Dayz ruined by rampat hacking?

[pcgnBobo 20]

The mod's have some of the hardest jobs here at DayZ, because I directed I wanted the forums to be like the "wild west". Unlike many forums, where the mods are very heavy handed, huge amounts of leeway are given. I think they do a fantastic job of bringing a tiny bit of order to what is one of the wildest gaming forums out there. Max, who posted above, in particular has given countless hours to try and put some order into things, which makes my job much easier because I can review it.

In terms of contacting specific communities, I really, really enjoy being able to talk with people. Not just about the good things (I've enough warm and fuzzy media interviews to last me a lifetime), i like talking about the real issues. The mistakes I made, the challenges we face. I think at my Eurogamer talk - this is what I am going to talk about. All the things I am amazed that media have never asked or challenged me about.

Anyway - I do have very little time. especially with two key Bohemia employees in prison in Greece (they were map designers on ChernarusPlus), so I would need some kind of easy mechanism to have discussions such as those Max has provided with consolidated questions.

I respect your busy schedule and would very much like to have our community interact with you to share stories and feedback.

I will send you a message later today in a format that matches your request as best as I understand it.

I am one of the calmest most collected individuals you may encounter in your life, and I know that doesn't seem apparent with some of my comments around these forums. I apologize for that and I hope it's understood the frustration that has lead me to taking rash measures.

Max, I do not single you or any other mod out. I do however notice a congruent effort from the mods as a whole posting more in the form of telling people what they do wrong versus what they could do more correctly.

[rocket 16567]

I am one of the calmest most collected individuals you may encounter in your life, and I know that doesn't seem apparent with some of my comments around these forums. I apologize for that and I hope it's understood the frustration that has lead me to taking rash measures.

I don't recall seeing anything I took offense too or thought was out of line in your post, hence why I took the time to reply.

The issue raised is not only valid, but serious. And yes, the discussion has occurred before but I think it is something that we will have to continue to discuss and tell people about until it is fixed. To do anything else would be like yelling at the sky to make it change color. Everyone is frustrated, but that is a good sign. That means people care about the result, the onus is now on the dev team and me not to fuck this up. If we do fuck it up, it's our fault because this is our dream project to lose.

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

Private Hives are only as good as the admins. Just because it's a private hive doesn't mean harckers won't be there if the admins are not on the ball.

Worse.. at least with masskill and teleporting you figure immedialy you have been "cheated".. and it finishes there. But with aimbots, map hacks, and stuff like that, you going to play with "invisible cheaters", that will make almost impossible to build a serious gameplay.

Cheaters in other games are ok.. since they are based on "rounds", so you change the server and you're fine. In dayZ, with a "permanent" world, one cheater could ruin your whole gaming experience: you can't hide a vehicle.. you can build a camp.. you can't "build" your own experience, you can only do death-match.. exactly like it's happening right now.

That's exactly why I play on whitelisted private hives and no longer have these problems. Deathmatching against aimbots and map hackers is just as pointless as deathmatching against god mode hackers.

Server admins who take the time to setup a private hive have more power over their servers and are generally more invested in it than some guy who tosses some cash a provider and doesn't do any of the work.

[Zombie Jesus 723]

I have to say Rocket is dropping some specifics in his allotted forum time this week, also I had no idea the guys arrested in Greece worked on Chernarus plus, that whole situation sucks a whole bag of dicks. Got a great answer in another hacker thread on the steps being taken to combat hacking in the standalone, glad I took this time to slack off at work to post on the forums today because I got some decent information.

I will post his answer here because it seems relevant to the discussion at hand.

Agreed.

The approach must be several layers:

1. Remove the ability to inject scripts in game. This is done through stopping the engine from loading pbo's after runtime, not allowing SQF script riles in after initial load, and checking signatures of all Pbo's. Compiling the SQF in the distribution is also additional security.

2. Improve the security of information between client<>server. You'll never solve that, but you can make it more challenging. This helps make packet injection more complex, therefore more easier to make mistakes. For mistake results... see #3.

3. Auditing of information. An additional cloud of servers who's job is to go through information archived in the database to identify those profiles with suspicious information. Some will clearly be hackers, and these accounts can be banned. Those that are just suspicious can be monitored, and informed of the reasons for their ban with evidence over time.

4. VAC/PB. If, for example, the game is released as a Steam distribution - then it can make use of VAC. Think of it as BattlEye on steroids. It also can cause you some issues with your steam account.

Even with all these levels, some hacking will undoubtedly occur. But like committing a crime, the chance is each time you will screw up, and when you do, you'll be caught. When 1-3 is tied with 4, the results can become even more effective. We need to increase the effectiveness to the point where the chances of you encountering a hacker are low, and where the amount of hacking is low due to the risks of getting caught. Once we reach this, and I am confident we can with standalone, then we will be in a much better position.

But, these things take time, and they take access to the source + smart people. We have all those things, but time only flows in one direction.

[WalkerDown (DayZ) 296]

That's exactly why I play on whitelisted ...

That's where you'll find the smartest cheaters, those ones that have enough brain to not mass kill ppl on the server or teleporting, but that will use map exploits and blood regen in a way that is basically impossible (server side) to know if they are really cheating or extremely aware/good players. You'll play with the constant paranoia of playing against a cheater. Whitelisted servers is a solution only against the brainless kids, but you'll continue to play against a bunch of cheaters.

[tsandrey 379]

Yeah what he said.. Really? YOu really think the standalone will be the end of hackers? Battleye comes out with a patch and within hours it's worked around by hackers, I'll give the standalone version 48 hours tops until it's cracked. Anyone thinks otherwise is living in la-la land. It's possible to slow down hackers but you won't be able to completely rid every game of them.

What you said has nosense! The standalone will simply lock up the game, so hackers can't teleport, masskill and create vehicles/weapons anymore! Of course, there will be ESP, aimbots and other cheats! Every game has cheats.

But in standalone, there will be less cheats and BE will have an easier job of catching them!

[RogueOne 112]

What you said has nosense! The standalone will simply lock up the game, so hackers can't teleport, masskill and create vehicles/weapons anymore! Of course, there will be ESP, aimbots and other cheats! Every game has cheats.

But in standalone, there will be less cheats and BE will have an easier job of catching them!

I honestly hope your right but I've been playing online games since Doom 3d and every game made since then has been hacked to some degree. My comment was aimed at the folks who say "Once standalone is released hacking will be a thing of the past". That's just stupid to say.. The only way to stop hacking completely is to make games single player, As long as your connected to a server there is an opportunity for hacks. That's the truth of the matter not a naive guess.

If your counting on BE to solve all the problem good luck.. They're doing a piss poor job with every other game using it, What makes you think they will suddenly step up the game?

I will agree that shutting down the number of DB interactions could/should take out most of the script injections such as teleporting, mass kills etc. But I'm guessing some genius hacker will figure out a way around that. Don't confuse script kiddies with real hackers, The guys behind the scripts are the real deal.. BE/PB/VAC all have talented people working for them but some of these hackers are equally as talented.

Edited September 18, 2012 by RogueOne

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

That's where you'll find the smartest cheaters, those ones that have enough brain to not mass kill ppl on the server or teleporting, but that will use map exploits and blood regen in a way that is basically impossible (server side) to know if they are really cheating or extremely aware/good players. You'll play with the constant paranoia of playing against a cheater. Whitelisted servers is a solution only against the brainless kids, but you'll continue to play against a bunch of cheaters.

Well, I guess the option is playing public hive servers with a bunch of drooling idiots or playing on this whitelisted private hive server with soft hackers that for some reason haven't found our cars yet, our camp, or bee lined right to us after we killed them. To our surprise, NO ONE has combat logged either and there's certainly no ghosting.

So I think I'll take my whitelisted server where someone may or may not be hacking but certainly isn't teleporting me into the ocean or turning us all into goats.

[Zombie Jesus 723]

I honestly hope your right but I've been playing online games since Doom 3d and every game made since then has been hacked to some degree. My comment was aimed at the folks who say "Once standalone is released hacking will be a thing of the past". That's just stupid to say.. The only way to stop hacking completely is to make games single player, As long as your connected to a server there is an opportunity for hacks. That's the truth of the matter not a naive guess.

If your counting on BE to solve all the problem good luck.. They're doing a piss poor job with every other game using it, What makes you think they will suddenly step up the game?

The level of hacking on this mod is absurdly high, but it has its roots in the ArmA2 engine being script friendly and can not really be addressed in the current mod. If there is a PC game that is completely hacker free let me know but every game I have ever played had some hacking (AKA scripting) involved. I rarely see it in Battlefield 3 but I took a forced break from Dayz just last night and encountered a hacker on one of my games. It will always suck to die by hack in this game due to the persistent characters, but hopefully the days of constant hacker incidents for players will come to an end with the release of a locked down standalone. I posted a very detailed response that Rocket gave me on this very subject in this thread, read it over and see if that sounds like something that will greatly reduce the amount of hacking.

That's where you'll find the smartest cheaters, those ones that have enough brain to not mass kill ppl on the server or teleporting, but that will use map exploits and blood regen in a way that is basically impossible (server side) to know if they are really cheating or extremely aware/good players. You'll play with the constant paranoia of playing against a cheater. Whitelisted servers is a solution only against the brainless kids, but you'll continue to play against a bunch of cheaters.

I honestly try not to think about this fact too often because it flat out depresses me to think about all the subtle hacks other players could be using. The only time I have ever seriously suspected one of these was when I was watching a guy from a bush (yea in third person deal with it purists) in a ghillie suit, he stops and then turns toward me and starts firing. How the hell did he know I was there, he might have caught a glimpse of me but I still have my doubts.

[tsandrey 379]

If your counting on BE to solve all the problem good luck.. They're doing a piss poor job with every other game using it, What makes you think they will suddenly step up the game?

I'm just saying that BE will have an easier job of detecting hacks in standalone! And if you think that any other anti-cheat (PB, VAC) would do better, you're wrong! It's already been confirmed that BE is the best AC for Arma

[FrankFisher 46]

This is why I think dayz has so many hackers.

Player: plays dayz, gets killed by someone or a hacker and gets angry.

Player than looks for hacks to get revenge and its like a chain reaction.

I don't know how to hack in any games but from what I know its super easy to do it in dayz.

That is why so many do it.

Edited September 18, 2012 by FrankFisher

[tsandrey 379]

I don't know how to hack in any games but from what I know its super easy to do it in dayz.

That is why so many do it.

It seems easy, but it's not. Believe me, 90% of them get caught sonner of later! It seems like they are undetected at first, but they get banned in a banwave later!

Some of them just leave DayZ/cheating, while some of them just buy more cheap keys

[RogueOne 112]

I'm just saying that BE will have an easier job of detecting hacks in standalone! And if you think that any other anti-cheat (PB, VAC) would do better, you're wrong! It's already been confirmed that BE is the best AC for Arma

AFAIK Rocket mentioned VAC could be an option. BE has positive options with the scripts but PB also uses almost the same system. Either way the issue with the ARMA engine is DB interactions which allow script injections pretty easily. Unfortunately you cannot completely plug those holes, I trust this will be addressed though.

[tsandrey 379]

AFAIK Rocket mentioned VAC could be an option. BE has positive options with the scripts but PB also uses almost the same system. Either way the issue with the ARMA engine is DB interactions which allow script injections pretty easily. Unfortunately you cannot completely plug those holes, I trust this will be addressed though.

PB has no custom script detection features whatsover, and it usually takes a lot of time for PB to detect public hacks! BE>PB in this case

Edited September 18, 2012 by TSAndrey

[skuggan 4]

Since DayZ is not your ordinary Battlefield 3 or BlackOps game where you play - die - play - rince and repeat until you are bored, but instead you migh play for hours and days just to get that precious high end gear just to suddenly be teleported and killed by some noname angry kid.

Don't get me wrong tho, I understand the issues with ARMA2 engine and how it works, i'm actually talking about the finished product of Standalone DayZ.

Maybe people won't be able to spawn a helicopter and 10 bodyguards going rampage in elektro, but i can bet you anything that there will be hacks within a week after release.

Not sure I'm willing to sacrifice so much time if there is no real plan from the devs on how they will counter hacks.

The DayZ competition (you know what im talking about) they released some info on what they plan on anticheat and prevention that sounded pretty promising.

I mean DayZ "Standalone" will still be using a stripped down version of the "Real Virtuality" engine that powers ARMA2.

And I don't care if Battleye bans X amount of people, the harm to us players are already done.

[pcgnBobo 20]

What I'm curious about is how MMOs handle anti-cheat.

This game is essentially an MMO without leveling and without central servers. The servers are 3rd party connecting to a central database. This inherently means that every 3rd party connection to that central database is a potential threat. These connections can be mimiced or otherwise be in cognito by some threatening entity.

[KField86 237]

Much like minecraft (and counterstrike) dayz has to deal with it's share of problems.

I've never said I could fix hacking. You will never "fix" it but you can do things to help. And tell me where I have even said that any upcoming dayz patch will even address hacking. I have not made those promises.

There are no rules for server administration, we opened this up and there are many excellent private hives. I don't know where you are getting information, but it is all wrong.

I've been promoting a number of private hives, because while i am addressing many issues in the standalone - they cannot be addressed in DayZ without changing the source. And that would fundamentally affect the experience of those playing regular ArmA2. Private hives are recommended as a great experience by me. Where people get the idea this is not the case, is beyond me.

Ok Rocket, this was news to me as well, and I was almost about to shut my server down, but I may hold off on that if you can answer one question for me. You say the rules for admins have opened up, but you only go on to talk about private hives after that. If I have a server on the main hive, do I have free rule to ban anyone I suspect of hacking? Do I have to provide logs? Basically, all the rules we had to watch out for to prevent being blacklisted, do we have to follow those still? I mean, with the way the game is right now, and so many people having bypasses, there really is no way to know other than hunch in some cases who is hacking. I'd rather ban 20 innocent people until I caught the asshole doing it, and then just go and unban everyone except him.

If you can give me the go ahead, or assure me that I shouldn't have any fear of getting blacklisted, and I can rule with an iron fist(against hacking, and anything classed as illegitimate) I will go ahead and keep the server online and possibly come back to play the game. That's really been my biggest gripe. It's so out of control at the moment, but I felt like we still weren't being allowed any privileges in terms of being able to kick and ban users for certain things. I only intend to ban for suspicion of hacking like I said, or using illegal weapons, or doing anything incredibly disruptive to the server. I don't care if people camp on sniper hill all day killing fresh spawns. That's part of the game. I don't care about someone griefing. That's DayZ. I care about anyone doing anything, or having anything, that should not be in dayz. Whether they hacked it in or not, it doesn't matter. There are other servers that will allow it, and there are more people than not, who would like to see people being removed for having illegal items. Plain and simple.

[RogueOne 112]

I used to play ravenshield and could input custom scripting much like BE does with the scripts.txt files. Haven't played that in years so maybe it's changed.

[RogueOne 112]

What I'm curious about is how MMOs handle anti-cheat.

This game is essentially an MMO without leveling and without central servers. The servers are 3rd party connecting to a central database. This inherently means that every 3rd party connection to that central database is a potential threat. These connections can be mimiced or otherwise be in cognito by some threatening entity.

That is more to the root of the issue here. The anticheat protection for DayZ is being used on a platform designed for FPS games, Therefore some type of hybrid needs to be built to treat it more like an MMO.

Edited September 18, 2012 by RogueOne

[Zombie Jesus 723]

Since DayZ is not your ordinary Battlefield 3 or BlackOps game where you play - die - play - rince and repeat until you are bored, but instead you migh play for hours and days just to get that precious high end gear just to suddenly be teleported and killed by some noname angry kid.

Don't get me wrong tho, I understand the issues with ARMA2 engine and how it works, i'm actually talking about the finished product of Standalone DayZ.

Maybe people won't be able to spawn a helicopter and 10 bodyguards going rampage in elektro, but i can bet you anything that there will be hacks within a week after release.

Not sure I'm willing to sacrifice so much time if there is no real plan from the devs on how they will counter hacks.

The DayZ competition (you know what im talking about) they released some info on what they plan on anticheat and prevention that sounded pretty promising.

I mean DayZ "Standalone" will still be using a stripped down version of the "Real Virtuality" engine that powers ARMA2.

And I don't care if Battleye bans X amount of people, the harm to us players are already done.

Hacking happens man, the sooner you learn to deal with that fact the sooner you will have fun PC gaming again. I get what you are saying here about Dayz having bigger consequences than a Battlefield 3 type game, but it still does not change the fact that hackers are gonna hack.

[kranky@dir.bg 27]

If I have a server on the main hive, do I have free rule to ban anyone I suspect of hacking? Do I have to provide logs?

Wait, wait - who told you can't ban the idiots? have you seen this link? http://code.google.com/p/dayz-community-banlist/

On my public hive server I have banned already over 1700 GUIDs and IPs. And I do not care at all TBH. Blacklisted or not. It is not essential to me to pay for public server at teh end of the day...

[xarok777@gmail.com 205]

What the fuck is rampat hacking?

[Blixil 0]

This is horse shit quite frankly. I've heard it a million times before "the next update, the next version, the standalone........... will fix the hacking".

That's like going to the car dealership and buying a jeep and the four wheel drive doesn't work and the dealership saying some douche tampered with it wait until we get our next shipment in and come buy another one.

The problem with hacking is the mods on this forum, rocket and his rules with server administration, and the pussy fucks that are attracted to the free for all the mods and devs have created for them.

Come to www.pc-gamers.net and sign up for our Oct 1st go live for private Lingor server which we don't have to associate by these "rules". What a joke. The game is amazing, the people are douches. We have a brilliant community, anti-hack measures monitored by hacking experts, and won't have these ridiculous issues. Lingor private is live now open for early access with Chernarus private coming in the next week or 2.

Want amazing experience with an amazing game? Come join us. PERIOD

http://www.pc-gamers.net/showthread.php?17985-Since-I-can-t-reply-to-BOBO-due-to-not-having-10-posts-BoBo-and-ED Yes goto a private hive server where they have no integrity, that server sounds good.

[Blixil 0]

I appreciate your sentiment and I like the sound of what you have said.

Referring to patches and updates, i am referring in general to the software industry.

I am ECSTATIC that you have opened up server adminning and yes this is news to me. Thank you for clarifying rocket.

As for fixing hacking, you're right it is an ongoing war that will never end which is why it's so important to let admins do their job.

Rocket, I'm sure you get many messages and comments from clueless individuals. I would like to invite you to a conversation with our community staff for some constructive collaberation. If you prefer to coordinate privately please let's do so!

http://www.pc-gamers.net/showthread.php?17985-Since-I-can-t-reply-to-BOBO-due-to-not-having-10-posts-BoBo-and-ED

Again... you're a hypocrite. They are banning players that are guilty by association, and then doing the exact same thing, and not banning themselves, and to clairify it is not them replacing lost gear, its much more than that and before this go further this issue this topic needs to be addressed by someone from rocket.

[pcgnBobo 20]

http://www.pc-gamers...sts-BoBo-and-ED Yes goto a private hive server where they have no integrity, that server sounds good.

Edited September 19, 2012 by pcgnBobo