters
- 1 refuse banned IPs and logins

UAA_nicknames "1"
- 0 accept all nicknames
- 1 refuse stolen nicknames

UAA_tags "1"
- 0 no tag checking
- 1 refuse stolen clan tags

UAA_notoriety "0"
- 0 accept everybody
- 1 require valid UAA Passport for every players
- 10,20,30 etc. limit to players with this notoriety

UAA_groups ""
- "" accept everybody
- "13 27.5" require to be registered in group 13 or to be admin in group 27.

UAA_rcon_groups ""
- "" password only rcon
- "11.4 37" require to be at least referee of group 11 or friend in group 37

UAA_cmd_anonymous "uaa"
rcon commands available for every users.

UAA_cmd_passport "uaa uaa-status"
rcon commands available for passport owner.

UAA_cmd_friend "uaa uaa-status uaa-whois uaa-kick restart nextmap"
rcon commands available for friends.

UAA_cmd_member "uaa uaa-status uaa-whois uaa-kick uaa-ban restart nextmap map"
rcon commands available for members.

UAA_cmd_referee "uaa uaa-status uaa-whois uaa-kick uaa-ban uaa-say restart nextmap map devmap exec bigtext"
rcon commands available for referees.


Their server rcon commands

uaa-getstatus
UAA public status. Can't be retrieve without rcon password.

uaa
UAA short state. Display in server public getstatus

uaa-status
Display UAA settings

uaa-whois <client number|name>
Display information about a client.

uaa-say <client number|name|all> <server|console> <text>
Say to server top, console or client.

uaa-kick <client number|name> "<server message>" "<client message>"
kick a client with human readable reason and message.

uaa-ban <client number|name> "<server message>" "<client message>" <delay> <min|h|d|m|y>
ban a client with human readable reason and message - works only with the first group set by UAA_rcon_groups and if the server is registered in this group on UAA website.

All these rcon command can be used with a full player name, his slot number or a simple extract of the player name : "uaa-whois klat" will work for "|KLA|Klatuu"




The UAA PASSPORT (Their Concept v. 0.9.0)


The UAA proposes that a system should be created for identifying and authenticating players in real-time. In a second stage of deployment, we are developing an anti-cheat that works with the system as an extra layer of protection.

It will help to :

- Protect servers against cheaters
- Protect nicknames against thefts
- Protect clans tags against thefts
- Give partial or full access to rcon
- Make clan only (or league only) servers


UAA has coded a special dedicated server ioUrTded[UAA] and a special game client ioUrbanTerror[UAA].

They work together with a central authentication server, which manages the authorizations for every registered servers, player, or group of players.


CLIENT SIDE

For example, the player "Klatuu" will register at "http://passport.uaaportal.com/".

login: "klatuu"
password: "********"
e-mail: "klatuu@gmail.com"
nicknames: "Mr.Klatuu" "_Klatuu_"
automatic: player_id reg_IP reg_date last_change

Assumptions and Constraints
- E-mail should be editable, with e-mail validation for each change.
- Protected nicknames should use more than 3 letters
- Each user can protect 3 nicknames.

Our player Klatuu will receive a private key called uaa-passport by e-mail :

Your UAA Passport details are as follows:-

- Passport login: klatuu
- Passport key: 03A2D CF4AC67E461A0273D4A9EF4C56B

You can manage you account here : http://passport.uaaportal.com/en/profile/klatuu/

WARNING: Do NOT share you Passport Key with ANYONE, no one will ever ask for it ! Not even staff !

You can use your new UAA Passport by typing in the game console :
/uaa-passport 03A2D CF4AC67E461A0273D4A9EF4C56B

Or by replacing your current "uaa-passport" file near the "qkey" file by this new one :
uaa-passport (0.2Kb)





CLAN SIDE

Clan or league admin will register on "http://www.urtadmins.net/groups/"

group: "KLA"
password: "********"
full name: Killers Laggy & Astounding
type: "clan"/"league"/"server"
tag: |KLA|
website: http://klaclan.com
IRC: #klaclan
e-mail: KLAleader@klaclan.com
members: "KLAleader","Klatuu","Guignol", etc. (logins)
admins: "KLAleader","Klatuu" (logins)
automatic: group_id reg_IP reg_date last_change
this will be used :
- to have clans tag protection.
- to have "members only" servers for clans or leagues.
- to protect rcon use.

GAME SERVER SIDE
Game server configuration

The server will use these cvars:

set UAA_cheaters_protection 1 // refuse banned IPs and logins
set UAA_nicknames_protection 1 // refuse stolen nicknames
set UAA_tags_protection 1 // refuse stolen clan tags
set UAA_groups_only "KLA,etc" // require to be member of one of these groups
set UAA_groups_admin_rcon "KLA" // require to be admin in groups to use rcon
set UAA_passports_level 1 // 0 not required - 1 registered - 2 active - 3 well known - 4 fully verified - 5 master
example 1: UAA_cheaters_protection set to 1 and all others set to 0 => the server is public, but cheaters (detected by IP and login) will be kicked
example 2: UAA_groups_only set "KLA" => only players registered in KLA group can play.
example 3: UAA_groups_admin_rcon set to "KLA" => clan has fired a member, and have delete his login of admin list in group at UAA : the fired player can't use the rcon.
example 4: UAA_passports_level set to 2 => Only "active" players can enter : they have played more than 30 days the last year on UAA servers...


We could have a public sv_vars giving automatically the server status. This status should be print in logs by server on round start, be in status request, and should be used in the game servers list.

sv_punkbuster => "3"
// "public server with UAA protections"
sv_punkbuster => "4"
// "pro server for UAA registered players only"
sv_punkbuster => "5"
// "private server reserved to a UAA group"

We will use sv_punkbuster cvars to propagate this values cause we will not have to change the q3 master server for that.

Whitelist

Why not add a whitelist to let a server admin protect their players : UAA_whitelist.txt :

// UAA_whitelist.txt

// these UAA passports s will be always admitted
toto
klatuu
alfred

// theses IPs will be always admitted

212.120.13.0
212.120.13.5
132.120.13.50
Blacklist



A blacklist to let a server admin ban the players : UAA_blacklist.txt :

// UAA_blacklist.txt

// these UAA passports s will be always kicked

kenny
lamerononline

// theses IPs will be always kicked

212.120.13.5
132.120.13.50


IN GAME AUTHENTIFICATION

On connection to game server :

- The UAA Passport client will send a request to the UAA auth server :
nickname + IP + game server IP:port + UAA_passport (Encoded, for security)

- The game server will send a request to the UAA auth server :
nickname + IP + game server IP:port + UAA_groups_only

- The server will received from UAA auth server the answer UAA_login + UAA_validation + UAA_message + UAA_user_message.

Note: The system must work even if the UAA server is down : so the player will enter, and be kicked (if needed) only when UAA auth server will answer to the game server.

So, if needed, the player will be reject or kick by the game server with this message (for example) :

Server UAA protected : your UAA login is banned
Note: Woekele speak about using ioq3 auth scheme :
ioq3 sources : client : cl_main.c > description of the basic auth system
AUTHORIZE_SERVER_NAME "authorize.quake3arena.com"
PORT_AUTHORIZE 27952
This is what I have made (Kalish).

The UAA_login, UAA_validation and UAA_message should be printed in the game logs to be used by servers bots or stats tools.

HOW WORK PROTECTION
1 - Anticheat Solution

We are building a real anticheat solution in the UAA PAssport Client. So people who want to enter on a UAA protected server with passport control will need to use it. If a hack is detected, the Passport account will be automatically banned.

So, to try o see if you are ready to escape, you will need to create an account, and it will be banned. So UAA will have information about IP and account captured dya by day... and will verify directly if the player IP is not well known...

2 - Players ranks

People will really want to have an identity using UAA Passport :

This identity level will be displayed in game after the name during connection process, and in logs (for bots), and in website too :-)

We will have an algorithm for each level, this will be like in forum : more you play, more you are well known, more you have a rated rank.

3 - Paypal

People who want to help us can make donation. This donation will give us also "real" information about them. So we will considered them as surer player than others, and give them verified rank. So to access to high-level rank, you will need to pay and to play. This like in the real community.

Note: TwentySeven : "when payment is received you should record some identifiable information about how they paid. So you can track one buyer buying multiple keys".
UAA DATABASE
Following cheaters

On each servers authentification requests, we will log in UAA database :

time (timestamp of request)
server_op (server IP:port)
player_name (client nickname in game)
player_ip (client IP)
player_id (if available)

Are u sure that the phrase "noobs who don't know what an aimbot is" is completely correct ?

Because IMHO half or more of this "noobs who don't know what an aimbot is" can be classified exactly at the opposite side. They just deny and use all offensive arguments because interested to defend , a player , a couple of players , a team , a system ...



About the first picture , I was not using my own nick so he didn't even know that I was there.

About HD , I didn't play with my own nick so he didn't even know that he played against me ... I don't have omniscience to see if he has used aimbot on every game he has played.

About the game he played against me , look at the chat mexs ( the map was quite q3dm6 - it has a different name in the dcmappack ) :

- <Falkland> was railed by HD
- <Falkland> almost dogded HD's rocket
- <Falkland> almost dogded HD's rocket
- <Falkland> ate HD's rocket
- <Falkland> was railed by HD
...
- <Falkland> was railed by HD
...
- <Falkland> almost dogded HD's rocket

One shot , one kill in dm6 map that is not exactly small as q3_testbox and spawnfrag is not so easy to be done.

Your HO is of course correct. I'm talking about the honest half (or less).

Well , QuakeLive does the same and on an Oracle 11g Enterprise Solution ... but yes definitely that's really sick.



so they will have a detect system .... anyway this will work with both fixed ( and I suppose also closed source ) client and server : that's really bad.

Their 'detect system' will probably be the server admins.


QuakeLive is another story. They make a lot of money with it, so if they disable cheaters, it's probably revenue protection for them.

But nice for Oracle ;-)))

bind k "kill"

/bind a "aimbot on"
/bind o "aimbot off"



Correct, here's the concrete code:
(I released code that plays around with the rename routine)

no really, more than a few of us use kill binds to return to spawn in ctf.

And so do I ;-))

or to kill self after defusing bomb in urt..  pause a second before though..  looks like faint with the pressure lol

here is another illustrious member of the glorious category of the "fake noobs who don't know what an aimbot is".

Or should I think that u have a nucleotide sequence alteration in the HAR1 gene ?

Finally...  Weekend !

Time to do apt-get update & apt-get upgrade & apt-get dist-upgrade and
Time to resume work on MY BOT.

J*A, would you be interested in collaborative work ?

You do not need omniscience to join spectators. The messages where you get fragged mean absolutely nothing. All it is telling me is that you suck compared to HD. It is most certainly not uncommon for people to lose with 0 or negative points in 1v1s.

There is no such thing as one shot, one kill with spawnfrags in vanilla oa, unless you gave yourself a handicap of 75 or lower. Spawnfrags are nothing special either. Get used to it. Depending on the map, predicting spawns is most definitely nothing special. Fragging a newly spawned player in minimal time is child's play.

Did u read what I exactly wrote or do you have a nucleotide sequence alteration in the HAR1 gene too ?


You could be right here ... because timing is not logged with chat/frag msgs.


With rockets u don't need to have a handicap to be killed with one shot : it's enough a direct hit plus the splash damage if u are near a wall or an obstacle.

I thought there was no splash damage at all if you direct hit.

there is indeed , expecially if you are in air ( not touching the ground ) while jumping and/or you are running in the opposite direction of the incoming rocket ( eg if u are perfectly airocketed after taking a jumper ).

JOIN THE GOD DAMN SPECTATORS AND TAKE A GOD DAMN DEMO YOU DUMB none sense. Watch him, if he keeps on doing exceptionally good while you spectate without hacking, then guess what, he is probably not hacking. If he starts playing terrible, then MAYBE he is. Use your fOH CRAP I TRIED TO SWEAR ON THE OA FORUMS!cking brain falk

Again, its possible to spawn frag just as quick with hacking as without. Just because he is infinitly better than you means NOTHING, I have played against you too falkland, and I know that you are a below average player.

There is ABSOLUTELY NO splash damage with a rocket if you get a direct hit.
You are, without any doubt, a moron. gg

And who/what are you gerbilinho ?

Ok ok ... you are right and I am wrong

Falkland: this is an aimbot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IUZQQiHkdk

99% of the people you attempt to accuse are not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quIVy9vUpS0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quIVy9vUpS0)

I ran into this video today, while watching some other OA video. It shows how the aimbot looks on the screen of the cheater.

This guy shows that having an aimbot doesnt always help, he is such a complete noob he still looses. hahaha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=merGrRdBSLY <- same guy now claiming to be a pro player....

I ran into this one too...quite interesting i might say

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZO1jwKY6NQ&feature=related

Hmm, I had just found this topic. We got another aimbot user topic going in development I believe. I ran into one yesterday and apparently chaosoldier made a demo. I learned more about the punkbuster possibility too.

For any admins, I have been compiling a list of IPs that I blackhole of known aimbot users. Most recent one(last night):

98.164.90.240

I keep a list of IPs of aimbot users or bitchasses. If anyone running a server wants a list, I can make it available.

Whynot publicize it just here with the date u saw them? Aimbotters haven't got much rights imo (i mean for privacy about ip's), and they should be banned for at least a week from almost all servers. After a week of isolation they'll learn or go away :P
Good for all other, honest, players in both cases ^^

Nice work Mar. I havn't seen any aimbot users at DIGICHALK for some time now I still havn't been able to try out the banning process.

New aimbot user:

IP: 96.54.239.171 (Nanaimo, near/in Vancouver, Canada)

Confirmed via spectating, and also by the words of the aimbot dirtbag. The nick was 'F-ing C*nt' but completely spelled out - seems there is some censoring of certain words on forum :)

say: UnnamedPlayer: bot
say: F-ing C*nt: obviously
say: UnnamedPlayer: bye bye
say: ^1Nudist^3Noob: NUDISM FTW!!!
say: MarquisDeSade: blackholing
say: MarquisDeSade: 96.54.239.171 is ip
say: F-ing C*nt: 4 now
say: MarquisDeSade: ill block the whole network of your isp
say: MarquisDeSade: bye bye dipsh*t
say: ^1Punk: :p
say: MarquisDeSade: shawcable user fyi

Nice work MAR. :)
I guess ciggaweed gets all the aimbot users these days because I still havn't seen one at digichalk in a while.
haha, that's fine with me. :p

New one:

IP: 98.212.3.179

Name: . TEE HEE

Just a thinking about a general anti-cheat system :

Instead of trying to outsmart technically the aimbots by spotting their traces and code injections, why not just do a behavioural test ? I mean, we all know how to spot an aimbot, even if some are more obvious than others, and this could be reproduced by a software, for example with a statistical and heuristic approach, we could spot with a fuzzy result a certain percentage of certitude about a player cheating or not. Plus, this approach would not be avoidable by the clients since it would be done server-side.

For example, some acts would have more weight than others, like correcting each MG bullets.

All it would require to integrate a system like this is a little more CPU processing serverside. Nothing clientside.

The goal is not to automatically kick or ban those users, but at least report them in a log, and if possible, attach a demo of some duration for later review by an admin who can then do the right procedure (drop it, warning, kick, temp ban, perm ban, refine anticheat settings).

On the other side, I know it's possible to make very smart and human-life aimbots, but isn't our goal to avoid non-human skills ? As long as an aimbot is, at worst, like humans, then the problem is much lower (and anyway aim is only one of many other skills a good player should have, alone it can't surpass a good human player).

What do you think about it guys ?

Note : I can make an algorithmic or Python generic code as a basis, but Im not experienced enough with C++ and the ioquake3 sourcecode to cleanly do it.

I'm pretty sure that any such algorithm would not be reliable at all.

Spotting obvious aimbots is not terribly useful. You can spot them even without specing. Spotting non-obvious aimbots is tricky even for people.

Details is the devil. When you sum up several subtle weird behaviour, you would theoretically end up with a quite good detection, even with smarter aimbots. Don't forget that a computer can do more precise statistics that a human.

As I said, the goal would be primarily to spot and in the end prevent non-human skilled aimbots, but this doesn't mean that only the obvious aimbots would be spotted !

There's no magic solution :  you either lower down the risk, but accept that you can't fully eradicate it, or you do a constant race to keep up with the risk. As you want, personnally I don't want to spend my life for a useless cause. I know hackers XD

It could be reliable indeed : it depends only of the accuracy of the analysis because there's always a pseudo-randomness in such those bots .

You cannot code any kind of aimbot that has contemporaneously an acceptable randomness ( for movements or tactics or hits ) and a response time of milliseconds and that is not running on a supercomputer.

If you ever had some kind of experience with cryptography , you should know that to avoid pseudo-randomness effects ( in other words , prediction ) you need some kind of entropy , an initial seed and cycling inputs many times to obtain something enough close to randomness, but it requires some seconds of time on a nowadays CPU, or even more.

So even the most sophisticated aimbot operates always in the same way because it naturally lacks of randomness.

About weapons and specifically the MG ... I've noticed 2 kinds of bots tyring to "un-spread" bullets :
- bots that uses a "burst" fire algorithm ( in which the burst time is lower than the rapid fire time ) to avoid the natural game bullet's spread algorithm . Even if the autoaim is configured to drop 2 bullets every 3 fired ones ( for example ) , the accuracy is always around 33%.

- bots that automaticily correct the spread with special prediction code client-side that correct aim before the next bullet is fired. This kind of bots are more easy to spot because usually the player under attack feels like he can't move or have some difficults to move. Usually those kind of bots needs a constant game world consistency and doesn't like packets loss , so they usually crash in few minutes in case of systemic, even artificially produced ,  packet loss

About the aim , the aimbot always aim at player with the selected ( usually by cvars ) options : aiming through walls or not , aiming at the closest enemy or over the enemy under crosshair or over the enemy close to the ch , aiming with a HIGH FOV ( easy to spot ) or with a LOW FOV , aiming at the player with the lowest HP points ,  etc ... for example , if you have two enemies close to each others and fightimg themselves , it's natural to aim in the middle with RL to try hit both while a bot usually aims possibly with an insta weapon over the first one (the closest or the furthest or the player with the lowest health ... ) and _THEN_ over the second one .

Another aspect to be considered is logging of the client input ( key pressed , MOUSE clicks and movements ). Usually bots'  automations don't make use of the input subsystem ( eg , the autoaim system which points the ch over the enemy [ +left or +right ] but without logging a mouse movement or a key pressed ; at least it could log a LEFT MOUSE CLICK [+attack] )

Um Im not sure what time randomness has anything to do here, but indeed bots can't be too much random, else it would lower drastically their skills (isn't this what we want ?).


Thank's for these interesting inputs, this is the type of detail that an automated anti-cheat system can look for, and averaging the results on a certain time duration would permit to avoid false positive, plus a mediuming (don't remember how it is mathematically called, I mean the calculation of the highest values) would still permit to spot smart hacks that drop skills for some period of time to average their results.

Anyway, this journey would require more than empiric observations, so we would have to test the currently available hacks to get a finer picture of what is running currently.

But if done well, this system should be adjustable for future needs with only some parameters tweaking.


I don't think this is a solution, because this can be easily simulated. This would only eliminates current low-level hacks, but in the future they will all bypass this protection. Plus this would require client-side modification in the engine, I don't think this is good enough compared to the efforts it would need.

Another thing : adding client-side tests would require more bandwidth usage since more infos would have to be transferred to the server (plus the risk that they get faked by hackers), while on the other side a server-side behavioural anti-cheat system would require no more bandwidth usage, everything is already available, so that's why it would require only some more CPU usage on the server, it would be completely transparent to users.

I would rather care about MITM attacks, altered client executables or any other way of manipulating the transmitted data than caring about sending a few extra bits to indicate if it detected a cheat yes||no.

the problem is that EVERY single symptom of an aimbot that I've ever heard of is very common with real players. Here are some of the ones which were  cited on here:

- shooting without mouse movement
- flick rails
- railing in mid-air and/or while strafejumping
- /kill
- smileys when falling into void
- suicides due to hitting a wall with a rocket

The problem is, I do ALL of those, and I certainly don't use an aimbot. I wouldn't even know where to look for one. If I used an aimbot, my aim would not suck as much.

Even any combination of those is not a reliable indicator that someone is using an aimbot.

Any statistical analysis will not be conclusive. You can model the behaviour of KNOWN BOTs and detect that, but you cannot model the behaviour of all human  players and then detect anything that deviates from it and label it as a bot. Detecting obvious bots is easy. Detecting subtle ones is not, and I'm afraid that clever detection algorithms will not help there. It's not that the algorithms are bad, it's that the problem is too difficult.

As machine learning people know, garbage in = garbage out. Computers are not magic, they are simply good at number-crunching. And when it comes to analysing human behaviour, they are usually far inferior to human beings. If you don't have representative features that can discriminate between your classes (cheater vs. non-cheater), then you cannot possibly learn a classifier to distinguish between them. Even a complex combination of many factors will only give you correlations which will not approach 100% accuracy. You'll inevitably flag a bunch of honest players as cheaters, and really, you don't need software to do this -- people are crying "bot" at decent players just fine without any clever algorithms.

If anyone makes a close to 100% accurate bot-detector program based on behavioural analysis, I'll eat my hat. It's a pipe dream.

That's why I say that it's useless to do a client-side test. Anyway, about the bandwidth, it would require more to send each keystroke and each mouse click. This would be useless.


Because you've heard noobs complaining. Im not a noob. And the list you've given is pretty much vague, this is totally normal that if you use it as a basis to spot aimbots, you can go nowhere.

I know aimbots because I was in the scene some years ago, I didn't really make one but I liked to analyze how they were done, particularly because they were a plague in Enemy Territory and the only way to get back a kind of fairness was to use one yourself.

Now that I have more knowledge in IA and statistical analysis, I would like to propose a new way to protect against this threat rather than fight fire with fire.


Sorry to be rough, but this sentence just shows how ignorant you are about mathematics and computer engineering. No, this is not magic : this is science. And this is possible. So many things are possible with science, like flying, becoming invisible (now almost true), making replicable machines, 3D manipulable holograms and seeing through clothes (yum).

Spotting a bot by behaviour is just not beyond possibility. And if your imaginary stops at this point, go in museum and conferences more to wider your vision.


Is that why a computer already knows what is the next hit song that you will love ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hit_Song_Science

Sorry to deceive you, but you, I, and any other on this forum, are far more predictable than you believe. We simply are machines.


Exactly, I will detect everything that is NOT a human behaviour. This has to be done in a systemic (general) way and a detailed one, both are necessary. For example, if you have something near 100% accuracy at the end of a match, and you killed a fair amount, then this raises the probability that you cheat. If you correct each bullets, or exactly each bullets of 3, this will be recorded, and accounts for you to cheat.

Any one of those behaviours alone will not tag you as cheater, but they will raise a certain percentage of cheating, thus achieving a fuzzy logic.

And, as I said, the goal is not to automatically ban cheaters, but rather spot them for future reviewing, so the best would be to autorecord a demo of players reaching a certain level of cheating probability percentage.

---------------------------------------------------

Ok so, who's with me ?

I need to collaborate with someone that knows well C++ programming, and has at least a basic knowledge of how the game works and knows about the sources. I don't need someone that really knows the engine by heart, I can give sources, explain roughly how they work (that's enough, search is your friend after), and give links for more infos describing the different parts of the engine.

We don't even need to modify the binaries, I think that this can be achieved in a mod. Later it could be integrated, so it could be used with other mods, but for the moment a mod would suffice.

A modder interested into revolutionizing anti-cheats system for opensource games here ?

It is definitely beyond possibility.

Any analysis you do will have a certain threshold where the best player doesn't cross it, but your run-of-the-mill aimbot would (such as accuracy with MG).  This threshold needs to be pretty high, as some people are very very good.  Hence all a bot maker needs to do is make sure his algorithm never crosses that threshold.

Your system would work to eliminate the super fantastic (obvious) bots, but they will then be replaced by slightly more sophisticated bots which are indistinguishable from the very best players.

It's been said many times before, and I think it's true: cheating prevention with FOSS multiplayer games is a problem whose solution is not a technical one but a social/community one, where the individuals who cheat are detected by peer review and banned from the servers.

First, the thresold will be configurable, secondly they will not really be threshold, and it will not be as obvious as "accuracy with MG". It will look at subtle details and patterns a human CANNOT do, and will distinguish between chance and computation with mathematical tools.


Even sophisticated bots CAN be distingued from the very best players. I once saw one like this : in normal speed, you couldn't spot it, but if you watched the demo in slow motion, you could easily tell that it was a bot. The same happened otherwise (from normal speed the player was like an aimbotter, but at slow pace, it was clear he wasn't).

This approach would for sure reduce greatly the use of aimbots (at least it will spot them, admins do whatever they want after with the datas), this is the goal ! I cannot assure that ALL cheating will be banned for now and forever. We could do that too, but it would require an extended tracking of the evolution of the current hacking scene : I don't want to loose my time with that, I'm not paid for that.

But, if we could get a tool that is intelligent, adaptable, easily extendable (opensource of course), and tweakable, I think that it would for sure help quite a lot.

The only flaw of this system that I can see, is an aimbot that is EXACTLY like a human, I mean even in the very subtle and unconscious features of the human motions (and it's hard to reproduce, look at the BrainWorks blog). But this not as bad as it looks :

1- it's almost impossible to do that with an aimbot, because of technical restraints : BrainWorks is a mod, it has access to ALL informations and features of the engine, and aimbot just don't (first it's client-side, and second it's injecting into the code, thus it can't really add or modify too much the features to be able to reproduce a human).

2- even if someone do it (sky isn't the limit anymore), then the problem is still reduced because it CANNOT be better as a human can be. Where is the problem then ? And anyway, as I said, aim doesn't do the whole thing. Current "perfect" aimbots can be beaten by pro players (human brain still calculates more things than a bot), so if we even reduce the skills of the bots to a "human" level, they won't really be a threat anymore.


I agree, but as I said and I will resay again :

THIS IS NOT THE ULTIMATE ANTI-CHEAT SYSTEM ! THIS WILL JUST REDUCE THE USE OF AIMBOTS !

Ok now ? There is no full bulletproof solutions, anywhere in the life, same goes for computers. But if we can reduce the risk, then it's good, and we can do quite a lot with this system.

Now as you want, personnally I don't have a problem with aimbotters : I can play against them, and there aren't really many, this is a myth. And if an aimbotter is spotted, you can still callvote kick him XD

Personnally I don't care, but instead of just basing your assumptions over just some rough idea of what an aimbot is, I propose to do use a full statistical approach using real mathematics, and not just some obscure reasoning like "he never miss a bullet - he knows everywhere I am - he did some flick shots"...

Hmm, great stuff, but is science able to protect some DVD from being copied, or some software to be cracked ? Seems a rather simple task compared to distinguishing human/bot moves.

Oh duck ... you seem so confident with statistics. You talk about predicting musical tastes of people who are already lobotomized and accustomed to hear only one kind of music. It's not like these songs had serious artistic complexity, and it's not like people were liking it because of how it sounds rather than because of marketing. They talk about HIT SONGS, it's not a coincidence, they don't talk about any masterpieces.

I mostly agree with andrew.

If you implement rules for anti-aimbot, then these rules would be reused inside the aimbot so that it takes them into account and bypass them.

Ok, let me repeat once more : this system is NOT perfect ! Not any system can be ! There are always drawbacks. And your presumption is false : try to crack Trackmania 2 by your own, just for fun. Good luck.

I propose to reduce greatly the risk of aimbots usage, not to suppress it altogether. But it will be so hard to bypass it that it will be unlikely that someone goes through.

Improbable thoughts ? Take a look at cryptanalysis, yes the thing that let you crypt your confidential documents and even the ones of secret services : they ARE bypassable, but they would take so much calculation and efforts that it would take years to crack a good password with a good crytpalgorithm, thus protecting effectively (as far as possible in fact) the crypted documents.

There are no bulletproof system, go over it. But we however CAN do something about it.

Edit: Ah and secondly, here the goal is not to make a stupid protection for a content that should be available to you (DRM), but to analyze some specific behaviours that are different from humans.

No seriously, now you have to decide guys : are we machine, or not ? Because, if we aren't machines, then there are features that distinguishes us ! Because if bots are undistinguishable, that means these machines are exactly like us !

Machine or not ? Paradox ?


Mozart and other classical songs are integrated into the algorithm (at least the database that the algo processed).

No really, I know it's hard to believe, I can imagine your nice childhood you've had while dreaming of Mickey and his friends, and watching Goldorack on TV (don't take me wrong, I love Goldorack and Mickey, but I don't believe we're living in their worlds).

I won't do you a full course about how predictable and manipulable you are, we'll simply do a simple test : go out naked for one full hour shouting "I LOVE BRITNEY SPEARS !!!!". Ok, too hard ? You fear that police arrest you ? Then forget the first bit, just go out and shout "I LOVE BRITNEY SPEARS !!!!" accross the town for an hour. You don't have any chance to get arrested just for that.

Here's the conclusion for you : you can't. Why ? Because your choices (free will) is just a ponderated selection over your possible choices ponderated by your past experience. This is just beyond your possible modelisation of the real. That's all. Someone other could do it.

Now, I don't need you to believe me, after all denying is the most predictable human reaction.


If they have server-side access, I agree. Else, no.

Opensourcing a system doesn't mean that it's for sure breakable. Look Linux. And Microsoft Windows is closed source.

---------------------------

Anyway I propose to make it and prove/disprove that it works by trying. I don't just argue some features Id like the dev to put in !

If you are all afraid to try, then go play and have fun.

PS : No, Im not against your replies guys, I thank you for your interesting inputs, but the "It cannot work because it's not possible/bots are too smart/everyone tried and failed/this is too complex for me" arguments are NOT valid. Please first try to imagine this system from what I say, and if there are things you find obscure or case that don't fit, please tell me so and Ill try to answer. But please, imagine it is possible, Im tired to argue if it is or not, because it won't be settled until it's done anyway.

PS2 : Please try to really understand that there is not point to try to make an unbreakable system, this simply can't exist (try to give me one example). When you'll have understand that, it's more easy to think of a system that is not unviolable, but efficient enough for its purpose.

oh hell yeah im with you man!

edit: ok read through the rest of the topic. What I think is that we just shouldn't look for a solution to eliminate aimbotters. We should just make it hard enough. When we detect for example the obvious things like when the crosshair is always less than x pixels off a player, when the accuracy is either very low or very high with certain weapons (the king orgy client hook for example can't hit a thing with rockets unless its lucky), etc. Sure like caca said "these rules would be reused inside the aimbot so that it takes them into account and bypass them". But it will kill frag most of the aimbots around. Also often code from other games which are alike can be reused for oa, when we make cheatprotection unlike familiar games they have to rewrite the code and it is less likely they port a bot.
Another thing we should target is the exploit allowing cheaters to join servers where they are banned. I never saw it or heard of it here, but almost every time I talk with an aimbotter (or sometimes some die-hard campers too) they say that they will join anyway ban or not due that exploit there is.

You see my point ? That's science !

I'm sorry to be blunt, but I actually do that for a living.

When you make a foolproof bot detection system, let me know, and I'll buy you a beer.

:P

I got one. It also wrote what you are reading now.. ye i mean myself ;)
So, the beer?

Yeah, but you didn't MAKE that system. Your parents did. :P

Do you mean computer engineering or mathematics ?


I don't like beer. Vodka ?

Machine learning.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning)

Behaviour recognition, to be more specific ;)

Give them a beer! Btw it's my fathers birthday today (no joke) ;)

Ok but let's get ontopic again.
So we're first going to try to get only really obvious bots detected? I guess we can't do a lot more and it'd be the first step anyway.
I am newb at scripting/programming other things than basic programs not that interactive with others. No experience with C or whatever ioq3/oa is built in so I guess I can't help that much. Some other experts willing to help?

So cool !!!! Im doing research in strong/pure AI. This is a life long work, so we can say that Im just at the beginning, even if Im attending this field since years now.

Anyway, from what I know is now possible with artificial intelligence, Im sure that what I propose is not a dead end.

Would you like to give it a try with me ?

No.
First, we're going to focus on a particular type of cheat : aimbots. We can later see for wallhacks.
Secondly, we will focus on spotting consistent use of aimbots (meaning : you use it the majority of the time), the bot being subtle or not, it should be spotted. Later, we will try to spot too users that sporadically uses aimbot a particular moments of the game (these ones will be the hardest to spot with the behaviour recognition approach, but it's not impossible).

So this system should trim about 95% of aimbots users, the ones using them regularly (why use an aimbot if you can play as good without ?). For the others, we will try to modelize their profile in the algo as well, but it will be harder.

You're starting the wrong way around.

First you need a feasibility study. Extract loads of information from loads of games covering a wide range of player styles and player experience. Extract loads of information from loads of different aimbots.

The information should be relevant, i.e. rather there should be a correlation between the values (firing rate, weapon preferences, speed of mouse flick before railing, average damage, or anything else you might consider relevant) and whether the person is using a bot or not.

When you have such information, you can run all the collected data through any freely available state-of-the-art classifier and see how well you do on a testing set where you know the ground truth (whether the person is cheating or not).

Only if this actually works should anyone bother coding an in-game detection system.

My problem is that nobody has come up with a list of features which are a) relevant for aimbots, and b) easy to extract from within the game. It's all too vague and unclear. First somebody needs to give a list of things you want to measure, and then provide a way to measure them from within OpenArena. Many of the things people associate with aimbots (hitting a wall too often, for example) are, in fact, almost impossible to detect algorithmically.

I'm not saying anything's impossible, but I am very skeptical by nature after seeing the most advanced algorithms struggle with the easiest imaginable tasks. We are very advanced in some areas, and very very poor in others. Detecting subtle patterns in human behaviour is one of the most difficult things out there.

An aimbot detector would be a fun Bachelor thesis, but I wouldn't hold my breath ;)

I don't think there is any significant chance of any of this happening.

Or rather: undistinguishable by a machine because of a not so perfect detection algorithms.
Now, to follow you, if you build some humanoid similar to the ones in Ghost in the shell, I'd agree to say machines and human is not a so relevant distinction anymore.

From what I've seen, I consider Artificial Intelligence is at a rather laughable state: talk to some A.I speaking bot and it'll piss you off in minutes. It's not because they processed Mozart that these results will suddenly become more intelligent, the computer algorithm will only digest (make something useful from) a little part of it, finally it can be mozart or anything it wouldn't make a big difference, talking bots may have processed writers from Proust to Burroughs, it doesn't make them less dumb. But it's not only about masterpieces, it's about subjective appreciation, tastes. We talk about tastes when we refer to some stuff which is vague and hardly explainable, it's inherent to its definition, that means there is no precise criteria to determine the liking. So I'd say until that "tastes" notion is relevant, it'll be impossible to make something which is enjoyable for everyone.

 

I wouldn't do because I have no reason to do it. Seems your ability to guess what I won't do makes you confident about your the possibility to guess what people will do. Of course, the more your example is absurd, the more you have chances for your guess to be right. On the other hand, what you will have guessed is no longer significant, what does it bring to you to know I won't go out and sing Britney Spears, does that mean I won't sing something else instead ? Does that mean I'll sing it for 5 minutes instead of 1 hour ?
To mass manipulation I prefer to defend individual freedom. Sociology or stats are tools which will work to find trends, but the fact there is always something which is outside that trend is a sufficient proof to say humans are not all so manipulable.

Now back to the subject, my fear was your efforts to be vain. I'd say now it's only half vain: you can make something which will detect the most obvious aimbots (moves which can safely be considered as not humanly possible), but I still fear it'll be just an additionnal obstacle and challenge for aimbot writers. I would have said the same if you planned to write some close source program (like punkbuster). If aimbot writers take back your work and write more complex aimbots which look more human than before, I doubt we'd come to that state but that was one of your point, I suppose they'd still be automatized, deadly and tough to kill (like some good player), so that would still be annoying.

FAKE !

Your comment is as useless as the ones complaining that a youtube video is fake.

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Exactly, that's why I propose not only to use stats, but my own algorithm, based on my knowledge of the inner workings of the game and its gameplay. I think I have this opportunity, being both an experienced player of this game, and an experienced computer engineer.


AI has its pitfalls, like the Go game, but some theoretically very complex things are now possible, like detecting the musical genre of a music and even the group that plays it.

The difficulty in detecting patterns in human behaviour does not arise from AI limitations but rather our limited knowledge about the very human nature. But last researchs are encouraging, since we now have many interesting findings sometimes (frequently ?) in opposition to what was believed before, even by scientists.

Human is very predictable, it's only that we need time to discover it all, but for now we already have enough technology to analyze one area by one.


----


Exactly, that's why I propose an innovative algorithm based on how this game works, rather than how all games work.


This is because you're not in the scene : if you're waiting for a humanoid robot that behaves, think and feels like a human, you'll still have to wait some time. But if you look to what AI can already achieve, it's pretty amazing, and highly useful.

And about your "taste" argument, the day a human makes something enjoyable for EVERYONE, I will dress like Patrick Swayze. You can make things that pleases the most audience, or something that pleases YOUR audience, but whatever it is, if you can do one then you can tweak your software to do both.

Anyway, there already exists some algo to detect the genre and even the group playing a music. What is the frontier with taste now ?


To not be detected by the system, this would imply not only making them much more human, but being at a human level too, so you wouldn't see anymore any "deadly" or "tough" to kill bots than an human could be. But only aiming. Why good players are so tough, is because of their strategy, dodging, movement and smart skills. A bot can't have those. Unless it has some special AI, but it's impossible if it doesn't have server-side access, and even so, look at BrainWorks project, it does a great job at simulating humans, but you can still detect they aren't. And BrainWorks has direct access to all the features and data of the game, a client injected bot wouldn't.

So in the end, lowering the aim skills of a bot (even if it's only to a good player level) would seriously diminish the value of using bots, since this is their only feature and they can't simulate any other human skill.

I mean that every aimbot running on a machine that is not a supercomputer is detectable because it always produces serialized data on output as it cannot contemporaniously have an enough amount of randomness AND have an acceptable response to event. The more randomness or "anti-serialized" technique you try to add, the more increased response time you obtain ( which is unacceptable ).

Aimbots doesn't look like AI machines, they rather looks like state machines : they don't ( and can't ) have strategies , they only have to response in the most convenient way and as quick as possible ( by design ) to some events and every event is signed by a priority.

"Sophisticated" (adaptative) (client-side)-bots don't either have strategies : simply they try to operate with brute-force when they aren't able to escape a situation that is an obstacle to their way of operating ( like for example enforcing autoaim when they are stalling under campers fire or when they are challenging a skilled player. Never seen a bot aiming and going back - which should be the most logical reaction when enemies are 3 or 4 or more - , always seen it going forward while enforcing its artificial "skill" or like CPMA bots - which is indeed a mod having full access to server's data - that aim faster exiting teleports or before collecting main items like MH just few seconds before items spawn ).



The only exploit I know is the INFOSTRING corruption exploit which it was fixed in the latest ioq3 code ( fixed in oa085 , oa081 is still vulnerable )

And the netchannel is already crypted : you can only send few status commands ( getstatus , getchallenge ... ) as plain commands . After the server sent the challenge all the traffic between clients and server is crypted. It was fixed another BUG in the latest ioq3 revisions ( OA085 ) about the reuse of a valid challenge . OA081 is still vulnerable.


Just a tought about this point ... in many cases you don't need cryptoanalysis , independently of the key-lenght or of the used algorithm .

RSA-768 was cracked with a distribuited brute-force attack in half a year - or so - ( http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/01/768-bit-rsa-cracked-1024-bit-safe-for-now.ars ) but the bad news is that another research team was able to crack RSA-1024 - which should have been secure to cryptoanalysis - with another kind of attack ( http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=7551 ) that requires almost 100 working hours !!!

Another bad news is that file or full disk cryptography can be attacked easily through memory dump attacks ( http://www.hermann-uwe.de/blog/lest-we-remember--cold-boot-attacks-on-encryption-keys ) because the VM data are mantained in plain text in the memory for most of the systems without adopting any scrubbing technique for sensitive data ( I know only Solaris OS scrubbing memory data by default, there were discussions and patches about introducing it in Linux too). Once you have a consistent dump of the memory ( or a copy of the hybernation image ) you can extract the key or the keys through a pattern analysis , since crypto-algorithms ( expecially AES ) have their own patterns.

This will imply that systems and their operative procedures ( like hybernation ) will change soon in the future.

Do you want security ? Try with systems that offers Plausible Deniability.

To get again in topic , pls don't call aimbot writers again as hackers ... just use the term of "experts in masturbation".

The word hackers is just (too) common used for crackers - or as you call it 'experts in masturbation'. I think the real hackers should get another name.

If the infostring exploit is fixed I guess we can focus on the aimbot detection for now. Later we can see about improved security for other hacks.

*executes trainer*

HAHA NOW i AM A REAL HACKER!!! JUST LiKE KEViN MiTNiCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And yet another thing that I often do, cause it's more fun to play like that on public servers.

Seriously, you are starting to convince me that I am, in fact, a bot :P

A very terrible one.

That's the deal, due to their very own nature, they do have constraints we won't in making an intellingent anti-cheat system.




Indeed, but I was pointing the primary goal of these cryptographic algorithm : it's not to make an unbreakable system, but hard enough to break that it becomes nearly impossible in the near future.

But as always, there are other ways to beat a system : by going over its protection rather than through it, that's how these attacks work.

There will always be exploit, probably in my system too, but they can always be fixed and don't negate the concept.


+1000

TrueCrypt is an easy way to achieve that.


Bah, as long as you try to exploit the weaknesses of a system, you can call that a hacker, whatever may be his intentions. I agree that making aimbots for opensource games is really lame, but as long as they make them, they are required to put some knowledge and effort in the process, and so we can call them hackers.

@HelloKitty!

I agree on this one, the patterns need to be really well defined and sure. Maybe this one can be a good factor in algo after all, if we ponder it on the situation, repetitivity and other factors...

This confirms for sure that you have never been to an institutional school of war .

And from my point of view it elevates the probability that you could be a cheater. ( HK: "Who , me ??? NEVER!!!" )

And again from my point of view that you eventually are stealing your salary.

Falkland, you're a riot.

Everyone who breathes is a cheater according to you. One day, you'll ban everyone in the world, and then you'll be left alone to play OA with nobody else to ruin your pleasure.

No, I haven't been to an "institutional school of war". It's a FRKING GAME. It's supposed to be FUN!

lol

...

ok back to matter : who wants to give a hand ?

There are several ways to participate :

- Helping in adapting the algorithm in C
- Advising some idea of what should implement the algo (if you have any, Ive got plenty already)
- Giving behaviours that you've seen in known bots (like the correction of each MG bullets)
- Giving names and/or links and/or directly softwares related to aimbots working for OA (or known to work with some modifications) -> please do so by PM

:)

hm I got a bot I can send you if you want, guess I can trust you with it that you won't use it online. It also claims to have correction for the bullets, but mg and cg still are more missing than hitting on long range so it isn't working.
And about ideas what we should make actually it look for, well I got some ideas about which one we should make first. Guess there aren't much ideas we can use for a first version which haven't been named yet.

My proposition has nothing to do with the funness of the game : for me the game is already good as is and aimbots aren't a threat. But this project seems to be a cool project ;)


Bah, I already know the aimbots scene since I had to go in these to get the tools I needed to hack the QVMs.

However, Im ready to not play anymore at all if there are doubts on my honesty, anyway Im not really into playing since quite a time, being more into customizing XD

This discussion (http://forums.urbanterror.info/topic/15530-urbanterror-passport-anti-cheat/) on Urban Terror forums can be helpful since they probably will introduce their own anti cheat with the 4.2 version , but they focused on a PB-like+authentication solution, not strictly useful for this project but anyway an interesting reading about cheats and cheats evolution.

I found some interesting custom patches ( in particular : block1337.patch , forcecvar.patch, logcallvote.patch, logrconargs.patch, playerdb.patch, sendclientcommand.patch) while I was getting around the svn tree posted here (http://forums.urbanterror.info/topic/18495-svn-repository-for-iourbanterror-exploit-fixes/)

Here's a quote coming from their README.TXT file describing one of their own patches which is intopic here :

lol @ block1337.patch XD

Anyway, this is indeed highly interesting, nice finding, but I think that we'd rather pursue our own way to spot cheats, and in the future it will still be possible to share and merge our work with some other communities work, so in the end we will get many solution to a complex problem, which is I think the best way to fix it.

Patch for recording server side demos ( which should be pertinent here ) : http://patches.mercenariesguild.net/index.php?do=details&task_id=196

It's for tremulous , but it should apply also to OA engine with some adjustments ( I didn't try yet )

Anyway there are a lot of interesting patches that could be applied also to OA : http://patches.mercenariesguild.net/

like for example this one (http://patches.mercenariesguild.net/index.php?do=details&task_id=133) which should increase robustness of clients identification using a RSA 1024 key for each client !!!

Great finding ! Thank you very much for posting that !

i thought there was an aimbot on a server i was playing once... turned out he was just really good and could strafe jump  :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomaly_detection
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier#Identifying_outliers

The solution I propose is of the 3rd type.

The project is still being discussed elsewhere, stay tuned.

The Tremulous server-side demos work in principle, but they require a patched server to replay them and a patched cgame to be able to follow the recorded players.

For ScrewOA (http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=3854), I followed an alternative idea by taking the recording code from the client and porting it to the server. It is now used to automatically record the games of players who reach at least 0.9*fraglimit. To preserve privacy, neither VOIP, chat (say/tell) nor broadcasts (print) are recorded. Take a look at ScrewOA's demo page (http://bb.game-host.org/oa/demos/) for more information and for demos, of course.

Thank you very much TheDoctor, it's highly interesting, you've made a great work.

Related thread :
http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=3790.0