What are your toughts on the Easy Anti-Cheat?

[SmilyFace 300]

Hey, Alisha here.

 

This will be another huge topic related if not the most, one of the most important argoments in games, Anti-Cheat.

 

During my APB experience over the years i noted many changes on this one.

I've got some questions for all of you, comment if you would like to share with everyone what you think.

We could lose our accounts because of an incorrect cheat detection, and we are talking about hundreds if not thousands of $ lost, not going to talkign about the time spent on that specific account.

So as you can imagine, this is very important, especially in games like this.

 

1) Why most of the companies care more in upgrading/changing the Anti-Cheat method but don't actually make it better by adjusting and monitoring over the periods?

 

2) What's the Best Anti-Cheat so far for you? Choose from this list and explain why or name and then explain if it isn't included

[Not in order]

- PunkBuster

- FairFight

- BattlEye

- Easy Anti-Cheat

- Denuvo Anti-Cheat

- Riot Vanguard (Riot Games)

- Kaspersky Anti-Cheat

- Valve Anti-Cheat (Steam)

- nProtect GameGuard

 

3) Do you wish to see Any changes about EAC? If yes, which one/s?

 

4) What you think about the future of APB: Reloaded? (Always related to that argoment)

 

5) What is gonna happen after the release of APB 2.1? Is Little Orbit exploring new ways behind the scenes/improving EAC?

 

--

 

We just don't know nothing yet about that, but i "hope" that we will be able to see that, if not soon, well.. sort of demostration? I don't know.

See you in-game or in another topic.

 

Maybe Matt will answer some interesting questions inside his.. hmm.. AMA on reddit? Sort of Q&A.

Im hopeful for that one coming the 30th of this month.

 

The thing im not reccomending at all to LO is to write/talk very detailed about how the Anti-Cheat works and what they do behind the scenes, which is kinda controversy to everything i just asked above, but not entirely.

More details given, more ways for hackers to avoid these ones and knowing better the system means much more cheat programs around.

 

--

 

Last thing i forgot to say.

FairFight wasn't trash, was just not paid under G1 and left unmaintained because they couldn't pay it.

If you search online there are many games running it, and is just wonderful.

Of coruse any of these needs to be handled with much care and attention, if you don't wanna fall inside false positives again.

A suggestion i would put is.. making the Broadcast System to post a global message with the number of cheaters have been banned in the last 24 hours, like in BF1 or even R6S.

 

I wanted to let you all know like Matt stated, FairFight is still in the game, just in the background, useful for other reasons i think.

As i knew this was until the introduction of EAC, after that i don't know exactly.

 

There are Many, Many methods, to detect cheaters (in general), and im so curious to know what is the way this game will take.

@MattScott

Edited May 19, 2020 by AlishaAzure

[vsb 6171]

6 minutes ago, AlishaAzure said:

1) Why most of the companies care more in upgrading/changing the Anti-Cheat method but don't actually make it better by adjusting and monitoring over the periods?

i don't know much about anticheats but i assume there's no a whole lot of adjusting that can be done, other than tacking on the anticheat in the first place

 

if an anticheat doesnt work well with the game or if it has significant breaches that either can't or won't be fixed (like punkbuster) then companies will switch products

 

afaik anticheats also cost a good chunk of money, probably via recurring licensing, so a company is not going to want to continue to pay for what they see as a subpar product

 

 

10 minutes ago, AlishaAzure said:

2) What's the Best Anti-Cheat so far for you? Choose from this list and explain why or name and then explain if it isn't included

i've seen the least amount of cheaters under easy anticheat so far in apb, but that could also be due to the lack of interest "public" cheat companies currently have in the game

 

 

12 minutes ago, AlishaAzure said:

3) Do you wish to see Any changes about EAC? If yes, which one/s?

nothing with eac specifically, but i believe a competent client side anticheat like eac should be paired with a competent server side anticheat (something like fairfight, altho obviously fairfight didn't work well for apb) for maximum effectiveness

 

at the end of the day its a matter of money, if i continue to see little to no cheaters with just eac then i'm not going to insist little orbit takes on the additional cost of another anticheat license 

 

 

17 minutes ago, AlishaAzure said:

4) What you think about the future of APB: Reloaded? (Always related to that argoment)

this is kind of a vague question

 

in regards to cheating if apb does have a population resurgence then its likely that the number of cheaters will increase, a sizable increase in player count would likely make it profitable for public cheat companies to dust off their discontinued apb cheat offers

 

if eac can hold up to the increased "strain" then that would be great, if not then perhaps other options need to be explored

 

 

21 minutes ago, AlishaAzure said:

5) What is gonna happen after the release of APB 2.1? Is Little Orbit exploring new ways behind the scenes/improving EAC?

this is basically the same question i think

 

just the update to 2.1 should knock most current cheats offline for a bit all on its own, and the switch to 64 bit will probably close some security holes (maybe, hopefully?)

 

most eac updates are probably out of little orbit's hands, but iirc i think mattscott has mentioned some sort of inhouse anticheat a few times

[Flaws 1033]

41 minutes ago, 404 said:

i believe a competent client side anticheat like eac should be paired with a competent server side anticheat (something like fairfight, altho obviously fairfight didn't work well for apb) for maximum effectiveness

EAC is both client and server side as far as I know.

[botter 3]

Never seen a cheater since we have EAC. Its pretty good. This game has no cheaters. totally

 

 

edit: Pls dont change it.   ever. you know.

Edited May 19, 2020 by botter

[Sayori 311]

2 hours ago, AlishaAzure said:

We could lose our accounts because of an incorrect cheat detection, and we are talking about hundreds if not thousands of $ lost, not going to talkign about the time spent on that specific account.

 

FairFight wasn't trash, was just not paid under G1 and left unmaintained because they couldn't pay it.

 

 

Strange....Over 25 years online gaming and I have never been worried about losing my account. Probably because I don't cheat ?! And if a false-positive happened I'm confident that I will manage to clear it up.

No idea how did you get that information thatG1 didn't pay for FairFight so it was "unmaintained".

 

Most of the ACs you have listed are mediocre at best, the rest are pure garbage. Even the new anti-cheat by  Riot is already busted. You have like 10 people developing an anti-cheat system and thousands of others who try to find vulnerabilities. Basic arithmetics will tell you who will get on the top.

Sadly there are so many vulnerabilities in Windows and all kind of drivers you can exploit to get around the anti-cheats.  People have been widely abusing lsass for EAC for awhile. I don't think it was ever fixed by Microsoft.

 

FairFight was the best thing ever happened to APB even if it wasn't "configured properly". You can't bypass what's on the server-side. It took out so much trash. And a lot of the people who cried out "False ban"  had VAC  bans too.  Wow, must be very unlucky if they get false banned by every anti cheat.

 

What LO needs to do for UE 3.5 is to hire someone competent to implement EAC because right now is just omegalolz. And generally step up their game and be more selective who becomes SPCT(or whatever it's called) or which streamer they work with.(there are spct who cheat and streamers previous hosted on LO's channel who play with modified muzzle brake flashes. ToS? Hello?)

And  one  phone app for verification that binds your phone number and maybe phone's IMEI to APB to prevent mindless rerolling.

 

  

49 minutes ago, Flaws said:

EAC is both client and server side as far as I know.

EAC is doing only heuristics on server side for detection. Nothing like what FairFight does.

Edited May 19, 2020 by Sayori

[vsb 6171]

18 minutes ago, Sayori said:

No idea how did you get that information thatG1 didn't pay for FairFight so it was "unmaintained".

i believe this was outright stated by mattscott at one point, i'll try to find the quote

 

edit: from the first q&a, altho there's no mention of financials 

Quote

The system has not been tuned for a year, and wasn’t being updated while the company was struggling.

 

 

 

Edited May 19, 2020 by 404
edit

[SmilyFace 300]

 

2 hours ago, botter said:

Never seen a cheater since we have EAC. Its pretty good. This game has no cheaters. totally

 

 

edit: Pls dont change it.   ever. you know.

Mhm, interesting.

You should keep more attention then, or you are just lucky, i would love to be in your situation.

It needs to change, to be better.

 

1 hour ago, Sayori said:

 

Strange....Over 25 years online gaming and I have never been worried about losing my account. Probably because I don't cheat ?! And if a false-positive happened I'm confident that I will manage to clear it up.

No idea how did you get that information thatG1 didn't pay for FairFight so it was "unmaintained".

 

Most of the ACs you have listed are mediocre at best, the rest are pure garbage. Even the new anti-cheat by  Riot is already busted. You have like 10 people developing an anti-cheat system and thousands of others who try to find vulnerabilities. Basic arithmetics will tell you who will get on the top.

Sadly there are so many vulnerabilities in Windows and all kind of drivers you can exploit to get around the anti-cheats.  People have been widely abusing lsass for EAC for awhile. I don't think it was ever fixed by Microsoft.

 

FairFight was the best thing ever happened to APB even if it wasn't "configured properly". You can't bypass what's on the server-side. It took out so much trash. And a lot of the people who cried out "False ban"  had VAC  bans too.  Wow, must be very unlucky if they get false banned by every anti cheat.

 

What LO needs to do for UE 3.5 is to hire someone competent to implement EAC because right now is just omegalolz. And generally step up their game and be more selective who becomes SPCT(or whatever it's called) or which streamer they work with.(there are spct who cheat and streamers previous hosted on LO's channel who play with modified muzzle brake flashes. ToS? Hello?)

And  one  phone app for verification that binds your phone number and maybe phone's IMEI to APB to prevent mindless rerolling.

 

  

EAC is doing only heuristics on server side for detection. Nothing like what FairFight does.

I never been worried about losing my account either, in other games.

APB is different, i can't talk about what happend, but i can be worried due to my past experience.

Matt words in the first Q&A with Kempington.

"We are keeping FairFIght, it's in the background, we are not using it to do auto-bans. That system has not be tuned in over year, the cost of FairFight was not paid, as the company was struggling, has been "left" there unmantained".

 

I agree on your part, would like to see these changes.

 

 

1 hour ago, 404 said:

i believe this was outright stated by mattscott at one point, i'll try to find the quote

 

edit: from the first q&a, altho there's no mention of financials 

 

 

 

Correct.

[ShawLOL 50]

EAC is good enough.

[safdfsgkjhdgsjkhs 140]

eac is lolworthy atm 

 

dont know if its because they are waiting to do a banwave or ?????

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

How about we give Vanguard a try next?

Edited May 19, 2020 by NotZombieBiscuit

[Speedz 147]

39 minutes ago, AlishaAzure said:

Matt words in the first Q&A with Kempington.

"We are keeping FairFIght, it's in the background, we are not using it to do auto-bans. That system has not be tuned in over year, the cost of FairFight was not paid, as the company was struggling, has been "left" there unmantained".

FairFight is not active in any form anymore. They only use EAC now:

 

Quote

During its history, APB has used Punkbuster (client side), Fair Fight (server side), and BattlEye (client side). This will be the first time that we can do runtime projection of the game and backend analysis of player behavior in one unified system. We have spent months integrating the system and connecting it to our /report system, so data from players can help drive detection systems.

Source: https://www.gamersfirst.com/apb/news/2019/5/31/fun-fair-fixed

[SmilyFace 300]

3 minutes ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

How about we give Vanguard a try next?

How about making EAC to actually work? How are we sure it is working, no signs of it, except few peoples crying about being banned,

 

2 minutes ago, Speedz said:

FairFight is not active in any form anymore. They only use EAC now:

 

Source: https://www.gamersfirst.com/apb/news/2019/5/31/fun-fair-fixed

Thanks, well, better to know that.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

2 minutes ago, AlishaAzure said:

How about making EAC to actually work? How are we sure it is working, no signs of it, except few peoples crying about being banned,

 

 

Well, regardless of whether it seems to work or not we can try VAC after that. We could go back to punkbuster for a bit too.

[SmilyFace 300]

1 minute ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

Well, regardless of whether it seems to work or not we can try VAC after that. We could go back to punkbuster for a bit too.

And for who don't own Steam or don't use it? You know not many peoples use Steam as background anymore and just run APB.

PunkBuster, ohh.. i would love that.

 

If im not wrong in the leaked EU 3.5 build it was found, so G1 maybe had the plans to bring it back?

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

2 minutes ago, AlishaAzure said:

And for who don't own Steam or don't use it? You know not many peoples use Steam as background anymore and just run APB.

PunkBuster, ohh.. i would love that.

 

If im not wrong in the leaked EU 3.5 build it was found, so G1 maybe had the plans to bring it back?

Oh that's no issue. Cause VAC wouldn't be used for long, so those that use steam wouldn't miss out for long.

 

I was thinking after VAC, then back to punkbuster, we could try renting a bunch of virtual servers and forcing everyone to play through them instead.

[TheJellyGoo 343]

Fairfight was the best.

It finally got rid of some of the longrunning closets.

Shame G1 screwed up it's integrity with all the manual stuff under it's name.

[SmilyFace 300]

40 minutes ago, TheJellyGoo said:

Fairfight was the best.

It finally got rid of some of the longrunning closets.

Shame G1 screwed up it's integrity with all the manual stuff under it's name.

yeep.

[MACKxBOLAN 431]

Fair-Fight. Why? Because its the only one that we as players could see was working due to the Hud broadcast.

 Back then my only complaint was that it did not seem to catch as many Jericho's as other servers. 

I am aware of the false positive factor, however just the broadcasting of the ban. Kept those players who were legit but considering purchasing cheats from taking the chance of a ban. And it kept whiners like me from whining about it. 

 See I consider any lasting lag spikes to be the work of hacks. Oddly I did not see any lag during the gun games, which would not be hacker lag, it would be the Event/Game generated lag. 

But yesterday, ffs i couldn't even walk. I went up to asylum it was laggy there too but only during close shoots, I'm talking about in district. They drop some code on you n lag you out till you disconnect. NOw I'm not sure how this works, but you all know wtf im talking about. Seems U hackers are a bit Slow on the Uptake. Ya know if ya didn't DC me, you might be able to EZ kill me, seems you would want a scrub in the house so ya din't get your patootie kicked

  So in conclusion I say, when they find an Anti-Cheat that catches these lag hackers, Then You have an Anticheat. 

[CookiePuss 5379]

6 minutes ago, MACKxBOLAN said:

See I consider any lasting lag spikes to be the work of hacks.

Mack please, stop saying that.

[MrChan 337]

You should measure an anti-cheat's success by how many people you see cheating, not by how many people it was telling you were banned by it. FairFight did root out a good few people, and I note that some of them are back due to LO's general amnesty but mysteriously aren't as good as they used to be. But do you wanna tell me that more people cheat now than under FairFight? I don't think so.

 

Not to mention the period between PunkBuster being turned off for false positives and LO coming in and implementing BattlEye badly showed up FF's lack of client-side detection when blatants running free cheats could run around for days before FF's metrics would cop-on and drop the ban. Now of course, we know from Matt that FF's metrics weren't really tuned for APB at all by G1. Maybe it could work if it was tuned correctly, but things are, imo better now than when we had FF.

22 minutes ago, MACKxBOLAN said:

Fair-Fight. Why? Because its the only one that we as players could see was working due to the Hud broadcast.

Suppose LO decided to publish weekly or monthly ban lists and there were more names on it than we had during an average month or week of FF. Would that change your perception? As I said above, it should be judged by how many people you see cheating, not how many people the system tells you it banned.

Edited May 19, 2020 by MrChan

[IMLEGIT BYPASS HWID 0]

 

believe it or not lo/eac has been making it harder and harder to cheat in apb, public cheats that were released in the last month were detected within a few days and stay detected. dumping any sort of module from the game at all is a major PITA currently as you need to mimic eac's process in order to join a server to dump most of the required stuff. there actually isn't a lot of people using full on cheats right now, there's only one russian private i know of that is invite only, and is only slotted for 50ish people.

 

there's maybe 20 or so people that i know of that have actual privates, and the rest of the people cheating are using color tbot/aimbot via ahk. ahk isnt flagged by eac, so people are making due with that.

 

we are no longer in the days of anyone can dump whatever they want on the main menu login screen, those days are long gone and it is much harder to develop anything for apb currently, which is why you no longer have any of the big names providing software for the game. anything else you see that is public is a scam or detected. there are absolutely no public cheats available for apb that aren't detected or work, and there have only been 2 which was during BattleEye, and since EAC has been implemented there has only been one public that got detected in a week. 

 

[swft 356]

EAC is probably one of the best commercial anti-cheats at the moment and, just so you know, Epic Games bought the company a few years back. Besides, APB is running its 32bit version which is not as powerful as the 64bit one, as Matt said, that will be changed once the engine upgrade is released.

 

Also, to those that say APB has a large scale cheating problem, I wanna mention that Unreal Engine is "easy" to make cheats for (duh, it's the most used game engine on the planet), it's also why Valorant got a bunch of cheaters right on the first day of CB, even though they use Vanguard which is an in-house ring0 anti-cheat.

[BlatMan 711]

Fairfight has the most potential since it monitors stats server sided, but it's also the most time consuming to setup since you need to fine tune all the variables.

 

Punkbuster would kick me randomly for disallowed program/driver. 99% of the time it needed to be manually updated to fix it.

 

Riot Vanguard runs in the background monitoring your activity. It causes massive stuttering in non Riot games.

 

Can't comment on the other ones without data on the cheaters caught or blocked.

 

[Rebelliousness 85]

8 hours ago, botter said:

Never seen a cheater since we have EAC. Its pretty good. This game has no cheaters. totall

edit: Pls dont change it.   ever. you know.

Says the admitted botter... mmmkay

Quote

WHAT ARE YOUR TOUGHTS ON THE EASY ANTI-CHEAT?

What anticheat? Fairfight is the best, it's just that Gamersfirst was too bankrupt to pay for updates and substituted GM decisions based on suspicion, grudges, or sheer rage at the playerbase to flippin ban everybody... under the auspices of a FF ban.

 

Also, what nearly KILLED this game was perma-bans.  A strictly enforced temp kick, with escalating time outs starting from 15 minutes to 15 days would be more than sufficient to prove the point... moreover, it could be implemented without a hand-wringing overly long time determining if a ban is completely justified and would stand up to an Appeals Court decision... and kick the miscreant close to immediately.... making the playerbase JOYOUS... and allowing him a quick re-entry and time to scrutinize his software for false flagging conflicts... if he continues to get kicked from game and his time escalates, he has a right of appeal to support... and those with cheat shenanigans can just go play something else on their short duration downtime, as it eliminates destroying their character and creating reroll rage hackers intent on destroying the game for everyone else... as their toon will be back in game shortly... but briefly if flagged as cheating.

Edited May 19, 2020 by Rebelliousness

[MonkaS 215]

Just slap on something like fairfight that uses stats and that should cover a good chunk of the cheaters who are actually able to bypass eac. Also make the game crash or send screenshots/logs whenever a debugger is attached to the game program. Only allowing apb to be run on the latest version of windows 10 would stop a lot of cheat bypass's from working(call of duty warzone/modern warfare 2019 does something similar were it won't let you play the game without having the latest gpu drivers). There are a lot of things that could be done to mitigate cheating even further but its a convenience vs effort thing for both LO and the cheaters.