Hacking, an analysis

[mcBain_101 25]

I know there is already plenty topics about this, and apologies for the long winded post.

As it stands Dayz is currently on the edge of a pandemic. A hacking pandemic that is spreading rapidly and in many ways now beyond manageable control. never in my time as a gamer have I had a gaming experience that has been so infested with people that hack and cheat. I thought battlefield 3 had quite a bad hacking problem. but even there you would maybe meet a hacker maybe once or twice a week. in Dayz at the moment its reaching the point where its once or twice a DAY.

Now all games have hackers....cheating in games is as old as gaming itself. But its keeping the number of people that do cheat under control enough that the people that play properly still have a pleasurable gaming experience. This I feel as it stands is starting to slip away in Dayz. Encountering hackers and exploiters seems to be almost a daily occurrence for most people in Dayz, just have a quick look in the Server section of the forum and you will see what I mean.

The problem is further exasperated by the type of game that Dayz is. Let me go back to Battlefield 3 as an example, little Carebear joins a server in Battlefield 3 and 5 minutes after joining a hacker joins and starts using an aimbot to kill people. quickly people catch on that this guy is hacking after getting 55 to 0 deaths in under a minute. people die....people get annoyed. a few minutes after the admin bans the hacker from the server and people go on there trigger happy way. Or if an admin isn't on Carebear leaves the server and joins another without a hacker on. he's only lost about 10 minutes of game time and maybe a bit lower KD ratio but nothing serious.

Now Carebear decides he wants to play Dayz. he has a good survivor that is now several days old. He has farmed long and hard for his gear and is now playing carefully to make sure he survives. he's running through a forest then bam! he is teleported to a location with everyone else on the server and dies in the confusion and gunfire that follows. Carebear now feels bitter because he died to an exploit after all his hard work, not to someone else, which he would be fine with.

And this is one of the problems Dayz has. Hackers can cause so much more grief than they can in a game like Battlefield 3 because of the type of game it is, and in many ways its so much more personal to. In battlefield 3 griefing will last about 10 minutes tops. In Dayz hours and hours of game time can be lost in a blink of an eye. Now out of this I can deduce 3 main outcomes that can occur-

1) Carebear accepts his lose and starts all over again. knowing that a hacker could potentially strike at any time, but he accepts it as a one off and carries on playing Example- http://dayzmod.com/f..._+quit +hacking

2) Carebear doesn't like what has happened to him and decides to stop playing. a bitter resentment towards the game that not enough was done to prevent him loosing his stuff from unfair means Example - http://dayzmod.com/f...+quitting +dayz

3) Carebear decides if you cant beat them join them and decides to use hacks and exploits himself. this thread here is an example of this- http://dayzmod.com/f...hl__ quit hack

Do you see the problem here? as hacking becomes more widespread option 1 becomes less and less likely and option 2 and 3 become more likely. neither of these are favourable outcomes. this is in stark contrast to Battlefield 3 where option 1 is still the most likely due to the fact that hacking is a lot less personal, and is far easily avoided.

still with me?

Now onto the type of hacking itself. Its reaching the point where hackers aren't even using subtle exploits like giving themselves gear, or even using teleportation which seems to be a hot favourite by hackers. Now we have stuff like this going on...

and this is the tip of the iceberg. This to me shows a total breakdown of control where hackers can just do what they want willy nilly to people for there own sick and vile amusement, with little or hardly any risk involved. the difficulty in Dayz for hacking is that, by the time the anti cheat system has caught on to something suspicious, it is already to late and the damage has already been done, be it teleportation of the whole server to a location, aimbotting, spawning gear or turning survivors into other things, u name it in Dayz a hacker can probably do it. Now I know that Dayz is in alpha stage and this is rather an Arma II problem rather than Dayz, but its showing that the current Anti cheat system for it(battle eye) is wholly inadequate for the needs of Dayz. it may well be enough for Arma II but for Dayz it seriously lacking in venom. Now I'm no expert in this field, I know nothing of how to protect from cheating etc, or the coding in games. But I know other games have done a darn better job that this of protecting themselves from hackers.

This problem is only likely to get worse as the popularity of Dayz continues to rise. or will it? will it get a reputation for just being an infestation of hackers and exploiters and will it drive away potential players that would rather stay well clear. I know this problem is unlikely to get fixed until the standalone version, but how far away is that? For me personally hacking is the No 1 issue facing Dayz as it stands. I hate it. it takes away all the enjoyment of playing this remarkable Mod because in the blink of an eye it is all taken away. Its not even the fact I've lost everything. its the fact I feel like a sheep. A sheep in a pack of wolves, a pack of wolves that can strike at any time, any place, they will even toy with you before striking. tossing you about like a doll. and you have no defence against it apart from aborting as quickly as possible, which sometimes still isn't enough. I'm all for fair game and I don't mind dying, everyone excepts its part of the game. but when its taken away UNFAIRLY then it becomes and issue.

this leads me onto the poll. I've made a poll to find out what you, the community feel about the current state of hacking in Dayz. is the current hacking level in Dayz tolerable? is it a big issue? does it not concern you at all? is it the biggest challenge this Mod is currently facing? or are are bugs and glitchs more a concern for you. I hardly expect Rocket and the team to look at this thread and act upon it, there has already been lots of topics on this subject. It may well be that in the current environment there is no way to resolve this issue at all, but you never know. I do know what I want though, and that's a more enjoyable Dayz experience. And at the moment, I'm just not getting it.

if you got this far thanks for taking the time to read :) btw by all means disagree with me, this is me theorising. just make sure you back up your argument :)

Bain

Edited August 10, 2012 by mcBain_101

[Guest cRy]

This is the biggest game breaker at the moment. Hacks, I mean. Followed by a close second with alt-f4ers. Then the bugs (which are annoying but avoidable for the most part if you aren't a dummy).

[tockeR 16]

Games alpha. Stop getting emotional over it.

It'll be patched soon

[BruceRee 0]

Ive been playing about 2 weeks or a week and a 1/2 now and haven't seen a hacker or any obvious exploits... Am i lucky? Cause i know they are out there.

[okano666@hotmail.co.uk 81]

It seems, right now that Private Hive servers have more protection than servers connected to the proper hive.

Why is this ?

[SHinOCk 2]

Biggest crap in that game and any other game with a shitty hack detection for that matter.

Found a camp with 5 friends, we were all in ghillie suit with good guns tactically moving in with a good 40-45 meters between us and we all got sniped headshot by an invisible dude rocking a DMR in intervals of like 2 sec.

Sure we will get over it but having to regear because of a fucking hacker is really unpleasant to say the least

[Guest cRy]

Games alpha. Stop getting emotional over it.

It'll be patched soon

This isn't as simple as you think. It would be a great undertaking by the devs to fix this. These aren't normal hacks. These are scripts, directly implemented in the original engine. For this to be solved, not only do the devs have to take notice but BE needs to stop being a shit company that updates once a fucking year. What other anti-cheat updates once every 6 months? NONE! Punkbuster would be better suited for this... Just ban based on ip/cdkey and hardware IDs. In fact, it is preposterous that the Devs of DayZ don't let the admins have more control. We can't even ban someone who alt-f4s. They are logging their activity.. yeah, OK! What is the next step after you log them? Cause, after that came into play I have run into more and more DCers than ever. How ironic.

[doom4mr 135]

you know what is the most interesting thing about ***?

I made a little research about it and I found out that they want to sell DayZ cheat for 15$ !!! lol lol lol

I also got some possible ideas about couple of ways to possibly minimize cheating and DC and Dupe but no one read my suggestions...

[Strawcrow 10]

Because only small amount of players play on a small amount of private hives compared to the DayZ hive, there are no more safer than the others.

[Dazed 80]

I played my first month of DayZ virtually hacker free. I had 0 deaths my first month from hackers, for the last week and a half though, I've been seeing hackers almost every day, sometimes 2-3 times a day. The only way I seem to die is by hackers. I just died a couple hours ago by a teleporting hacker. I was riding through the woods on my motorcycle on my way north past Skalka when I start taking shots from a silenced weapon, 15 seconds later an As50 starts shooting me. I manage to make it to the road when 10 seconds later I start taking shots again by an As50 and eventually get nailed. At that moment I am thinking it was definitely a hacker, but their was also the possibility that it was a team of 3.

My clan airlifts me from Electro and we fly to where I died. We do a fly-by and see that my body and the bike are still their. We land 500m out and our chopper starts taking fire. I run into the forest and our chopper lifts off to avoid fire, a moment later a satchel charge blows up narrowly missing our chopper. 2 more satchel charges go off as our chopper is flying away taking fire from the As50 the entire time(he is the worst shot ever.) I loot half of my body and run back off into the forest before he can return, a satchel charge blow up a tree 50 meters from me. I have my l85 back and I scan the forest but still don't see anything even though shots are going off almost right next to me. The shots get farther away and I go loot the rest of my body and drive off.

The teleporting invisible hacker left my body as bait, and only his horrible aim allowed my guys and I guys to escape him the second time. Luckily I managed to get my stuff back...except for my ghillie.

Seems like we're running into hackers every time we log in now regardless of how many we ban.

[Publik 404]

We've drawn the ire of some hackers. Had two attack our camp with god mode and hacked items the other day, and had a hacker with god mode spawn hostile NPCs at our camp just this morning.

>Still can't get tents to save.

>Weapons have been nerfed to hell and beyond.

>Hackers after us every weekend and now on the weekdays.

>Ban a hacker, community tells you not to and says you're on a "power trip"

>???

>Low fucking morale.

GG

Edited July 31, 2012 by Publik

[mcBain_101 25]

I played my first month of DayZ virtually hacker free. I had 0 deaths my first month from hackers, for the last week and a half though, I've been seeing hackers almost every day, sometimes 2-3 times a day. The only way I seem to die is by hackers. I just died a couple hours ago by a teleporting hacker. I was riding through the woods on my motorcycle on my way north past Skalka when I start taking shots from a silenced weapon, 15 seconds later an As50 starts shooting me. I manage to make it to the road when 10 seconds later I start taking shots again by an As50 and eventually get nailed. At that moment I am thinking it was definitely a hacker, but their was also the possibility that it was a team of 3.

My clan airlifts me from Electro and we fly to where I died. We do a fly-by and see that my body and the bike are still their. We land 500m out and our chopper starts taking fire. I run into the forest and our chopper lifts off to avoid fire, a moment later a satchel charge blows up narrowly missing our chopper. 2 more satchel charges go off as our chopper is flying away taking fire from the As50 the entire time(he is the worst shot ever.) I loot half of my body and run back off into the forest before he can return, a satchel charge blow up a tree 50 meters from me. I have my l85 back and I scan the forest but still don't see anything even though shots are going off almost right next to me. The shots get farther away and I go loot the rest of my body and drive off.

The teleporting invisible hacker left my body as bait, and only his horrible aim allowed my guys and I guys to escape him the second time. Luckily I managed to get my stuff back...except for my ghillie.

Seems like we're running into hackers every time we log in now regardless of how many we ban.

We've drawn the ire of some hackers. Had two attack our camp with god mode and hacked items the other day, and had a hacker with god mode spawn hostile NPCs at our camp just this morning.

>Still can't get tents to save.

>Weapons have been nerfed to hell and beyond.

>Hackers after us every weekend and now on the weekdays.

>Ban a hacker, community tells you not to and says you're on a "power trip"

>???

>Low fucking morale.

GG

this is what i am talking about, I to have seen a huge rise in the amount of hackers in the last week/two weeks. And the community as a whole seem powerless to stop this from happening, even admins have little control over what happens and to be honest this is the most worrying. when a exploiter has more control over a server than the person running it what does that say for the integrity of the game? have a look at this thread- http://dayzmod.com/f...ge__hl__hacking

Edited July 31, 2012 by mcBain_101

[AnalogSet 5]

I haven't been playing the mod very long. To be honest, I've only been able to play it on 2 seperate occasions at a friends house. However, I can attest that the hacker problem is indeed getting worse. My very first time playing the game, within 10 minutes, I find myself transformed into a bunny rabbit, in the middle of the airfield, a long with 30 other rabbits. Suddenly everybody turns back into a person armed with guns, and a GIANT mexican standoff turns into a massacre. I've also experienced the "Thunderdome" thing, but the game crashed before I could find loot/get killed. Hopefully this is something that will be addressed sooner rather than later. :)

[mcBain_101 25]

well coming back to this this morning and looking at the poll so far. its clear to me that the majority of the community also feel that hacking is now facing a crisis point in dayz -.- this is really bad news, lets hope rocket responds to the crying out of the community and tries to do something about it =/ keep up the voting! more numbers = a more accurate opinion

[kieranbrazil91@gmail.com 0]

I have my own server (40 player slot) we lose so many players because our server gets hacked about (no joke) five to six times a day. Usually by teleporting players and then killing them. Heck, even our chopper got teleported and destroyed (it took us 12 hours to get the parts and working) and when we did, bam! Who wants a to play a game where you have to spend countless hours putting work into only to be stripped down by hackers. This game NEEDS its own engine and a better anti-cheat system than battleye. Shit, BE could EVEN implement a feature that auto-kicks when a player moves a certain distance in a certain allotted time. So many things that can be fixed easily yet they choose to ignore...it makes me even more sad when this is the game everyone has wanted for so long and the Arma engine and BE are ruining it!!!!

EDIT :BE needs to implement a system where it tracks player movements. If it sees a player has moved between two points too quickly - it should boot you from the game (this saves people being teleported and the teleporters themselves). Obviously this wouldn't count with vehicles and helis and such. All BE needs to do is look at the server log files and determine logical movements. Minecraft can do it - why not an Anti-cheat syste?

Edited August 1, 2012 by Kruezritter

[Dankine 377]

this "all games have hackers" shit is pure hyperbole.

[Milk (DayZ) 1]

I am getting low morale as well. My friends and I play every night. We all have around 300hrs of game time. The first month we rarely ran into a hacker. Now no matter what server we go to there are hackers. Some servers get hacked 2-3 times a day. I'm sick of people saying "its alpha". Why continue to play? It's starting to leave such a bad taste in my mouth I wonder if I'll even pick it up when its fully released.

[martin_sonderegger@bluewin.ch 141]

Tolerable, based on my personal experience. I died 3 times by hackers as of now, Thunderdome'd once, parachute cow bombed once and some dick teleported me really high up.

[Falcrist 119]

People are starting to leave because of the stupendous amount of hacking.

[dystopeon 46]

stopped playin a week ago :( - sad really

[ironman Tetsuo 181]

FFS!

Someone ban this OP till he learns how to report hackers.

Starting threads like these actually adds to the problem, you've posted up a big sign post that says "Hey Hackers, your efforts to screw with us are working, keep up the good work!"

Everyone that needs to know is already aware of the situation. If you have details on a hacker submit it in the proper fashion, stop making threads like these, you have become part of the problem (where is the option for that in your poll??)

Edited August 8, 2012 by ironman Tetsuo

[mcBain_101 25]

FFS!

Someone ban this OP till he learns how to report hackers.

Starting threads like these actually adds to the problem, you've posted up a big sign post that says "Hey Hackers, your efforts to screw with us are working, keep up the good work!"

Everyone that needs to know is already aware of the situation. If you have details on a hacker submit it in the proper fashion, stop making threads like these, you have become part of the problem (where is the option for that in your poll??)

alot of the time its hard to even know who the hacker is. if say everyone gets teleported to a location and you die 5 seconds later...how am i meant to find out who the hacker is? i would like to point you towards one of the first comments i made in the post. its keeping the hacking 'under control' that needs to be addressed not necessarily banning the hackers themselves, prevention rather than justice.

if you read the post properly its not actually a rant thread. its an analysis, a theory with facts and examples to construct an arguement with a personal judgement. this thread was made a while ago now, at the start of the rise of hacking. this wasnt just a 5 minute button bashing post either. i put some considerable time and effort constructing an argument and i wanted to see what the community thought about the current situation, i havnt seen many threads with this stance. As the poll currently stands, it seems alot of people feel the mods no 1 problem right now is the hacking situation. personally i havnt seen another thread asking this type of question to the community, so its useful information to know what the community feels about it. for all we know hacking could be a problem but people could still find it tolerable, and its just a vocal minority making the threads about it. so the more that people vote the better it is for a more accurate picture.

as for the reporting hackers...i will add it to the poll, I am unable to think of everything :P

Edited August 10, 2012 by mcBain_101

[tenshu 43]

wow 3/4 people being affected by hackers in this poll so far, what kind of credible data can this alpha test obtain with so many hackers?

I guess player and network interactions and performance but even that data will be tarnished by people injecting code.

At the same time there is nothing anyone can do apart from battleEye who are obviously out of there depth, is there even a point in mentioning the hackers or reporting them as noone can be sure who it is??

[Grodenn 53]

This isn't as simple as you think. It would be a great undertaking by the devs to fix this. These aren't normal hacks. These are scripts, directly implemented in the original engine. For this to be solved, not only do the devs have to take notice but BE needs to stop being a shit company that updates once a fucking year. What other anti-cheat updates once every 6 months? NONE! Punkbuster would be better suited for this... Just ban based on ip/cdkey and hardware IDs. In fact, it is preposterous that the Devs of DayZ don't let the admins have more control. We can't even ban someone who alt-f4s. They are logging their activity.. yeah, OK! What is the next step after you log them? Cause, after that came into play I have run into more and more DCers than ever. How ironic.

Bohemia Interactive will never remove the possibility for scrips within arma. Arma is a game for the military (use as a training tool) and the scripts are a feature for just this kind of use. Then dayz would not exist without the scripts, dayz is essentially base on the same scripts that are used as cheats. That type of scripts will get remove in the standalone and I'm confident that this will fix a lot of issues with the hackers.

@OP, Did you ever play counter strike during that games golden age? I would say there were far more cheaters in that game. I'm not only talking about the public games but also all the PCW's, the friendly online tournaments and even LAN tournaments that had big cash prices too compete for. Yes there where a few people getting caught using cheats at these events. Today you have sites that are running ladders and tournaments for CS, and many of the use the anti-cheat program EAC (Easy Anti Cheat). Not only does it look for stuff that is changing the game it self but it is also taking print screens of your screen and upload them to a web server. And it uses the ingame record function and post that video online aswell for anyone to download and look at. Basically if you meet someone that you think are cheating you can look at prints and a rec but even with this rather crazy stuff people keep using cheats that can bypass all of that shit (fake the screens etc).

Conclusion is that it is literally impossible to stop ALL hackers but when the standalone is realised there will be way less amount of hackers. So best thing to do now is not care to much, you will loose all your gear etc soon enough anyway.

Edited August 10, 2012 by Grodenn

[Grodenn 53]

This isn't as simple as you think. It would be a great undertaking by the devs to fix this. These aren't normal hacks. These are scripts, directly implemented in the original engine. For this to be solved, not only do the devs have to take notice but BE needs to stop being a shit company that updates once a fucking year. What other anti-cheat updates once every 6 months? NONE! Punkbuster would be better suited for this... Just ban based on ip/cdkey and hardware IDs. In fact, it is preposterous that the Devs of DayZ don't let the admins have more control. We can't even ban someone who alt-f4s. They are logging their activity.. yeah, OK! What is the next step after you log them? Cause, after that came into play I have run into more and more DCers than ever. How ironic.

Bohemia Interactive will never remove the possibility for scrips within arma. Arma is a game for the military (use as a training tool) and the scripts are a feature for just this kind of use. Then dayz would not exist without the scripts, dayz is essentially base on the same scripts that are used as cheats. That type of scripts will get remove in the standalone and I'm confident that this will fix a lot of issues with the hackers.

@OP, Did you ever play counter strike during that games golden age? I would say there were far more cheaters in that game. I'm not only talking about the public games but also all the PCW's, the friendly online tournaments and even LAN tournaments that where you competed for big amounts of cash prices. Yes there where a few people getting caught using cheats at these events. Today you have sites that are running ladders and tournaments for CS, and many of the use the anti-cheat program EAC (Easy Anti Cheat). Not only does it look for stuff that is changing the game it self but it is also taking print screens of your screen and upload them to a web server. And it uses the ingame record function and post that video online aswell for anyone to download and look at. Basically if you meet someone that you think are cheating you can look at prints and a rec but even with this rather crazy stuff people keep using cheats that can bypass all of that shit (fake the screens etc).

Conclusion is that it is literally impossible to stop ALL hackers but when the standalone is realised there will be way less amount of hackers. So best thing to do now is not care to much, you will loose all your gear etc soon enough anyway.