Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

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Smithers





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Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by Smithers »

Halo 2 Mods,

This is part of a community wide letter going out to communities who currently support Halo 2 gaming and have recognized dedicated servers identifiable within the game. A massive project has been launched that requires your attention and your feedback and your support. In an attempt to clean up the halo community, to remove cheaters and cut down on those who wish to ruin the game for legitimate players is where the source of this letter derives from.

I have been a programmer for years, and as the cheating within our servers, and bashing and plain disregard for skilled players as hackers continues to be on the rise, the time for this has come and it’s time to see it go. I started a campaign in correlation with Halo 2 Vista and multiple programming corporations to design a project now named “Haloguard” this will become (or hopefully so) an Anti-Cheating software implementation for Halo 2, and eventually Halo PC, and following that Halo 3 pending its release.

Now this project has not come to light yet, it is still under design and conception, we are already hiring people to contact Microsoft Directly and see to the official implementation of the final product. For now it will be considered non-official software. The process has not yet been started and we are seeking the support to make it a reality.

The product would basically work in two parts a server side application and a client side application. Anybody hosting a dedicated server could download the server side of the application and apply it to their already running server; we will design the software so that it integrates directly into the server. This software is being designed by respectable software companies seeking like we are to clean up cheating on a wide scale. Once the halo server side application was installed the server would immediately begin denying anyone from joining the server who did not contain the client side of the application.

The idea of Punk Buster often supported by EA Gaming Software and some Activision software is the general idea of the server side and client side software. The client side software would search the computer active memory searching for processes that are deemed cheating or cheating related. Anyone found using these systems would be removed from the server with a warning “Notifying them to remove the cheating software before continuing game play” you would then have a chance to do this. If you failed to do this again you would be banned for a period of 24 hours “Notifying you to remove the cheating software before continuing game play” If you continue to fail to remove the software you would be stricken with a long term ban from every server that runs and supports haloguard.

In addition an update for Halo itself would be released making anyone who installs it who runs their own personal server through Halo hosted by haloguard server side software immediately being protected from those who would choose to cheat in your server. These ideas are all under draft but they are all also very real, and the implications of this product have real positive outcomes that we could see throughout the gaming community.

Systems and devices would be put into play along with rules and regulations agreed on by the community in regards to what would constitute a removal of that ban and what would grant the software managers the rights to initiate a ban based upon hard evidence.

This is a draft and sometimes drafts have objections and issues that need to be ironed out. But I think something we all can agree upon is the ability to game without frustration and the ability to game with the knowledge that we can suppress cheaters is one that we can all embrace. The changes to the game itself will not be noticed, the only change that you’ll notice is fair, dedicated, level game play that we can all enjoy and which is the emphasis of this project.

I don’t not have the ability to answer every question so please if you wish to talk to me directly please contact me on xfire at smith9935 and I would be happy to answer any of your concerns, problems, questions, or comments with an open mind and a fair response. Obviously those who cheat, and those who choose to manipulate the system will disagree with the practices that this system provides but for all else it should provide some comfort and stability to a game in which to much instability and cheating already exist.

We are asking for your input, your comments, your software requests, and any additional information you wish to provide.
Thank you so much for taking the time to view this message as it is important to everyone involved in this project to get the information, support, and feedback from the community who will be affected by such a project.

Thank You,
Smith (A.K.A Jordan)
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grimdoomer




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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by grimdoomer »

Heres an idea. Use the fucking map checksum. They were put in maps for a reason now use it. Hardcode the checksums into the server side app. Have the client side app calculate the checksum on the map file, and send it to the server. If it doesn't match the server side app's checksum, boot them the fuck out. This has to be one of the easiest things to accomplish ever.
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by kornman00 »

The problem is, where there is a cause, there is a will. If someone wants to cheat, they will find a way to circumvent such implementations, especially when its their machine running the software which talks back to the server. They have control over what is executed, its only a matter of time before a work around or exploit is made\found. You're only delaying the inevitable really, which is why I'd rather play MP games on a console as its a dedicated machine and isn't made to run any type of executable the user wants or can inject thus has a much longer delay in this inevitable fact than a PC counterpart.

At least the idea you're going with is non-invasive and not constantly running even when in a non-authenticated game (ie campaign, in case you wanted to mod it for yourself). However I'm not so sure MS will be so supportive with this even if your claims of support from "many" developers is true. Halo 2 (and 3 if it comes out) was made for use with GFWL which uses its own authentication systems. Adding additional layers which work outside of the system will only add more bug related problems (and you wont have the GFWL sdk to debug with to find them as easily). The only sound solution is if you're able to integrate something like this into the game code which I HIGHLY doubt you'll ever be able to do. If MS really wanted something done, they will just do it via GFWL system updates.
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by -DeToX- »

When you say checksum.. I hope you don't mean a CRC Checksum.. You can fool those easily.

To be honest I think this is pointless, though there is multiple ways to fix it, and they know so, why do you think they haven't done so yet? They have a damn good knowledge of how to implement security that would stop it but have not..
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by ImpactPro »

kiwi has talked to him, I missed him on xfire (drats) but it is a big task to do this correctly. Its highly unlikely that it will get corrected, and even if they did there are easy bypasses because the check is client side. Just reverse engineer.
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by grimdoomer »

Also I don't know where you get this gaint wave of chaeting from, when the only mods you can achieve are by using RTH.
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by ImpactPro »

grimdoomer wrote:Also I don't know where you get this giant wave of cheating from, when the only mods you can achieve are by using RTH.
Cheat Engine Script Kiddes who found how to use the "Speed hack" option on CE and found the Speed Address's then saved them in a Cheat Engine file then distributed to all their nooby friends.

That would answer your question.
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by grimdoomer »

ImpactPro wrote:
grimdoomer wrote:Also I don't know where you get this giant wave of cheating from, when the only mods you can achieve are by using RTH.
Cheat Engine Script Kiddes who found how to use the "Speed hack" option on CE and found the Speed Address's then saved them in a Cheat Engine file then distributed to all their nooby friends.

That would answer your question.
Which is a form of RTH, so that doesn't answer my question. And wtf happend to Xlive hashing memory?
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by ImpactPro »

XLive = for the Halo 2 executable only, not what is loaded later. So we cannot debug/make debug patches.
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by grimdoomer »

ImpactPro wrote:XLive = for the Halo 2 executable only, not what is loaded later. So we cannot debug/make debug patches.
Xlive is for all windows games, and it is supposed to hash all the memory the windows live game uses. Sounds to me like someone didn't use special allocation methods.....
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by ImpactPro »

Nope.
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grimdoomer




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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by grimdoomer »

ImpactPro wrote:Nope.
Umm yes, thats why a hacked version of xlive.dll was released so people could mod certain parts of GTAIV.
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by ImpactPro »

grimdoomer wrote:Sounds to me like someone didn't use special allocation methods.....
Nope.
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by grimdoomer »

ImpactPro wrote:
grimdoomer wrote:Sounds to me like someone didn't use special allocation methods.....
Nope.
Have you read anything I said? Obvisouly not because you would understand what I said. And you didn't know that xlive.dll protects memory when used correctly, so you obviously have no idea what you are talking about.
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by kornman00 »

grimdoomer wrote:Have you read anything I said?
ImpactPro wrote:Nope.
grimdoomer wrote:so you obviously have no idea what you are talking about.
ImpactPro wrote:Nope.
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by ImpactPro »

Kornman that was uncalled for, Also grimdoomer I have "hacked" many games a plenty. The XLive module does nothing to stop memory edits unless they were done to the .exe binary itself.

Games that have been hacked (Or RTEdits)
Gears of War PC
Halo 2
Shadowrun.

All run Xlive, all can be hacked.
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by LuxuriousMeat »

ImpactPro wrote:Kornman that was uncalled for, Also grimdoomer I have "hacked" many games a plenty. The XLive module does nothing to stop memory edits unless they were done to the .exe binary itself.

Games that have been hacked (Or RTEdits)
Gears of War PC
Halo 2
Shadowrun.

All run Xlive, all can be hacked.
It sounded like kornman was agreeing with grimdoomer and, honestly, I'd trust his opinion over some random any day; if he said dinosaurs still exist, I might believe him.
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by grimdoomer »

ImpactPro wrote:Kornman that was uncalled for, Also grimdoomer I have "hacked" many games a plenty. The XLive module does nothing to stop memory edits unless they were done to the .exe binary itself.

Games that have been hacked (Or RTEdits)
Gears of War PC
Halo 2
Shadowrun.

All run Xlive, all can be hacked.
Thats because those games probally use windows allocation APIs. There are games where you need a hacked xlive.dll to be able to edit memory. The xlive.dll obivously does something, the programers probally neglected to use the APIs it offers. And I know how you and kiwi "hack" games, using other peoples code, hard coded offsets/scanning memory for idents, and getting kiwi to talk to me about it all the time is hardly a hack.
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by Gruntlord5 »

grimdoomer wrote:
ImpactPro wrote:Kornman that was uncalled for, Also grimdoomer I have "hacked" many games a plenty. The XLive module does nothing to stop memory edits unless they were done to the .exe binary itself.

Games that have been hacked (Or RTEdits)
Gears of War PC
Halo 2
Shadowrun.

All run Xlive, all can be hacked.
Thats because those games probally use windows allocation APIs. There are games where you need a hacked xlive.dll to be able to edit memory. The xlive.dll obivously does something, the programers probally neglected to use the APIs it offers. And I know how you and kiwi "hack" games, using other peoples code, hard coded offsets/scanning memory for idents, and getting kiwi to talk to me about it all the time is hardly a hack.
SCORCH! I for one have never encountered a hack on h2vista.
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Re: Implamentation of Anti Cheat Software

Post by jackson117 »

Well in my opion This anti cheat software is at least not that bad as punk buster is. (With how it Disables Fraps and other game software)
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