BanToolsACE (ban player by ACE machine ID)

[Higor]

Useful tool to get rid of players with dynamic ip's, for obvious reasons, only someone with .ini access can add rules.
Readme.txt and .ini files contain all necessary info on setting this up as either Server Actor(recommended) or Mutator.

This one has been compiled using IACEv08c.u, if you're running a different ACE version or a different ACE client interface, simply grab the source code (included in the package) and compile it, don't forget to add the IACEvXXX.u package to use.
Like this:
EditPackages=IACEv08c (or your version)
EditPackages=BanToolsACE

This tool doesn't need to run on clients, so no need to send it.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/58384316/UT99/BanToolsACE.zip

[UnrealGGecko]

I think it would've been better for you to post these mods/mutators in a single topic.
Cool work, btw!

[Higor]

I have a mountain of things, many unfinished.

Most of them have been packed into a .u file under my real name I've been working on for years.
And an artificial intelligence bot still under development but operational and ready to use, most of these things have little to no user interface so setting them up isn't easy.

Once I post all of them, I'll make an index thread collecting all things posted so far.

[JackGriffin]

Sorry to bring up an older thread but I just got pointed to this.

It's worth mentioning that every way ACE can identify you is now bypassed. Most ban-by-ACE scripts are not going to work on anyone that is serious about getting on the server. As it is now there is no sure way to block someone, especially if they have a minor bit of skill or a modicum of dedication to cause problems. One only needs to look at the issues |uk| clan has had to see that persistent problem-causers have the upper hand as far as being denied access.

Sorry :shrug:

[Feralidragon]

Well, there's something people have to understand about security, and this applies in every system:
- anything that relies in any value client-side only, is unsafe (including hardware values, as long they can be accessed, they can be modified in some way).
- anything that runs either partially or totally client-side, is extremely unsafe and easily bypass-able.

And of course, the way you have to identify a person or a machine is through the values they send or let you see in their own environment, thus making every security system nowadays flawed (anti-cheating wise), no matter what is done, but so far there's really no other way.

ACE is the safest anti-cheat there is afaik (hats off to Anthrax), as yet it still grants a very high percentage of cheats caught vs existing cheats, but some people think ACE is invincible... well, it isn't. It *just* takes someone at least as capable or more than Anthrax and the right tools to bypass it (no offense, but this is the way it is, one can be really really good at something, but there are always someone as good or better meaning to do no good at all, and this is why it's a constant battle).

Everything Anthrax can do is to make the life of cheaters more difficult by the day and catch as many of them as possible, and while this will never fix the problem at 100%, it will provide a better and more fair experience to all the players in the servers running it.

One of the most effective ways of banning someone is generally to range ban an entire region and ban all the proxies you can acknowledge, but of course, banning an entire region is not the solution and there are so many proxies these days that you will spend the rest of your life collecting them (specially with the start of IPv6).

[Higor]

I know, i intended this to become the last line of Ban layers.

There is no perfect defense, but if you layer a few of them, you'll give cheaters some hard work.
The intended enviroment i coded for (never knew if the admin used it on his server...) is NexGen > IP > Proxy detector > HWID.

[anth]

It *just* takes someone at least as capable or more than Anthrax and the right tools to bypass it (no offense, but this is the way it is, one can be really really good at something, but there are always someone as good or better meaning to do no good at all, and this is why it's a constant battle).

It's not just about that. I have to work with some HUGE constraints that cheatcoders simply don't have to think about. Not only am I overloaded with irl work, I also have to care about privacy, platform support (everything since windows 2k atm and I did get several flame mails for dropping win 9x), resource usage (there are regions where UT is still hugely popular and the average pc is a P4...), impact on gameplay, usability (ease of installation/possible virus detection/...), ...

ACE is in a position where everyone is pretty much being forced to use it so I can never simply block people on purpose, whereas if a cheat doesn't work properly the cheater can just get his money back and move on. I could make ACE a lot better than it is right now (especially in terms of security, I'm pretty satisfied with things like performance and usability) but I'm finding it very hard to make some time to work on it and to implement new features that don't require much better hardware than the average player is using right now. If this would be my full time job and the average player was using at least a dual core machine with 2+ gigs of DDR2 RAM then this would be a whole different story

[Feralidragon]

It's not just about that. I have to work with some HUGE constraints that cheatcoders simply don't have to think about. Not only am I overloaded with irl work, I also have to care about privacy, platform support (everything since windows 2k atm and I did get several flame mails for dropping win 9x), resource usage (there are regions where UT is still hugely popular and the average pc is a P4...), impact on gameplay, usability (ease of installation/possible virus detection/...), ...

Yeah, didn't think about that, and those are indeed serious stuff to care about. Not long ago I offered a P4 to my mom (we moved to some other place at work, and since they were going to throw away some stuff, I took most of them since they still worked just fine), and I played UT for a few months on it. Every time I entered a server with ACE on, the PC lagged a lot during the few seconds it was scanning, after it ended the scan everything good again.
Any other PC with dual-core and at least 2Gb of Ram, it's like you say, it never was a problem and it never lagged.

As for flame emails, did I read that one right? People actually dared to email you because you dropped support for an already totally obsolete system? That's just disgusting, it really pisses me off that these people think developers own them anything at all, they should already feel lucky that someone knowledgeable like you is still working and updating an effective anti-cheat without receiving a dime for an old game like this, otherwise the game would be already dead specially at online level with the amount of cheaters still on it.

[iloveut99]

Every time I entered a server with ACE on, the PC lagged a lot during the few seconds it was scanning, after it ended the scan everything good again.
Any other PC with dual-core and at least 2Gb of Ram, it's like you say, it never was a problem and it never lagged.

Weird maybe it's just me but ACE always lags me out (very much) until it's logo disappear. And I'm using a dual core 2.2 + 4GB ram.

[JackGriffin]

Yeah, hats off to you Anth for the amount of work you've done. UT would already be dead if you hadn't jumped in, at least for any sort of competitive play.

And yeah it never ceases to amaze me at the people still playing on dinosaur systems. You know what I'd do? Release a full-power version for the server admins that want to use it and leave the players with weak systems to the second-tier servers. Don't offer any sort of support for anyone but the ones running it as you want it done. It just takes too much of your time to be compelled to answer all these "It doesn't work on my system" emails and posts. I keep good computers with decent specs and I have never had the first issue across multiple installs on both clients and servers. It's time to draw the line and say "I need to focus my work on the people I can really help" and let the UTPure source that was just posted work for the admins catering to the legacy players. You can't be 'everything for all people' and I personally would rather you were 'some things for some people' especially if you are happy with how it works.

[Wises]

hmmm.. another gem amoung many found here.

this was sent to me recently and I have yet to test it.. mainly because I use acemanager which does basically the same.
I think for the most part this blocks 99% of the retards
out there.. and I don't solely rely on it as the end-all solution in doing so.

follow this one up with a firewall ban and seems to work quite well. as for proxy / tunnel experts well not to sure there and only *ehem certain kinds of proxies can even be used for these kinds of connections afaik.
couple of problems I have with ace mentioned over the hills and in the valleys is its inability? to identify spectators... this one is the main hole for the moles/rats/fixes to crawl back in by.. prior to fire-walling them.

if there is ever going to be a new release of this most excellent tool.. could this be considered?

on the note of client-side vs server-side cheat detection scenarios.. could someone perhaps release one of these closet anti-cheats *coughs *jack , that detects suspicious behavior from a server-side perspective.. and silently logs to an external .ini of some-sort?

I mean with all the mathematicians/experts in here you would think that someone would be knowledgeable to some degree to be able to come up with some algorithm($) to be able to detect from a servers perspective a really good player from a lamer with a 20$ aim-bot subscription?.. surely.

in case of the other dropkick methods of cheating 'Radars' well not so easily detectable.. I guess aside from the magical 'screen shot' methods recently incorporated within the last decade. Now of course this method is fallible due to its client-side nature.. however I am wondering.. could more be done to improve this? perhaps watermarking Screen-Shot's or embedding? doing double takes through alternate methods to cater for the double layered screening effects (DRM) type BS that hackers/cheat-makers likely use to spoof their works?.
... something like this.

another method of ensuring only legitimate players gain access is through some system (unreleased) afaik or private.. via forum registration/server integration.. I forget what this system was called but it was both a killer and a doorstop for retards.

killer in that players c't-b-fkd registering in order to play.. and a doorstop for those that were banned from the forums.. and couldn't play.

alternatively there is the include only option under the IPPOLICES= (THINGGY)
But this is probably a nightmare in the age of dynamic ips and such.

yeah..

[Higor]

I'll keep this floating despite thread age.
I've discussed many of these blocking/allowance methods with the owner of uK servers and many interesting points came up:
- Forum registration for players will kill the server.
- IP range bans always take some collateral damage, but work for persistant lamers.
- Blocking know proxies is good practice.
- HWID bans (with these in an external database, yep, he uses something far better than what i made here) work for 99% of known cheaters.
- Certain player bases will change their NexGen id's and aliases like they change their own underwear.
- Players with dynamic ip's are a pain to track.
- Players with dynamic ip's and knowledge of virtualization can literally shit on all of your bans. ===> (i'm to blame for this, after showing somebody the methods for an experiment of mine).

You will commonly see the same 5 players with their own anti-ACE aimbots come back for some after they change machine or proxy, they'll simply won't refrain from annoying other players.
Using NexGen, ACE and ip range bans does 99% of the job, having moderators and encouraging players to record demos and post is the only way of putting those rates up to 99,9%.

[Wises]

Re: Nexgen.. There is actually a security flaw realised by BillyBill right here in these forums where you can steal players NExGen ID's from their user.ini's when they play on an infected (hacked) server.. This honeypot server collects information from players and then can be used to gain access back to the server and have admin rights over the server. Therefore I find Nexgen to be insecure.

One method which I have discussed with another developer is to incorporate into NexGen a Hostname/IP Check against a database of all any/privledged users.. Also perhaps with the ability to auto_update and change their NG ID's every xx_Days perhaps making it harder for these people from gaining access without Authorisation.

HWID bans (with these in an external database, yep, he uses something far better than what i made here) work for 99% of known cheaters.

is this mod available by chance? or is this AceManager?

Problem with the HWID thing unfortunately is as Iam sure you know that it was bypassed 6months-1yr ago by Hyper-X , this information was released to the cheating community who soon developed workarounds and such.

still not everyone goes to such places and tbh , if they did .. they'd def get more then they bargained for. As these newer cheats which-bypass everything require a Client-server intervention.. by which the cheats only work if you remain connected to the cheats_server.. whilst you are playing bot games in my server .. the cheat_maker is likely playing hacking games on your PC.. etc.

but most ppl would'nt know this and well ... I guess thats the price you pay for doing such things

[UT99.org]

Hey back4more i know you like to help people as evident in your other posts. I know of the mod you are talking about that lets people sign up on a website before they can play on the server and like you tried to say, people cannot be "bothered" to sign up. And that is why I don't know the name of it. lol

I think your suggestion about scanning spectators pcs is a bit dull. If you have a problem with spectators there is a built in mute spectators function.

Hope I was of some help

[Wises]

*Smiles* hey ya Billy..,

I don't think that any Admin would want any banned person from being on their servers?... playing/speccing or otherwise..

ACE does a pretty-good job of keeping 'The Player' out of the game but has a 'loop-hole' that you have discovered , which is to say 'Spectator mode' via Proxy.

So.. yeah .. Block the Hole and (ACE) Goes from 'petty-good' to 'fkn fantastic' imo. *Grins*

btw thanks for laying low things have been picking up and that's all any of us could hope for. Also you have noticed that I no longer use Nexgen?.. shame really, as it has alot of
excellent features.. but while that 'Steal the ID' vulnerability remains I doubt I'd ever go back to it.. unfortunately.

Yer.

re: forum authentication.. most players are lazy , non technical , very simple human-beings who just want to frag someone and goto the Gym afterwards.. (Juice Junkies rather then Chess Players)

Unlike you and I who are TBH (horrible players) - even dare I say it Useless (one of my many aliases).. we are more into the technical aspects and how to make our servers more functional and
in a sense perfect. Which .. I doubt we ever could because of the imperfectness of the engine itself unfortunately. (very human like)..

I guess that is what drives us to continue with this very dated game.. The quest for perfection at least drives me.. And I am never satisfied with anything less then that.

anyway glad you could provide some feedback.

Take Care.