Banning hackers in ET

2006-03-03T15:52:00.000-08:00

So many stupid people in charge of ET and so many more stupid people think they know everything.

There is a big argument at ET Center about a woman who got banned from TWL which is Team Warfare League because her husband hacked and they have one IP for the house. And this started so many things so many idiots crawled out of their holes to shake their fist and act like experts. OK so here is the facts about banning people in ET.

PB GUID is the GUID given to you by Punk Buster it is based on your CDKEY and it is good for most games because if your GUID is banned you need to buy a new game. Not ET it is free so you only need to delete ETKEY to get a new GUID. Fail. Next!

ET pro GUID is made by ET pro mod which is used in TWL it is made from your hardware. So many ways around this but I will not give details. Why? Because stupid people don't know how and it can be used to track them some what and I approve of that. But Windows 98 users all have one ET pro GUID. Let me tell you though I can have a new one in moments do not be fooled. And the ET pro creators give a warning do not place any trust in that GUID it was an experiment. Fail. Next!

IP. TWL knows PB GUID and ET pro GUID are useless so they ban by IP. They use PB GUID to identify you in a match but that is also pretty funny because I can send my ETKEY to my friend and he is me. TWL would say "aha but we can get the IP and see it is not from your ISP" well sorry guys I am about to explain why IP is a joke.

Let's pretend I am a hacker and I got caught on a server that sends PB violations to the MBL Master Ban List and TWL finds out and bans me. Or maybe there is a PB screenshot of me with a wall hack and it is sent to TWL. Either way I get banned from TWL. But I want to play in TWL what do I do? Well I can not use my old name obviously so I make up a new alias. OK now I am uk0rgi (no not that obvious just for fun here). I delete my ETKEY and make a new one and register on TWL as uk0rgi. I use a proxy when I register. They can still track you when you register with a proxy but I will not explain how. I do not know if they do this or not because I have not checked but it is easy to bypass as well. But retarded hackers might fall into such a trap so I will leave it a mystery. OK now uk0rgi is a new ET player with no past. Shit I can't play with this IP it is on the MBL what do I do now? Get a new one. Some ISPS give you a new one regularly some do not. If your IP does not change much reset your modem. Stick an unbent paper clip in the tiny reset hole in the back and hold it a few seconds. You may have to reboot windows and you may have to enter your ISP username and password again. Also it may not work the first time so try again. Eventually you will get a new one if you have to reset the modem and power down over night. If you have a static IP call your ISP I can't help you.

OK now I am uk0rgi with a new TWL account a new PB GUID and a new IP. But what if somebody has traced your ET pro GUID before? For example YAWN is a tool which tracks them and it might tie your new name to your old name and you are busted. Well good. As I said I will not explain how to change that ID because believe it or not if TWL is reading this I do not want to help hacker scum. I have to leave some things open to mystery LoL! So I leave that to you but you better change your ET pro GUID Mr. Hacker or you will be discovered. We will pretend you figured that out.

Now you have a fresh identity and no hacking history. Time to find a team! But wait! Your voice may be recognized! If you play on a team you will have to use voice communication software and the gaming world is small with people coming on your teams Ventrilo server to visit and what not. Not to worry there is software to change it so convincingly I could not recognize myself when I tried it. I even made myself sound like my father and recorded it and played it to my mother and she was amazed.

Now you are asking how do you know all this are you an old hacker like you described? No. I am not. I learned everything here in one late night of searching and testing because of what I saw with this woman who was banned so wrongly from her hobby. One night with Google and I would be able to bypass anything TWL can throw at me. Happy for me I do not need to do such things. But if I can learn all this from Google how can so many people be so ignorant?

Another thing about IP. TWL will tell you they will ban sub nets until you are gone. Or keep looking for your ISP. Sorry but fail again. I have also tried playing ET through a proxy and it works very pleasantly. I had only some public proxies and my ping was spiking up and down and sometimes I could not move at all. This was pure experiment though remember. With a private proxy server this would not be an issue and the only negative would be extra hops to add to your ping. But depending on location of the proxy server this could be very small and remember ET has anti-lag.

So once again the point here is TWL is in a very bad position. What do they do? They must ban hackers of course. One possible idea is like this........

When the season ends you announce that next season is in one month (or whatever). You tell players who intend to play next season to generate a new ETKEY or make a backup up their current one now because next season we will require your PB GUID is one month old. And they add that command to the official match config and if your ID is not a month old you can not connect for your match. But there are problems here. PB has lots of bugs and in earlier times you had to delete your key to play ET. What if this happened again? This is a real problem but the positive benefits of such a plan are so nice it would be worth looking for a way to do it safely. Of course other games that you buy do not have this problem because you can not delete your RTCW KEY for instance. This is a problem with ET caused by a PB error. So we need to get them to fix it or guarantee it is fixed now.

What else? Nothing really. Banning works because people do not want to spend money on a new game. This is not applicable in ET so we must make the disposable key non-disposable so it has some value like other games. It is not a perfect idea but everything else is worse. It is the least shitty method in a pile of other worthless shitty methods. ETKEY sharing could be dealt with by allowing only one GUID per player per season. This is of course if PB could be sure the ET system would work correctly like RTCW or Quake or what ever. If you lose your ETKEY too bad it is no different than losing your RTCW CD case with the CDKEY on it. You fucked up now buy a new CD and see you next season. Same with ET.

MAKE THE ETKEY VALUABLE!

So you see I do not smile on hackers or hacking. If you are reading this you see I did not reveal anything just common things and I hinted at the rest. This is a devils advocate role I played here. I hate hackers but I fucking hate unfair bans too. How can you harden your anti-cheating methods without poking holes in them? OK lets poke holes and see if we can make it better because banning by IP is FUCKING RETARDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First post!

2006-01-17T17:41:00.000-08:00

LoL!

igr0ku

Banning hackers in ET

First post!