Anit-Hack Essay on the Herald

[Caohmin]

http://www.camelotherald.com/more/1529.shtml

Got an important essay for you folks:

New Frontiers represents a clean, fresh beginning for realm versus realm combat in Dark Age of Camelot. Part of that new beginning means that we must continue our ongoing battle against the cheaters and hackers who seek to have an advantage over honest players in our new lands; over the honest players who are the vast, vast majority of our customer base.

As part of the New Frontiers development effort, we have developed new "hacker sensing" technology. Early tests indicate that we can identify hackers better than ever before, and at the same time with fewer hours of investigation. We’re very excited about this, as it will significantly speed up our banning process. We have always cared very much about getting cheaters out of the game, but the process was so time consuming that it frustrated both ourselves and our honest players. Now, our first New Frontiers bannings and suspensions will happen during the first week of launch.

On some message boards, a few people have posted that they believe they need to use cheat programs because "everyone" does. While our numbers don’t reflect this at all - our tests continue to indicate that only a small minority of our players cheat - we will still give those people a chance to jump off the bandwagon and stop cheating of their own free will. Here’s your notice: If you completely uninstall the programs now, you won’t have anything to worry about.

If someone doesn’t uninstall the cheat programs he depends on to stand a chance against good players, because he thinks this is just another typical pre-release press release, he’ll present the perfect chance for us to give our new technology a spin. We’re looking forward to banning even more players who feel that it is perfectly acceptable to cheat in our game. Mythic will gladly lose the small portion of its subscriber base that does not abide by the EULA in order to make the game experience even better for the vast majority of the players.

Although our new technology guarantees faster and more accurate investigations, we will still consider each case individually and take the action appropriate to each account. Just remember, our stated policy is, and has always been "one proven hack, one banned account". If we opt to give second chances, we can only hope that people take advantage of the chance to start fresh.

New Frontiers will be be great fun, and we want the great rewards to accrue to players who really are that good, as opposed to people that really are that sad. Thanks for playing, and we hope you all enjoy yourselves on launch day.

***************************

It sounds like they've always been tough on cheaters and banning accounts whenever they find someone cheating, but for the life of me, I can't ever remember anyone on Iseult ever being banned and we know there are cheaters on our server. Even in Albion.

"one proven hack, one banned account"

I guess it's the "proven" part that lets them weasel out of it.

[Sodom]

Tough talk, but still no evidence. I for one would appreciate some figures to back it up. In their in-house tests, how many times out of 100 are they able to catch someone using Unleashed? What are their ban statistics to date?

[Zutroy]

I know one person who got a 1 week ban on MLF for using daox back when they were cracking down on it. That's about it though.

Some of the biggest cheaters I've ever seen were playing on pendragon when I went over there to test a couple times last month. Makes me somewhat doubt their new technology's capabilities.

[Gueuze]

It's a bluff imo.

[Axecleaver]

Sounds like BS to me. There was only one account banning I'm aware of, and I got it reported second hand. I had posted something on the VU boards that I didn't know anybody ever getting permabanned, and I got this story sent to me.

Some kid on Iseult (he was 10 I think) was talking in his guildchat about how he used radar. Now apparently this is about it in terms of "proof" -- if you SAY in game that you're using cheat programs, that'll get you banned. Somehow I don't see a lot of people being caught by this, lol.

Guess we'll find out shortly after NF launches. But I think this is more along the lines of PR than actual new techniques for catching cheaters.

[Zutroy]

The only reason they caught people using daox was because they put in a listening script that would report you whenever you typed in a ]*** command. Even if you were just screwing around and didn't have it actually running you'd get a warning email for doing that.

[Legellyn]

IF...and I do mean "IF" this isn't BS...how will this affect us non-cheaters that use firewalls?

<--non-cheaterness >= my n00bness

[Axecleaver]

I guess it depends what this "new technology" does. My guess is they've automated some kind of detection technique that searches for particular behavior. It's probably woefully simple and will flag a few innocent folks. I wouldn't worry too much about it until we get some field reports about people who have been caught.

[Siddhartha]

why don't they just change the terms of use that they can search your registry or file system for any file that they want to. That would turn up the offending dll - and be pretty good proof.

I mean they don't really have to be fair about it. If you have it installed, you get banned - pretty simple.

The file search thing would only work if it didn't try to search the whole tree at once - just a little after you start up.

None of this would be an issue if we had quantum entanglement encryption.

[Caohmin]

"why don't they just change the terms of use that they can search your registry or file system for any file that they want to."

I'm no expert, but I believe that it's illegal to search someone's computer without their consent.

[Rosslyn]

I think that's the point- you'd be consenting when you clicked on "I Accept" on the Terms window.

[Gueuze]

Yeah, that pretty much requires a search warrant.  I think volunteering to have your hard drive searched would cut down on their customer base.  Privacy issues, not to mention the increased lag.

I don't want them finding my collection of redhead 19 yr olds in glasses.

(Edited by Gueuze at 5:26 pm on June 16, 2004)

[Rosslyn]

d00d, I'll trade you my "Lindsay Lohan in bifocals" for a good "Lucille Ball w/ Ray Bans", just let me know.

[Axecleaver]

Everquest tried that at one point and got sued for it. Nobody is willing to take that risk again.