New PB Update for ET and Static Guid's Released!

[Threshold]

ETPRO team I was wondering what your opinion on this was and you thought's on it's effectiveness

I know this is not ETPRO related but the chance of having static GUID's is good news..


As reported on www.enemy-territory.com


If you are a cheater, life just got a lot tougher for you.

The good folks over at evenbalance.com have now implemented their hardware ban feature for ET. In simple terms, your computer has a unique identifier that comes with your physical machine hardware. Punkbuster will now ban you using this number (you can't change it yourself without replacing your hard drive). Also, be warned that if you are caught cheating on ET, you will be automatically banned from all Punkbuster supported games even if you didn't cheat in those games at all!

EB Comments

" We use multiple private one-way hashes so that no serial number information for individual computers can be determined by admins or anyone else who may try to obtain this information from a Hardware GUID (and as always, no personal information of any kind is examined, stored or transmitted by PunkBuster). When players raise a violation that corresponds to hacking or interfering with PunkBuster's normal operation, we now (in addition to Global PB GUID bans) are Globally banning the new Hardware GUIDs across all games supported by PunkBuster (including games supported in the future). So punks who are determined to cheat so badly on PB-enabled servers that they try to hack PunkBuster may now need a new computer in addition to a new cdkey in order to return to PunkBuster servers. As with previous PB GUID Global bans, the new Hardware GUID bans are permanent and will not be lifted. As always, players who are affected by these Global bans will still be able to play on non-PB servers. Honest users should never "test" hacks that claim to interfere with PunkBuster. We have successfully tested this new feature set over the past few weeks for a few supported games and will be rolling it out to all supported games over the next few days and weeks. Additionally, PunkBuster servers will be updated to signify whether kicks for Global bans are for PB GUIDs or the new Hardware GUIDs."


For more info, visit www.evenbalance.com.

[ouroboro]

i remember that paragraph as being old, but perhaps it just went into effect after having been on their site for a while? at any rate, it's great news. i only wish the hardware bans were for "normal" cheating, not just hacking PB files, since only the "leet" cheaters are that sophisticated. oh well, i'll take what i can get.

the only problem is that, according to the cheat sites, spoofing a hardware guid is childs play (i have no idea if that is true or just some punks refusing to admit they are finally defeated).

[dA*Rogue]

This is very old, yeah. Could even be something in the forum about it already.

[DG]

FWIW this news is "old" (end of June '04), though reports on forums are suggesting they are finally starting to excercise it in ET - not seen one myself yet though.


the hardware ban is for attempts to hack punkbuster only, not for normal wallhacks and aimbots etc, only those that try to interfere with PB (e.g. the pbscreenshot blockers).

Try to hack punkbuster = denial of use of punkbuster. This is 100% fair imo, though ofc there's bound to be some unintended consequences where innocents get banned (in which case email support@evenbalance.com)

It's all there in the EULA:

Licensor grants Licensee a non-exclusive and non-transferable license to use PunkBuster software only for non-commercial entertainment purposes. Licensee may not disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer, redistribute (in any form), create derivative works of, or modify PunkBuster software in any way. Licensor reserves the right to terminate the license at any time and for any reason, or no reason at all, and without notice to licensee. Additionally, upon breach of any term of this Agreement, the license granted under this Agreement shall automatically terminate without any additional notice to Licensee. Upon termination of the license, Licensee shall destroy all copies of PunkBuster software in Licensee’s possession.

[uber-noob]

Punkbuster will now ban you using this number (you can't change it yourself without replacing your hard drive).

Do they know that you can change the serial of almost any hard drive with a nice little tool, eighter directly inside the flash-rom of the drive, or by hooking up into the bios of the machine . There are also some (normally used for encryption) hardware dongles, that are placed between the drive and the cable, that can randomize the serial on every reboot. None of these can be detected by a software.

I doubt this will do anything good against those who are really into hacking PB itself. It may work against the occasional cheater, who is downloading some wallhack/aimbot from a site, but it isn't aimed at them. So it's as useless as the rest of PB and will only lead to banning innocent players.

[gotenks]

it's aimed at the people using the cheats that hack pb, not the hackers themselves... the people who hack pb are few and far between, but the people that used it are far more common...

btw, this won't affect people using pb screenshot blockers afaik... a while ago there was a hack that disabled pb, allowing old cheats to be used undetected... this prompted pb to require admin privledges... and this step

[uber-noob]

a while ago there was a hack that disabled pb, allowing old cheats to be used undetected... this prompted pb to require admin privledges... and this step

And it is still possible, despite admin privileges. It just got a little bit harder.

[gotenks]

yes but the admin privledges make it more detectable

[uber-noob]

yes but the admin privledges make it more detectable

Not really, like I said it just got a little bit harder.

There are much better ways than admin privileges to stop it, but evenbalance doesn't seem to listen. So in my opinion PB is (in it's current state) useless crap, that's on it's way to hit more innocent people than the ones who deserve a ban.

[ouroboro]

uber_noob you seem to know a lot about it, maybe you could help EB and perhaps the etpro team with some ideas?

i'm not being a wiseass, i'm being serious.

[uber-noob]

uber_noob you seem to know a lot about it, maybe you could help EB and perhaps the etpro team with some ideas?

I did help EB for a long time, but ridiculous decisions like forcing ppl to run a game as admin or unreliable hardware bans turned me away from them. And I won't support them until they get back to sense, but I don't see this coming soon.

As for etpro it currently does a far better job than PB ever did and if I encounter a cheat/hack that is directly aimed at it or undetected by it, I normally notice bani via PM of them. That's all I can currently do in my free time.

Btw. it would be nice if /cheaters would give out debug info for clean players, because I had at least 3 Players on our Server running a new Multihack that shows as "clean" on 3.1.9. They even admitted that they do cheat, but I don't have anything usefull to report about that hack without the debug info.

[ouroboro]

good point. i'd even go so far as to say that "clean" status should be only attainable if it is a sure thing. if there exists the possibility for hacks to show as clean, it negates the meaning of the clean status entirely.

i'm proud to always be clean, and i always check myself to be sure when i join a server - just in case something's gone awry with my system (unlikely). but now that status means nothing. i used to consider anyone with "???" to be basically a cheater (yes, i know, spare me what i already know) simply because some cheats showed as "???" - so in my book that closed the door on any legitimate cause for "???" (if a cheat can cause it, i have no way of knowing YOUR'S isn't due to a cheat, therefore i shall assume the worst).

now the same hold true for "clean" - which basically makes the /cheaters command worthless unless it's a blatant red "CHEATER" - and i've not yet seen one of those, but i HAVE encountered cheats

[bani]

Do they know that you can change the serial of almost any hard drive with a nice little tool, eighter directly inside the flash-rom of the drive, or by hooking up into the bios of the machine .

no, you can't. you're thinking of ethernet mac address, which can be changed. hard drive serials can't be changed.

There are also some (normally used for encryption) hardware dongles, that are placed between the drive and the cable, that can randomize the serial on every reboot. None of these can be detected by a software.

i've never heard of these. a hardware dongle which randomizes the serial for encryption makes no sense at all.

there are ways to defeat the pb hardware guids, but these arent one of them.

[=FF=im2good4u]

the best thing is jsut use some undetected stuff

[DG]

they sometimes dont kick until a while after detections have been added. my guess is for two reasons - one to catch more people, second to check for abnormally high detections, which might suggest they're picking up something innocent.