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On February 20 2012 08:33 roymarthyup wrote:
seriously whats the point of maphacking, all it means is you will keep winning until you reach a level where eventually you will face people massively better than you who crush you
lol yea, hacks don't make up for a lack of skill 
The only real problem would be the use of hacks in tournaments, but when money's involved, those replays are going to be scrutinized like crazy, and there's no way you would get away with it.
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On February 20 2012 01:05 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2012 23:59 dehdar wrote:
As I explained hacks which uses .dll injections are all but undetectable. So if they are all but undetectable, doesn't that mean they are everything except undetectable, in other words easy to detect? I think you used that phrase incorrectly. Just trying to clear up some confusion.
the usage of the phrase is correct
the phrase itself has always been a little bit weird, but he used it correctly. the phrase "all but x" means "very close to x"
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I think it would be fairly accurate to say that "Blizzard is doing as much as they feel is necessary to keep their game "mostly' free of hacks".
They probably could eliminate all of the hacking with enough effort and money. But for them, I guess, its enough to eliminate 95% of it.
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Wrong. They could eliminate hacking permanently if they would put 1% of the effort they did to make this game unpiratable
Besides the fact that, the 1% would mean at least 1 million dollars, do you have any idea about making thing unpiratable? I'm pretty sure you don't, if you say things like that.
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On February 20 2012 08:57 Dhalphir wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2012 01:05 BronzeKnee wrote:On February 19 2012 23:59 dehdar wrote:
As I explained hacks which uses .dll injections are all but undetectable. So if they are all but undetectable, doesn't that mean they are everything except undetectable, in other words easy to detect? I think you used that phrase incorrectly. Just trying to clear up some confusion. the usage of the phrase is correct the phrase itself has always been a little bit weird, but he used it correctly. the phrase "all but x" means "very close to x"
The phrase "all but x" means everything except x. Like batman is all but invincible, because he has many positive qualities but isn't invincible.
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I thought Blizzard couldn't scan for .exe signatures because of the potential breach of privacy? AFAIK they used to do this practice but stopped because people were complaining that it was too invasive.
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On February 20 2012 05:29 PR4Y wrote:
To the people that quoted my post saying things like "it's impossible to secure" and "they have done everything they can"... I'm going to shoot down your entire argument right here and right now:
Maphacks work by modifying just a few game variables. Every time a patch comes out, the variables are SIMPLY RENAMED so that the people that made the maphacks have to find the variable again. This is literally the extent of what they have done to "actively" stop maphacking. They changed the name... PLEASE realize that this is NOT what some of you are calling "impossible to secure"... as they have done literally NOTHING to prevent maphacks. If you can show me a shred of evidence otherwise (you can't, because they haven't), then I'll retract my statements.
They sent a cease and desist letter to a few well known hack developers, who have since shut down their operations and haven't released the source code for their hacks. I think there have been 2 major sites and/or hacks that have since been shut down.
If someone figured out how to dupe in WoW, that would probably be fixed, correct? It would be fixed by finding out HOW the person did it, then patching the vulnerable code so that it wont work anymore. When it comes to maphacks, Blizzard has NEVER done ANYTHING to prevent them from being made (unless you consider renaming the variable in question prevention... which it isn't).
If you look at an open-source maphack from 2 weeks after the game was released... and an open-source maphack from yesterday, you will find VERY SIMILAR code because the exploits that are being used to create the maphack are STILL THERE. This has never been fixed.
There is a major difference between a game like HoN or LoL, where maphacks are impossible because of the way objects are called, to a game like starcraft. The scale of SC2 means that it isn't possible to use the same system like HoN or LoL without introducing a host of lag issues between the clients and servers.
Long story short, Blizzard has approached the problem of hacking in a number of different ways. From Warden detection to scaring the websites and developers of these hacks into shutting down directly through litigation threats. They're doing what they can.
To input my own opinion on this subject, there really is no point in hacking. You will just have your MMR artificially boosted until you face people who are just genuinely better than you. At which point you are really no better than before you were hacking.
If you hack in SC2, it is not if you will get banned, but when.
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You can design the game in such a way that map hacking is 100% impossible. It's pretty simple axiom: if game server sends the whole game state to client, this information can be intercepted and used.
Some games (like HoN as some pointed out) designed in such a way that client doesn't get 100% game information, instead it gets only the information on units he can see.
Blizzard has chosen against that. There are notable differences between HoN and SC2. SC2 has much more active objects on the map than HoN (especially since it suppports not just 1v1 but 4v4 as well), visibility state can change very fast due to fast movement of some units, XelNaga Towers and availability of scans. Game client also needs the whole gamestate info to record replays, but this obviously can be solved by server-side replay recording.
Now before you start shouting "STOOPID BLIZZ Y U DESIGN SC2 WRONG U COULD AVOID MAP HAX BLAHDY BLAHDY BLAAAAAAAAARGH", I want to remind you about one peculiar unit... known as mothership.
Do you remember the time when game started lagging when mothership gotten built? Note that it lagged for both players. That is the case of when gamestate of a hundred objects can change very fast. It sounds simple to just go over list of objects and change their stealth status -- yet in the end Blizzard had to patch in the cap of amount of units that can be stealthed by a mothership in a game second.
Now consider that if your client wouldn't have the whole game state available, the scans would lag you much more badly than mothership cloaking nearby units. Either that -- or enemy units would get into vision not at the same time, but gradually. Have that picture in mind? Now imagine how two maxed players start trading the control of a XelNaga Tower.
That study linked above is very interesting and it states that providing partial vision to game clients can be done without big perfomance hits. But that's theory, in practice we have the mothership case, which shows why exactly Blizzard did design SC2 in such a way that both clients have whole game information.
Now when it comes to mentioned above blink hack, this is an entirely different case. This is not a passive hack, it needs an interaction with game engine, so the only possible way of opposing it is tools like Warden. Sure, Blizzard can try to obfuscate game data in memory (making the game slower in process), but it's just a cat and mouse game with hackers. You can't reliably build the 100% protection against things like these. However blink hack can be easily spotted in replays
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While I don't hack, I have a friend who payed ~60.00 USD for a hack which works perfectly and for which he's never been caught. I don't know exactly when he got it, but I know he's had it since November of last year.
The hack is a full map hack and production tab hack. This guy plays mainly team games so honestly I don't even see how it's that useful haha. He seems really confident that he won't get banned though.
The thing that I tell him though, I know you can still get banned if people notice that you're map hacking, even if Blizz can't detect it. I think he's able to get away with it because he's like gold-plat league. I think even if I hacked, and I'm only high diamond, it would be more noticeable to my opponents and I'd probably get banned one day.
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On February 20 2012 09:58 Alexj wrote:+ Show Spoiler +You can design the game in such a way that map hacking is 100% impossible. It's pretty simple axiom: if game server sends the whole game state to client, this information can be intercepted and used.
Some games (like HoN as some pointed out) designed in such a way that client doesn't get 100% game information, instead it gets only the information on units he can see.
Blizzard has chosen against that. There are notable differences between HoN and SC2. SC2 has much more active objects on the map than HoN (especially since it suppports not just 1v1 but 4v4 as well), visibility state can change very fast due to fast movement of some units, XelNaga Towers and availability of scans. Game client also needs the whole gamestate info to record replays, but this obviously can be solved by server-side replay recording.
Now before you start shouting "STOOPID BLIZZ Y U DESIGN SC2 WRONG U COULD AVOID MAP HAX BLAHDY BLAHDY BLAAAAAAAAARGH", I want to remind you about one peculiar unit... known as mothership.
Do you remember the time when game started lagging when mothership gotten built? Note that it lagged for both players. That is the case of when gamestate of a hundred objects can change very fast. It sounds simple to just go over list of objects and change their stealth status -- yet in the end Blizzard had to patch in the cap of amount of units that can be stealthed by a mothership in a game second.
Now consider that if your client wouldn't have the whole game state available, the scans would lag you much more badly than mothership cloaking nearby units. Either that -- or enemy units would get into vision not at the same time, but gradually. Have that picture in mind? Now imagine how two maxed players start trading the control of a XelNaga Tower.
That study linked above is very interesting and it states that providing partial vision to game clients can be done without big perfomance hits. But that's theory, in practice we have the mothership case, which shows why exactly Blizzard did design SC2 in such a way that both clients have whole game information.
Now when it comes to mentioned above blink hack, this is an entirely different case. This is not a passive hack, it needs an interaction with game engine, so the only possible way of opposing it is tools like Warden. Sure, Blizzard can try to obfuscate game data in memory (making the game slower in process), but it's just a cat and mouse game with hackers. You can't reliably build the 100% protection against things like these. However blink hack can be easily spotted in replays
This guy's post is much more detailed and eloquent than mine on why Blizzard doesn't make a 100% maphack proof game.
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On February 20 2012 09:24 Nagano wrote:
cease and desist letter works only in Usa, wonder what happens if there hackers are from Europe how many letters blizzard could be sending
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On February 20 2012 09:58 Alexj wrote:+ Show Spoiler +You can design the game in such a way that map hacking is 100% impossible. It's pretty simple axiom: if game server sends the whole game state to client, this information can be intercepted and used.
Some games (like HoN as some pointed out) designed in such a way that client doesn't get 100% game information, instead it gets only the information on units he can see.
Blizzard has chosen against that. There are notable differences between HoN and SC2. SC2 has much more active objects on the map than HoN (especially since it suppports not just 1v1 but 4v4 as well), visibility state can change very fast due to fast movement of some units, XelNaga Towers and availability of scans. Game client also needs the whole gamestate info to record replays, but this obviously can be solved by server-side replay recording.
Now before you start shouting "STOOPID BLIZZ Y U DESIGN SC2 WRONG U COULD AVOID MAP HAX BLAHDY BLAHDY BLAAAAAAAAARGH", I want to remind you about one peculiar unit... known as mothership.
Do you remember the time when game started lagging when mothership gotten built? Note that it lagged for both players. That is the case of when gamestate of a hundred objects can change very fast. It sounds simple to just go over list of objects and change their stealth status -- yet in the end Blizzard had to patch in the cap of amount of units that can be stealthed by a mothership in a game second.
Now consider that if your client wouldn't have the whole game state available, the scans would lag you much more badly than mothership cloaking nearby units. Either that -- or enemy units would get into vision not at the same time, but gradually. Have that picture in mind? Now imagine how two maxed players start trading the control of a XelNaga Tower.
That study linked above is very interesting and it states that providing partial vision to game clients can be done without big perfomance hits. But that's theory, in practice we have the mothership case, which shows why exactly Blizzard did design SC2 in such a way that both clients have whole game information.
Now when it comes to mentioned above blink hack, this is an entirely different case. This is not a passive hack, it needs an interaction with game engine, so the only possible way of opposing it is tools like Warden. Sure, Blizzard can try to obfuscate game data in memory (making the game slower in process), but it's just a cat and mouse game with hackers. You can't reliably build the 100% protection against things like these. However blink hack can be easily spotted in replays
Interesting post, thanks a lot.
When it comes to maphack, which I regard as the hack that gives you the biggest advantage in SC2, your client needs to know when to render which units... If the Blizzard servers resolves when the enemy units are in your FoV (field of view), then your client only receives data about enemy units, when they're in your FoV - so actually disabling FoW (fog of war) won't be useful at all.
Great example of how game design can prevent some hacks from being implemented. Thank you 
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What is/can Blizzard do to stop hackers?
They're doing everything they can. They are using Warden and they're suing the people developing/distributing the hacks. A few months ago the biggest game-hacking community site was taken down by Blizzard.
That is complete bullshit. If this is the best Blizzard can do then they need to start firing some of their employee's. They have nearly UNLIMITED recources compared to every other company due to WoW. And there are 13 (That are AMERICAN) that can make a maphack that bests warden. Benidik made so much money off selling a TieHack that wasn't banned for 2 years for wc3. I dont know who is making the Maphacks now for sc2 nor do i care but there are people paying $30-40 for undetecable ones that are constantly updated. Just ask Manubot.
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On February 20 2012 09:58 Alexj wrote:+ Show Spoiler +You can design the game in such a way that map hacking is 100% impossible. It's pretty simple axiom: if game server sends the whole game state to client, this information can be intercepted and used.
Some games (like HoN as some pointed out) designed in such a way that client doesn't get 100% game information, instead it gets only the information on units he can see.
Blizzard has chosen against that. There are notable differences between HoN and SC2. SC2 has much more active objects on the map than HoN (especially since it suppports not just 1v1 but 4v4 as well), visibility state can change very fast due to fast movement of some units, XelNaga Towers and availability of scans. Game client also needs the whole gamestate info to record replays, but this obviously can be solved by server-side replay recording.
Now before you start shouting "STOOPID BLIZZ Y U DESIGN SC2 WRONG U COULD AVOID MAP HAX BLAHDY BLAHDY BLAAAAAAAAARGH", I want to remind you about one peculiar unit... known as mothership.
Do you remember the time when game started lagging when mothership gotten built? Note that it lagged for both players. That is the case of when gamestate of a hundred objects can change very fast. It sounds simple to just go over list of objects and change their stealth status -- yet in the end Blizzard had to patch in the cap of amount of units that can be stealthed by a mothership in a game second.
Now consider that if your client wouldn't have the whole game state available, the scans would lag you much more badly than mothership cloaking nearby units. Either that -- or enemy units would get into vision not at the same time, but gradually. Have that picture in mind? Now imagine how two maxed players start trading the control of a XelNaga Tower.
That study linked above is very interesting and it states that providing partial vision to game clients can be done without big perfomance hits. But that's theory, in practice we have the mothership case, which shows why exactly Blizzard did design SC2 in such a way that both clients have whole game information.
Now when it comes to mentioned above blink hack, this is an entirely different case. This is not a passive hack, it needs an interaction with game engine, so the only possible way of opposing it is tools like Warden. Sure, Blizzard can try to obfuscate game data in memory (making the game slower in process), but it's just a cat and mouse game with hackers. You can't reliably build the 100% protection against things like these. However blink hack can be easily spotted in replays
You've given a good overview of lockstep simulation which is what an RTS game such as sc2/wc3 etc would use due to the potentially large number of moving entities in the world [see http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/35929/Opinion_Synchronous_RTS_Engines_And_A_Tale_of_Desyncs.php］ .
A game, say HoN or LoL, with a significantly lower cap to the number of entities, can use a simulation model similar to FPS games where the client fires their commands to the server which has the final say about the state of the world and sends back 'real' gamestates to the client.
There are reasons to choose one simulation model over the other, it's not an arbitrary choice made to have a less secure game.
On February 20 2012 16:16 GMonster wrote:Show nested quote ++ Show Spoiler +What is/can Blizzard do to stop hackers?
They're doing everything they can. They are using Warden and they're suing the people developing/distributing the hacks. A few months ago the biggest game-hacking community site was taken down by Blizzard. That is complete bullshit. If this is the best Blizzard can do then they need to start firing some of their employee's. They have nearly UNLIMITED recources compared to every other company due to WoW. And there are 13 (That are AMERICAN) that can make a maphack that bests warden. Benidik made so much money off selling a TieHack that wasn't banned for 2 years for wc3. I dont know who is making the Maphacks now for sc2 nor do i care but there are people paying $30-40 for undetecable ones that are constantly updated. Just ask Manubot.
Out of curiousity, what would you suggest they go and do? Hire a bunch of people to look at random memory dumps of people playing the game to see if they may be hacking? Have a more invasive protection mechanism in warden? Rewrite their networking stack?
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I hate hackers and cheaters, get rid of them please Blizzard T_T, Thanks for this though, I enjoyed gaining a lot of knowledge about the terrible maphacks / hackers , just to understand what is truthfully going on, it is crazy , and unfortunate SC2 isn't 100% hack proof....sometimes I play people that just don't scout and I wonder if they hack .. T_T
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You really have no idea how bad the security on all blizzard games is. Most of the functions used are internal commands from SC2 that just need to be called. Changing one number in a memory field isnt exactly l33t hacking. Seriously blizzard have for a long time never gave two damns about security, they prefer to get their legal department to do the work not the hacking department.
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Hackers might use this information to their advantage. close thread naoz
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I honestly don't get why people think hacking is this HUGE problem. I've played 600 games and I haven't played against a single person whom I could say was hacking. And even if some of them were hacking, either I won anyway because I had better macro or unit control, or they might have won either way because they were better than me. Very rarely will you play against someone where their maphacks were the sole reason that they won the game.
And when you consider how skilled the top players are, it's inevitable that map hackers eventually hit the MMR where they're playing against people who are so much better than them that their map hacks won't even make a difference, and they'll get stomped either way.
I just think people need to stop saying that hacking is a huge problem that Blizz needs to devote millions and millions of dollars to fix. It's a relatively small-scale problem, and anyone who uses them for long enough will eventually play against someone who can tell that they're hacking, and report them.
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On February 20 2012 00:03 TibblesEvilCat wrote:
also sc2 is allowed by law now (in the new user agreement) to perdoically scan the pc ram to see what processes are in use
Really?!?
Why hasn't this been a huge topic if correct?
Blizzard has no right in knowing what processes I run..
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On February 20 2012 08:57 Dhalphir wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2012 01:05 BronzeKnee wrote:On February 19 2012 23:59 dehdar wrote:
As I explained hacks which uses .dll injections are all but undetectable. So if they are all but undetectable, doesn't that mean they are everything except undetectable, in other words easy to detect? I think you used that phrase incorrectly. Just trying to clear up some confusion. the usage of the phrase is correct the phrase itself has always been a little bit weird, but he used it correctly. the phrase "all but x" means "very close to x"
But he didn't mean that it was nearly undetectable. He meant the opposite, that it was very detectable. That's what it looks like to me, anyway, and in that case he didn't use it correctly.
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EPT
