Get PunkBuster for standalone, please!

[franzuu 211]

Arma 2 being a horribly broken game security wise and everything being client side, this game has become a cheater paradise. Even if 1/100 people used hacks, all it would take is for that one person is to go to 10 servers, kill everybody, and he has ruined the enjoyment for 500 other people, only that those 500 people get fucked 5 times a day. It is too easy to screw people over. BattlEye sucking doesn't help either. Btw it is much, much higher than 1 in 100.

I know PunkBuster has it flaws and kicks people that aren't hacking and that VAC and BE don't have that problem, but that is because VAC and BE don't do ANYTHING! How is it possible that you can delete vegetation, and building files from your install folder, join a game and BattlEye doesn't check if the files are there or confirm their MD5 hashes? This would not be possible with punkbuster. Or you code some Direct3D shaders to override regular ones. BattlEye can't even begin to detect something like that.

The biggest problem with PunkBuster games is that cheaters and hackers don't get punished. PunkBuster only kicks people, the banning is left to the server owners. This is where groups like www.pbbans.com www.punksbusted.com www.anticheatinc.net and others come in. A lot of them were recently DDOSed and are still down (shows that they are doing something right).

These groups maintain banlists that are created from kicks and whatnot that are streamed to them. They also create custom MD5 and CVAR checks for cheats that punkbuster has yet to detect.

PunkBuster also has a screenshot function

where a screenshot is taken of a section of the players screen to check for ESP hacks and there are tools that will automatically go through them and detect hacks. Of course there are countermeasures to this like blockers (static image/rotation of images or those that causes it to fail), those that turn off everything before the image is taken and there have been some that attempted to clean them after the image is taken and before it is sent.

I played America's Army for years and it had a very strong anti cheat community (3 major groups dedicated to it + many others) and on servers that were affiliated with them it was mostly peaceful. Official servers were hell because punkbuster didn't ban people by itself and they didn't run any banlists (tens of thousands of accounts were on them). The only flaw was that because America's Army was a free game you could make as many accounts as you wanted, but I imagine buying a new CD-Key would have gotten old pretty fast.

The only reason PunkBuster hasn't been such a huge success outside of AA is because not many servers were part of these anti cheat communities so the punishment for hacking was mostly a kick. If Rocket can demand server admins to not kick/ban/lock the server then he can have every server run a shared banlist and checks from PBBans or some other community or even create his own.

VAC is marginally better than BattlEye.

Edited August 2, 2012 by KeelPool

[ninjaholic 116]

DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER. DONT USE PUNKBUSTER.

Spam aside, Punkbuster is a pile of crap. And Battlefield have the same problems that Dayz has. I can't play it because my games are in Steam and it uses Direct3D hook, even if it's disabled and I can't play ANY of the Punkbuster enabled games unless I buy non-Steam versions. Yet, hackers can play fine since they just pick up a cheap copy or a new key and install standalone versions. And they were raping on the servers I was getting kicked from because I have a game platform that uses an in-game overlay. Punkbuster is a pile of shit. And isn't any better than Battleye. VAC. Hands down. I've seen a LOT of players banned by VAC. I've seen 1 player banned by Punkbuster. I've seen Battleye ban no-one. VAC has the lowest false-positive count of any anti-cheat system and actually bans people.

Edited August 2, 2012 by ninjaholic

[Lady Kyrah 1109]

Because until recently servers didn't have the vegetation .pbo files in the list of files to validate.

ALso the screenshot feature of PB is not exactly reliable, you can code hacks that will not show in the PB screenshots.

Edited August 2, 2012 by Lady Kyrah

[suspense 210]

I'll just qoute what i have already said on this case, oh and before i do, the punkbuster screenshot function works on 5% of the games punkbuster supports lol. Good feature

EDIT: To be more specific, a software detection has to be done by battleye this requires MANUAL work, and happens usually within 1-2 weeks. Most anti-cheat programs then detect the hacks, and postpone the bans another 3-4 weeks to make it more difficult to spot what got them detected in the first place. Battleye does not delay bans from detections

So with battleye, we see bans within a week, rather then after a month. Battleye is NOT SHIT, you just DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW IT WORKS.

I understand how it works, and I think it's idiotic. Even detected hacks that are months old can be used to nuke 20 or so servers before you're banned lol. I'd call that pretty shit, and I think they're full of BS that they do these delayed bans on purpose. Why not at least stop the script from executing and flag the user, rather than just "HERP DERP we'll ban after he's griefed 20 more servers."

These are not old. The passed 3 months, this "one person" has released 4 different hacks in order to bypass battleye. Its got nothing to do with md5 hashes, reobfuscation or recompiling . Obfuscation has nothing to do with how it works, the md5 hash or anything, only how difficult it is to read and understand the code without source.

A software detection is done by reversing the hack in order to find which memory spaces it injects into, so that it stops battleye from updating and inizializing on the server. Once battleye has done this, they update battleye so that the "bypass" no longer stops battleye from running when joining a server, the updated version of battleye then searches for injections in this memory space that they discovered, and any injects done that arent supposed to be done = ban.

Why dont you take his hack, reverse it and look for where it injects, how it injects, and what signatures it leaves. Then come back to this thread, quote me with a workaround, and then we can imaginarily say "we got the hackers".

I'm waiting.

you keep talking like BE is effective and all I keep seeing are more posts in the forums about entire servers being wiped out.

Thats not battleyes fault, thats bohemias fault. If it werent for "scripts" (Bohemias implemented these) or creating items/putting nukes in the game, teleporting(bohemia put this in the game). All we would see, would be aimbotting, wallhacking, which wouldnt "appear" as a major issue, because it is much more difficult to spot. But it would still be as much of an issue, as the current hacking shenanigans are.

On top of that, 90% of everyone making posts about battleye on these forums, has absolutely no clue about what they are talking about. They see a server get hacked on monday, and then see it getting hacked again next monday, and they assume nothing was done. Plain and simply wrong, and its mind blowing how people can come on forums here, claim something is bad, while having 0 understanding for what it is, what it does, or how it functions

.

[Lady Kyrah 1109]

This

[franzuu 211]

Spam aside, Punkbuster is a pile of crap. And Battlefield have the same problems that Dayz has. I can't play it because my games are in Steam and it uses Direct3D hook, even if it's disabled and I can't play ANY of the Punkbuster enabled games unless I buy non-Steam versions. Yet, hackers can play fine since they just pick up a cheap copy or a new key and install standalone versions. And they were raping on the servers I was getting kicked from because I have a game platform that uses an in-game overlay.

What I do is disable the steam overlay. PunkBuster kicks for those because cheats can be loaded through direct3d hooks.

Punkbuster is a pile of shit. And isn't any better than Battleye. VAC. Hands down. I've seen a LOT of players banned by VAC. I've seen 1 player banned by Punkbuster. I've seen Battleye ban no-one.

This proves that you did not read my post. PunkBuster does not ban people by default (only if you hack PB itself does it ban you). PB only kicks, disable your hax and its as if nothing ever happened. It is up to the server admins to ban people. (Read the part about anti cheat organisations)

VAC has the lowest false-positive count of any anti-cheat system and actually bans people.

That is because VAC does not do much to stop hackers. PB does a lot so false positives are going to happen.

The only advantage of VAC is that it bans silently, hackers play and lose their accounts as opposed to one dude getting banned and alerting the rest. Also the risk of losing your steam games acts as a deterrent.

With VAC you have no control, no custom CVAR checks or MD5 checks no nothing. It is all VALVE. PunkBuster is much better at detecting hacks and harder to circumvent. The troble is is that people don't get banned.

[suito 17]

There is no anti-hack protection at all, even Punkbuster or VAC2 or BattleEye can be hacked, even fcking Warden from blizz has a anti-warden function >_>

[Teo (DayZ) 6]

VAC. Hands down. I've seen a LOT of players banned by VAC. I've seen 1 player banned by Punkbuster. I've seen Battleye ban no-one. VAC has the lowest false-positive count of any anti-cheat system and actually bans people.

Actually I think VAC is the worst. It wont detect anything! There are plenty of servers in CSS that are FULL of aimbotters because VAC wont detect them. Only the servers with 3rd party anti-cheat have no cheaters. For example the DetoCS. Punkbuster is decent/good, atleast in some games. Edited August 2, 2012 by Teo

[suito 17]

The worst thing in DayZ is that a hacker can do everthing with you, i dont care if there have a wallhack or something like this, but if they teleport me, turn me to dogs .. that is mean -.- and THIS are things handelt by arma2 engine :-/

[suspense 210]

I've seen 1 player banned by Punkbuster. I've seen Battleye ban no-one. VAC has the lowest false-positive count of any anti-cheat system and actually bans people.

Really? Seriously?

Here, look how active battleye is....

http://i.imgur.com/JaQsJ.png

http://i.imgur.com/gtEAA.png

http://i.imgur.com/vH5ji.png

Edited August 2, 2012 by Suspenselol

[NightRipper 284]

Suspenselol is the definitive voice on this thread. I award him 5 internetz.

Seriously though, the man has good points. We need another solution besides failbuster.

[franzuu 211]

The worst thing in DayZ is that a hacker can do everthing with you, i dont care if there have a wallhack or something like this, but if they teleport me, turn me to dogs .. that is mean -.- and THIS are things handelt by arma2 engine :-/

Yeah, DayZ needs to go standalone ASAP

I'll just qoute what i have already said on this case, oh and before i do, the punkbuster screenshot function works on 5% of the games punkbuster supports lol. Good feature

Is that still broken? That stuff is somehow related to DX 10, 11 and anti aliasing. Somehow messes with the way screenshots are taken and they turn out black. Figured they'd have fixed it, used some other DX function to grab it.

Anyway my personal suspicion is is that Evenbalance is exploiting the apathy of big box publishers to rake in cash and not do shit. The detection methods haven't improved in years, but is that really the worst thing? Punkbuster is already running on SYSTEM level. People had problems with it scanning outside of the game folder.

I believe that the best Anti Cheat system will come out of the game Devs and anti-cheat Devs working together. If you are not interested in your game then PB, BE or VAC have no interest in working to protect it.

[suspense 210]

Yeah, DayZ needs to go standalone ASAP

Is that still broken? That stuff is somehow related to DX 10, 11 and anti aliasing. Somehow messes with the way screenshots are taken and they turn out black. Figured they'd have fixed it, used some other DX function to grab it.

Its been broken for the last 4 years, not a single fix or attempt to fix it has been made. Really good commitment :P

[franzuu 211]

Its been broken for the last 4 years, not a single fix or attempt to fix it has been made. Really good commitment :P

Let hope Rocket figures out this cheating stuff ASAP or it'll be the death of this mod.

[farnebrink 1]

The only solution I find against hacking is quite frankly having password locked servers. These scriptkiddies have no idea what hacking actually implies, and if each server has a forum where there is a application process I think that would put an end to the reign of the failfags. Also, give server administrators the ability to actually moderate! No anti-cheat software is secure, and will never be.

[L0G!N (DayZ) 149]

@Suspenselol, so I'dd be the first to admit i have only conceptual knowledge of hacking&detection, but what you are basically saying is that:

- battle-eye should actually do something about 'stopping' the hack? as right now even a 1y old hack would work for a certain period of time?

- While I only know about the hacks you mention, aimbotters, etc. these would be less noticable in a game where you hardly run into people, and when you do they will kill you not matter if they use an aimbot or not. Arguably you would have a bit of a change to fight back without an aimbot, but still, if you have no bloodbag+friend it will take you a long time to recover from meeting somebody. Then ofcourse, these aimbots, wallhacks (w/e that is :P - i'm guessing shooting through walls) etc. while they can be realy annoying, they can not entirely screw up your gaming experience, and for an 'alpha' version of a game these hacks are not that important ... the thunderdome hack though or spawning w/e hacks, those are annoying and destroying my gaming experience. If i get shot by an aimbot, sure that sucks, but it still be within the realms of the game actually being shot...

I mentioned in another thread that i found it weird that Arma accepts other code to work 'while' the game is running, see i personally like modding and user created content, but all things possible should stay within the editor, the moment a 'mod' is running it should just not accept any coding that is not in the mod. But then i guess programming something like that would solve all hacking issues with all games, and be the holy-grail of anti-cheat gaming... so i guess the conceptual idea is nice, but i shouldn't expect anything like it real soon ... :|

[suspense 210]

@Suspenselol, so I'dd be the first to admit i have only conceptual knowledge of hacking&detection, but what you are basically saying is that:

- battle-eye should actually do something about 'stopping' the hack? as right now even a 1y old hack would work for a certain period of time?

- While I only know about the hacks you mention, aimbotters, etc. these would be less noticable in a game where you hardly run into people, and when you do they will kill you not matter if they use an aimbot or not. Arguably you would have a bit of a change to fight back without an aimbot, but still, if you have no bloodbag+friend it will take you a long time to recover from meeting somebody. Then ofcourse, these aimbots, wallhacks (w/e that is :P - i'm guessing shooting through walls) etc. while they can be realy annoying, they can not entirely screw up your gaming experience, and for an 'alpha' version of a game these hacks are not that important ... the thunderdome hack though or spawning w/e hacks, those are annoying and destroying my gaming experience. If i get shot by an aimbot, sure that sucks, but it still be within the realms of the game actually being shot...

I mentioned in another thread that i found it weird that Arma accepts other code to work 'while' the game is running, see i personally like modding and user created content, but all things possible should stay within the editor, the moment a 'mod' is running it should just not accept any coding that is not in the mod. But then i guess programming something like that would solve all hacking issues with all games, and be the holy-grail of anti-cheat gaming... so i guess the conceptual idea is nice, but i shouldn't expect anything like it real soon ... :|

Not exactly. Its very likely that a year old bypass is detected, so no that would not work. In ArmA 2s case, a year old "script" would work in the game with a new "bypass" because scripts dont really change, bohemia created them so events can happen during a multiplayer game.

An example, when you log in to the game with your DayZ char, you actually run a script to spawn your inventory.

[RIGHTLY 87]

Jesus christ Far Cry 2 used Punk Buster and it was some of the worse bullshit I ever experienced. I would join a game and get instantly kicked and banned from that server when I didn't do jack shit. Like literally. I didn't get a chance to do anything. It was instant kick-N-ban.