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On July 14 2011 08:27 cryL wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2011 08:23 jinorazi wrote:
i think the problem is that the average joe uses softwares like raidcall not knowing how it actually works, all they want is just be able to talk to their buddies awhile they play. its something that spread word to mouth, i personally use skype since my friend asked me to get it, but if my friend asked me to get raidcall i wouldn't have hesitated to do so.
then they got banned for trying to talk to their friends while playing.
blizzard has banned hundreds of people for suspicion. if the average joe asks, "what the hell did i do wrong?" blizzard simply answers, "you broke the rule."
is blizzard going to stand by their words(thx for money, bye bye) or will they actually try to help out the innocent people?
seriously, $60 out the door for trying to talk to friends. not sure how much raidcall is related to the fiasco in taiwan but that situation is pretty fucking ridiculous in blizzard's part. no it's ridiculous on RaidCalls part for not performing reasonable verification on their software before pumping it out to the masses and going to great lengths to advertise / appear to be developing reputable software (see sponsoring a professional esports team). Focus your attention on the correct entity.
Not sure if you read all of the relevant arguments here.
Blizzard's devices are flagging harmless pieces of software as cheating mechanisms. They're not whitelisting RaidCall properly, as they clearly don't have issues with other overlay programs (FRAPS/Steam, etc.). Thus, there's something wrong on their end.
On July 14 2011 04:01 R1CH wrote:
Steam, FRAPS and DXTory all use page flip hooking to draw overlays exactly like Raidcall does. There are differences in the implementation but the concepts are the same.
On July 14 2011 07:28 R1CH wrote:
Your anti virus / security software probably violates the TOS/EULA too by injecting and intercepting API calls. Should Blizzard ban for that as well since it's a 3rd party program?
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Have got my accounts back !
Thanks Blizzard to listen to the community when they're having to :D
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On July 14 2011 07:57 meursault wrote:
Can someone explain what you can achieve with an overlay as far as external maphack that you can't achieve with a second monitor or by relaying the information over the network to a laptop next to you. I don't have experience using these hacks but I am a graduate student in Computer Science and read the source code to one of the original external maphacks so I understand how they work.
Is their some magic to what they are doing with overlays that makes it so much better than simply displaying the minimap and current production information on a separate screen? R1CH can probably answer this but my non-programer brain tells me that this action from Blizzard seems very stupid to put it nicely.
The line of thinking appears to be something like this: 1) People use hacks on sc2. 2)These hacks display something on the screen like almost every consumer software out there. 3)One of these hacks(or some) use these kinds of DX hooks or whatever they are called, probably exactly like most programs do that are able to show things on the screen when people play games in full screen mode. 4)Ban accounts where the computers the accounts were used on had software that used this technique.
There are probably millions of different software on peoples starcraft 2 computers around the world, just buying a computer from for example HP probably equals to like 50 already installed. Banning accounts because peoples computers have to Blizzard unknown software on them will most likely never work unless people start using special computers that they only use for starcraft and absolutely nothing else.
Not only does banning because of these DX hooks or whatever seem stupid, it shouldn't have any effect what so ever on the so called "hackers" since, as far as I can understand, these hack programs don't need to use these techniques more than normal programs.
But again, I'm not a programer so if I'm wrong someone like R1CH will hopefully correct me.
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Stupid, justified, good, whatever... It will come down to image.
The image a company will get for banning people for using chat software X that does not offer them any kind of help in the game is going to be a negative one. When we are talking about the numbers that it seems like (over 33% of TW server lol?) I will place money on this being 'fixed' in some fashion.
This is business. A tough warden is good for business until it causes something like this.
Companies do things that enable them to make money, they are tools to that purpose and that purpose alone. Just ask yourself what makes sense with that in mind and it will be clear what the outcome of this will be.
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My account was banned as well for using third party programs. I have never hacked and did not use RaidCall. My ban was also downgraded to a warning, but I already paid $60 for a new license. Hopefully they'll give me a refund and restore my old Starcraft II character and its portraits, achievements, etc.
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On July 14 2011 10:53 StarDrive wrote:
My account was banned as well for using third party programs. I have never hacked and did not use RaidCall. My ban was also downgraded to a warning, but I already paid $60 for a new license. Hopefully they'll give me a refund and restore my old Starcraft II character and its portraits, achievements, etc.
wait a sec.
bliz ban your account for no reason and the first thing you do is sending them 60$?
omg thats wired. if bliz del my account for nothing i would never buy any of there products again in my life...
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On July 14 2011 09:52 Akta wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2011 07:57 meursault wrote:
Can someone explain what you can achieve with an overlay as far as external maphack that you can't achieve with a second monitor or by relaying the information over the network to a laptop next to you. I don't have experience using these hacks but I am a graduate student in Computer Science and read the source code to one of the original external maphacks so I understand how they work.
Is their some magic to what they are doing with overlays that makes it so much better than simply displaying the minimap and current production information on a separate screen? R1CH can probably answer this but my non-programer brain tells me that this action from Blizzard seems very stupid to put it nicely. The line of thinking appears to be something like this: 1) People use hacks on sc2. 2)These hacks display something on the screen like almost every consumer software out there. 3)One of these hacks(or some) use these kinds of DX hooks or whatever they are called, probably exactly like most programs do that are able to show things on the screen when people play games in full screen mode. 4)Ban accounts where the computers the accounts were used on had software that used this technique. There are probably millions of different software on peoples starcraft 2 computers around the world, just buying a computer from for example HP probably equals to like 50 already installed. Banning accounts because peoples computers have to Blizzard unknown software on them will most likely never work unless people start using special computers that they only use for starcraft and absolutely nothing else. Not only does banning because of these DX hooks or whatever seem stupid, it shouldn't have any effect what so ever on the so called "hackers" since, as far as I can understand, these hack programs don't need to use these techniques more than normal programs. But again, I'm not a programer so if I'm wrong someone like R1CH will hopefully correct me.
I'm probably not comparable with R1CH, but in short:
This DX Hooks are put directly between SC2 and the Graphics Card, they have full access to the rendering of SC2. They are not limited to drawing something on the screen, they could go far deeper and do basically anything, from replacing textures and making cloaked units easily visible to (maybe, depends on SC2 programming) removing the fog or drawing other information into the world (for example actions your opponent performs that the hooked program intercepts from the network traffic).
SC2 can not know what the Hook does, it could be as harmless as Raidcall or as bad as a maphack. They very probably keep a whitelist of programs that are known to be Ok, like the often mentioned Steam and Fraps. Raidcall was not in the whitelist, so Blizzard/Warden had to assume it's something evil since Raidcall put itself between SC2 and the Graphics Card and did who-knows-what.
I also assume that SC2 does not transfer personal information like the list of running processes, so they don't know what exactly the hook is.
Would you rather have a few people banned and later unbanned or hackers that roam free because "they might not have done something wrong"? It is not possible for blizzard to use a blacklist, as that would miss every new maphack that would appear. A whitelist is a sensible choice and while it's sad that it hit a few innocent people, i'm sure those accounts will be restored. They just can't know about every program that plugs into the DirectX API.
On July 14 2011 10:35 vaderseven wrote:
Stupid, justified, good, whatever... It will come down to image.
The image a company will get for banning people for using chat software X that does not offer them any kind of help in the game is going to be a negative one. When we are talking about the numbers that it seems like (over 33% of TW server lol?) I will place money on this being 'fixed' in some fashion.
I haven't read the TW thread since yesterday, but wasn't TW something totally different?
EDIT:
Ok, checked the TW thread again. 253 people used Raidcall of 281 banned, so it looks probable that it's related. Still, 281 banned accounts are 0.2% of the TW Server, not 33%. Just because it's 33% of the poll doesn't mean it's 33% of the server unless every single person on that server voted in the poll.
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On July 14 2011 15:45 Morfildur wrote:
Would you rather have a few people banned and later unbanned or hackers that roam free because "they might not have done something wrong"?
yes its better to have one guilty person free than one not guilty person in jail ^^
thats common thinking in democratic states.
It is not possible for blizzard to use a blacklist, as that would miss every new maphack that would appear.
They are not able to detect every new maphack anyway. On common operations you have to use blacklist. Think about what would happen if a antivirus softoware use white not blacklist.
A whitelist is a sensible choice and while it's sad that it hit a few innocent people, i'm sure those accounts will be restored.
we are not talking about few people here
They just can't know about every program that plugs into the DirectX API.
thats why no one in this market expect them would even think about a white list
PS: sorry for double post i messed up the quote in quote thing hard
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On July 14 2011 15:52 skeldark wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2011 15:45 Morfildur wrote:
Would you rather have a few people banned and later unbanned or hackers that roam free because "they might not have done something wrong"? It is not possible for blizzard to use a blacklist, as that would miss every new maphack that would appear. A whitelist is a sensible choice and while it's sad that it hit a few innocent people, i'm sure those accounts will be restored. They just can't know about every program that plugs into the DirectX API.
1) They are not able to detect every new maphack anyway. 2)On common operations you have to use blacklist. Think about what would happen if a antivirus softoware use white not blacklist. 3) And yes its better to have one guilty person free than one not guilty person in jail ^^ thats common thinking in democratic states.
1) They can detect every maphack that uses a DX Hook
2) Unlike AntiVir programs and file operations, there are only very few reasons for any program to use DX Hooks, so for AntiVir programs 99% of the cases are ok, for DX Hooks in SC2, 99% of the cases are not. This is why in AntiVir programs, blacklists are ok while for SC2 and DX Hooks, whitelists are the correct choice.
Example:
You know you only recieve E-Mails from 5 persons/websites/companies, but you get a few hundred spam emails a day. Would you rather whitelist the 5 persons and have everything else land in a "spam" folder or blacklist every single mail address that does not belong to those 5 entities?
3) Having a banned account is not comparable with being in prison.
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On July 14 2011 16:03 Morfildur wrote:
1) They can detect every maphack that uses a DX Hook
2) Unlike AntiVir programs and file operations, there are only very few reasons for any program to use DX Hooks, so for AntiVir programs 99% of the cases are ok, for DX Hooks in SC2, 99% of the cases are not. This is why in AntiVir programs, blacklists are ok while for SC2 and DX Hooks, whitelists are the correct choice.
Example:
You know you only recieve E-Mails from 5 persons/websites/companies, but you get a few hundred spam emails a day. Would you rather whitelist the 5 persons and have everything else land in a "spam" folder or blacklist every single mail address that does not belong to those 5 entities?
3) Having a banned account is not comparable with being in prison.
1) they can detect every Program that use a dx hook you mean...
2) there are many program who use this. like video players.
example: I will never get a new costumer in my life because he get blocked.
Looks like a very bad idea to use a whitelist. i never heard of a email whitelist in my life and in working in this businesses.
3) yes but in both cases: innocent until they proof your guilty
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What happens if you miss a cheater with your detection: you have 1 cheater more.
What happens if you ban a nocheater: i loose 1 costumer forever...
BUT:
what happens if you ban a noncheating nerd: you get 60$
bliz have a financial interest in banning innocent guys.
I dont think they work with this, but the setup is scary.
PS: sorry for the mass edit so you replay to older version. i should think longer before i click post ^^
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On July 14 2011 16:07 skeldark wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2011 16:03 Morfildur wrote:
1) They can detect every maphack that uses a DX Hook
2) Unlike AntiVir programs and file operations, there are only very few reasons for any program to use DX Hooks, so for AntiVir programs 99% of the cases are ok, for DX Hooks in SC2, 99% of the cases are not. This is why in AntiVir programs, blacklists are ok while for SC2 and DX Hooks, whitelists are the correct choice.
Example:
You know you only recieve E-Mails from 5 persons/websites/companies, but you get a few hundred spam emails a day. Would you rather whitelist the 5 persons and have everything else land in a "spam" folder or blacklist every single mail address that does not belong to those 5 entities?
3) Having a banned account is not comparable with being in prison.
1) they can detect every Program that use a dx hook you mean... 2) there are many program who use this. like video players. example: I will never get a new costumer in my life because he get blocked. Looks like a very bad idea to use a whitelist. i never heard of a email whitelist in my life and in working in this businesses.
You seem to not have understood what DX Hooks are. No Videoplayer uses DX Hooks. Not a single one. They sometimes use DirectX Rendering, but thats (almost) completely unrelated. They don't change the output of other applications.
There are about a dozen programs that use DX Hooks for valid reasons, all others are usually maphacks, wallhacks and other such programs.
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On July 14 2011 16:16 Morfildur wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2011 16:07 skeldark wrote:On July 14 2011 16:03 Morfildur wrote:
1) They can detect every maphack that uses a DX Hook
2) Unlike AntiVir programs and file operations, there are only very few reasons for any program to use DX Hooks, so for AntiVir programs 99% of the cases are ok, for DX Hooks in SC2, 99% of the cases are not. This is why in AntiVir programs, blacklists are ok while for SC2 and DX Hooks, whitelists are the correct choice.
Example:
You know you only recieve E-Mails from 5 persons/websites/companies, but you get a few hundred spam emails a day. Would you rather whitelist the 5 persons and have everything else land in a "spam" folder or blacklist every single mail address that does not belong to those 5 entities?
3) Having a banned account is not comparable with being in prison.
1) they can detect every Program that use a dx hook you mean... 2) there are many program who use this. like video players. example: I will never get a new costumer in my life because he get blocked. Looks like a very bad idea to use a whitelist. i never heard of a email whitelist in my life and in working in this businesses. You seem to not have understood what DX Hooks are. No Videoplayer uses DX Hooks. Not a single one. They sometimes use DirectX Rendering, but thats (almost) completely unrelated. They don't change the output of other applications. There are about a dozen programs that use DX Hooks for valid reasons, all others are usually maphacks, wallhacks and other such programs.
Checked it, informed myself. Your right! I should do more research in the frist run.
Still i think a whitelist is to strong because a false positive is just to bad in any scan-procedure.
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On July 14 2011 16:21 skeldark wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2011 16:16 Morfildur wrote:On July 14 2011 16:07 skeldark wrote:On July 14 2011 16:03 Morfildur wrote:
1) They can detect every maphack that uses a DX Hook
2) Unlike AntiVir programs and file operations, there are only very few reasons for any program to use DX Hooks, so for AntiVir programs 99% of the cases are ok, for DX Hooks in SC2, 99% of the cases are not. This is why in AntiVir programs, blacklists are ok while for SC2 and DX Hooks, whitelists are the correct choice.
Example:
You know you only recieve E-Mails from 5 persons/websites/companies, but you get a few hundred spam emails a day. Would you rather whitelist the 5 persons and have everything else land in a "spam" folder or blacklist every single mail address that does not belong to those 5 entities?
3) Having a banned account is not comparable with being in prison.
1) they can detect every Program that use a dx hook you mean... 2) there are many program who use this. like video players. example: I will never get a new costumer in my life because he get blocked. Looks like a very bad idea to use a whitelist. i never heard of a email whitelist in my life and in working in this businesses. You seem to not have understood what DX Hooks are. No Videoplayer uses DX Hooks. Not a single one. They sometimes use DirectX Rendering, but thats (almost) completely unrelated. They don't change the output of other applications. There are about a dozen programs that use DX Hooks for valid reasons, all others are usually maphacks, wallhacks and other such programs. Checked it, informed myself. Your right! I should do more research in the frist run. Still i think a whitelist is to strong because a false positive is just to bad in any scan-procedure.
+rep 
You are the first person ever on the internet to change their opinion. CONGRATULATIONS Humanity is evolving! Have many many children for evolution sake please.
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On July 14 2011 16:21 skeldark wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2011 16:16 Morfildur wrote:On July 14 2011 16:07 skeldark wrote:On July 14 2011 16:03 Morfildur wrote:
1) They can detect every maphack that uses a DX Hook
2) Unlike AntiVir programs and file operations, there are only very few reasons for any program to use DX Hooks, so for AntiVir programs 99% of the cases are ok, for DX Hooks in SC2, 99% of the cases are not. This is why in AntiVir programs, blacklists are ok while for SC2 and DX Hooks, whitelists are the correct choice.
Example:
You know you only recieve E-Mails from 5 persons/websites/companies, but you get a few hundred spam emails a day. Would you rather whitelist the 5 persons and have everything else land in a "spam" folder or blacklist every single mail address that does not belong to those 5 entities?
3) Having a banned account is not comparable with being in prison.
1) they can detect every Program that use a dx hook you mean... 2) there are many program who use this. like video players. example: I will never get a new costumer in my life because he get blocked. Looks like a very bad idea to use a whitelist. i never heard of a email whitelist in my life and in working in this businesses. You seem to not have understood what DX Hooks are. No Videoplayer uses DX Hooks. Not a single one. They sometimes use DirectX Rendering, but thats (almost) completely unrelated. They don't change the output of other applications. There are about a dozen programs that use DX Hooks for valid reasons, all others are usually maphacks, wallhacks and other such programs. Checked it, informed myself. Your right! I should do more research in the frist run. Still i think a whitelist is to strong because a false positive is just to bad in any scan-procedure.
I'm suprised, i found someone who admitted to being wrong.... on the internet
It is strong and we could argue forever about wether it is too strong or not. I'm siding with blizzard in this case, but, well, if he works long enough, every programmer turns into a paranoid who thinks everyone is evil (My usual phrase is "If you write an application for any number of people, from one user - including yourself - to a billion users, there is always at least one person with malicious intentions"). I can understand that your opinion is different and won't argue more about it.
Blizzard made a business decision which - while maybe too strong - was not completely unreasonable (though maybe not completely reasonable either) and wether it was the correct decision or not, those users are still banned. I just hope Blizzard unbans them before the accounts get deleted.
They will probably change the policies in the future, though i fear they might start transfering the process list for those using programs with DX Hooks - which would be a big privacy concern.
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On July 14 2011 07:37 mr_tolkien wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2011 07:17 iba001 wrote:
My friend got banned for this, only for using a chat program, and that's shit because it's money down the drain. He's not going to buy another copy and now the only friend that I have played with is gone. Good job Blizzard. At least you have people with a complete lack of empathy on your side. It's not «empathy», from what they saw and the information they had it was a plug to the game rendering engine altering what the SC2 window was showing. As they didn't have any other info, it's quite normal they banned the account. Let's just hope they'll unban them ASAP.
i wasnt referring to blizz, i was referring to the people who instantly went to their defence with "I'm ok with it" comments. I actually quoted one of those too but you seem to have deleted it?
anyhow, it doesnt matter anymore, blizz saw the error of their ways and my friend got sent a retraction email after contacting them.
This should teach those who instantly defended blizz to take a breath and think about the situation, not everything blizz does is the right thing, they themselves acknowledged it. I love blizz and the games they make, but please try to think for yourselves people.
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On July 14 2011 17:33 iba001 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2011 07:37 mr_tolkien wrote:On July 14 2011 07:17 iba001 wrote:
My friend got banned for this, only for using a chat program, and that's shit because it's money down the drain. He's not going to buy another copy and now the only friend that I have played with is gone. Good job Blizzard. At least you have people with a complete lack of empathy on your side. It's not «empathy», from what they saw and the information they had it was a plug to the game rendering engine altering what the SC2 window was showing. As they didn't have any other info, it's quite normal they banned the account. Let's just hope they'll unban them ASAP. i wasnt referring to blizz, i was referring to the people who instantly went to their defence with "I'm ok with it" comments. I actually quoted one of those too but you seem to have deleted it? anyhow, it doesnt matter anymore, blizz saw the error of their ways and my friend got sent a retraction email after contacting them. This should teach those who instantly defended blizz to take a breath and think about the situation, not everything blizz does is the right thing, they themselves acknowledged it. I love blizz and the games they make, but please try to think for yourselves people.
How exactly did they do the wrong thing? Banning and then unbanning is the right thing to do as Blizzard knows they're the only ones that clean up the mess that this program creator did. It is up to the program creator to inform Blizzard of their programme and warn the users that their programme has not been cleared by Blizzard yet. You can't hijack SC2 and expect Blizzard to be ok with it. I'm not a Blizzard fanboy but I am a programmer. From a security perspective, I have to agree with Blizzard's approach. If I'm a maphacker right now, I'll probably try to figure out ways to hack into SC2 and pretend to be this friendly program. If a new harmless program that has this same behavior comes out, Blizzard will do this all over again.
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On July 14 2011 16:41 Morfildur wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2011 16:21 skeldark wrote:On July 14 2011 16:16 Morfildur wrote:On July 14 2011 16:07 skeldark wrote:On July 14 2011 16:03 Morfildur wrote:
1) They can detect every maphack that uses a DX Hook
2) Unlike AntiVir programs and file operations, there are only very few reasons for any program to use DX Hooks, so for AntiVir programs 99% of the cases are ok, for DX Hooks in SC2, 99% of the cases are not. This is why in AntiVir programs, blacklists are ok while for SC2 and DX Hooks, whitelists are the correct choice.
Example:
You know you only recieve E-Mails from 5 persons/websites/companies, but you get a few hundred spam emails a day. Would you rather whitelist the 5 persons and have everything else land in a "spam" folder or blacklist every single mail address that does not belong to those 5 entities?
3) Having a banned account is not comparable with being in prison.
1) they can detect every Program that use a dx hook you mean... 2) there are many program who use this. like video players. example: I will never get a new costumer in my life because he get blocked. Looks like a very bad idea to use a whitelist. i never heard of a email whitelist in my life and in working in this businesses. You seem to not have understood what DX Hooks are. No Videoplayer uses DX Hooks. Not a single one. They sometimes use DirectX Rendering, but thats (almost) completely unrelated. They don't change the output of other applications. There are about a dozen programs that use DX Hooks for valid reasons, all others are usually maphacks, wallhacks and other such programs. Checked it, informed myself. Your right! I should do more research in the frist run. Still i think a whitelist is to strong because a false positive is just to bad in any scan-procedure. I'm suprised, i found someone who admitted to being wrong.... on the internet It is strong and we could argue forever about wether it is too strong or not. I'm siding with blizzard in this case, but, well, if he works long enough, every programmer turns into a paranoid who thinks everyone is evil (My usual phrase is "If you write an application for any number of people, from one user - including yourself - to a billion users, there is always at least one person with malicious intentions"). I can understand that your opinion is different and won't argue more about it. Blizzard made a business decision which - while maybe too strong - was not completely unreasonable (though maybe not completely reasonable either) and wether it was the correct decision or not, those users are still banned. I just hope Blizzard unbans them before the accounts get deleted. They will probably change the policies in the future, though i fear they might start transfering the process list for those using programs with DX Hooks - which would be a big privacy concern.
Publicity wise, transferring the process list would be a lot worse. That is so intrusive. They have to do more than just check the name of the process. They have to verify the dlls that are loaded are genuine. I'm not sure that's even legal.
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After having to read this thread just to get my head around why raidcall users were banned and unbanned I have to ask, why did they need to use a direct x hook, or whatever strange method that flagged it as a a possible hack just to display an overlay?
How different is it to just have an application pop up on top of SC2? Did they need to do it the way they did for some fancy looking transparency or shading out when you bring up the program like steam does (how the background fades out but you can still make out what the game is doing).
I'm asking mainly in relation to my overlay macro thread, but also to get my head around why software like this turns out the way it does..
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Russian Federation88 Posts
On July 15 2011 14:04 zergrushkekeke wrote:
After having to read this thread just to get my head around why raidcall users were banned and unbanned I have to ask, why did they need to use a direct x hook, or whatever strange method that flagged it as a a possible hack just to display an overlay?
How different is it to just have an application pop up on top of SC2? Did they need to do it the way they did for some fancy looking transparency or shading out when you bring up the program like steam does (how the background fades out but you can still make out what the game is doing).
I'm asking mainly in relation to my overlay macro thread, but also to get my head around why software like this turns out the way it does..
Well we meet again ^_^ By using DX you can display something even in "fullscreen" (not "windowed fullscreen") mode. This graphic mode is default and faster than "windowed". So most of users prefer "fullscreen". I believe that Raidcall do this because many games use just DirectX fullscreen. It's not for SC2 only. But only SC2 has got ban for this.
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EPT
