2011-06-22, 07:36 AM
Stereo Wrote:It's way too hard to report hackers... and I assume that's cause the GMs don't have any good tools for sorting through the reports, since it's fairly obvious Nexon's not all that competent. So they need to cut down on the number of reports they get, and this means raising the barrier to reporting.
I know OdinMS had several heuristics that helped GMs find hackers (and autobanned people who were obviously cheating) but it's possible Nexon doesn't employ anyone able to build a similar system.
Independent verification of packet contents would go a long way towards fixing the problem. If it fails the sanity checks (buying an item the NPC wasn't selling, trading negative numbers of items, sending spouse chat to someone you're not married to or whispers to someone with whispers blocked) then temp-ban the account immediately. If it's within bounds, but is unusual behavior (mobs behaving out of the ordinary, like always moving towards the player when it should be random. Player changes channel very frequently, like every time someone else enters the map) then send a GM to look at them.
And playerside limits should be reflected by serverside ones. Otherwise you have a game where legitimate players are at a disadvantage over hackers on even minor things, like being able to change channels quickly or enter the cash shop.
When someone reports a player, it should be possible to start recording the reported player's actions. Save the packets and timing, then the GM has evidence to go on, even if they can't immediately zap themselves to the hacker's location. Making reporting more effective means fewer reports, and if someone does abuse the privilege, remove it.
There are ways to generate fake packet signatures and circumvent checks like you suggested. Easily, in fact. Been there done that, I'd say what you're saying is wholly true and it boils down to this: More human investment into the damn game. Period. Whether it's direct through GMs or through better infrastructure like you said. Better systems for automatically detecting stuff like this. While they'll always come back because that's what they do (they circumvent everything), it's better than letting it get so far out of hand like this and the last big PG hack release.
I'm convinced Nexon has pretty detailed logs of what's going on but they choose not to utilize them correctly/efficiently. If I a GM can tell me in a ticket with logged knowledge that I was running hacking programs then they obviously have the capability but not the competence. These programs aren't rootkitting themselves or anything and if MS is monitoring what is going on outside of the game and logging it, that can and should also lead to some effective solution. All they have to do is stay on top of these blatantly public programs.
I feel like it's harder to work from inside the game, ironically enough. They should take the fight to their security system and prevent them from even being able to enter the game with anything like that initialized. I believe that's how most other games are doing it. I know for sure Warden (similar to HS but more integrated/unannounced) in Blizzard games is some tough pomegranate. Even if you get away with map hacking in SCII, which is deathly easy to do, your program usage is logged constantly and you're almost always banned within a couple weeks.