Any lock can be opened and any safe can be cracked... Valve is restricted by the law of the diminishing return; much like the OSHA cowboy. At some point, onerous safeguards destroy the game they were intended to protect. The servers are our homes... we need to lock the doors ourselves.
-----Original Message----- From: Whisper [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 12:03 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [hlds] Re: Scum-sucking Bottom Feeders -- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] It is quite simply a case of developers more worried about making the game work, rather than making the game code secure at the very beginning from the design point onwards. As I have said before, if you design a platform with security and robustness up most in your mind from the beginning and also assume that whatever you do will break and set things up so you can make changes easily for you, and difficult to circumvent, then you would be well in front to begin with. Trying to bolt security onto an product at the end, is nearly always a losing proposition. Take a look a 1 very simple feature that is already built into the game: sv_consistency If sv_consistency was implemented properly, the server admins could choose to turn it on and force players to only play with Valve default models, which as some of you know, would help considerably against numerous VAC proof cheats currently available. If a user wished to bypass this check with a 3rd party program (read cheat) then it would be 1 more thing available for VAC to detect. The other annoying thing is, in the old days when not as many people had decent Internet connections and Valve did not have this wonderful update platform known as STEAM, I would agree, it was difficult to keep clients maintained, but now with STEAM and huge amounts of bandwidth currently available (>2GB FOR A BF DEMO OMFG), other than the develpment side, there is now no limitation to how often a Anti-Cheat can be updated. Any how, I don't know what happens or why, but I would have thought that making your game a cheat free as possible, and consideration of server administration as a part of the initial design phase rather as an after thought, would be primary a consideration to game development these days. On 9/11/06, Frazer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > First, as the OP on this thread, I would like to explain my intent in > drawing attention to this: simply to raise awareness and to have some > idea > what to encourage our game admins to watch for during play. I am sure > that > those who want such hacks as these have no difficulty finding them. Oh > and > also...as was suggested in an earlier response - I don't think (last time > I > checked) that I am some kind of list troll. :o) > > Second, I wonder to what extent Valve - or for that matter any online game > developer - can truly provide a defense against this crap. The problem is > that game state is continuously transmitted to the client and all > rendering > is under the control of the client. While VAC can, to some extent, ensure > that the client executable is not tampered with, unfortunately, short of > some very intrusive and, frankly, unwelcome measures, its unlikely that a > complete defense is possible. Perhaps something of a Bayesian or > statistical application which is not examining executables - but is > watching > and measuring the behaviour of players to determine what is suspect and > what > is not. (e.g. 20 headshots within 5 minutes and never killed) Then, > perhaps, some kind of selectable level of tolerance, to be applied by > server > admins - much as spam tolerance levels are set today. > > In any event, I just wanted to shine a light on it - because, in the > absence > of a technical solution, knowledge and vigilance, on the part of the admin > community is the first and most effective line of defense. I certainly had > no intention of promoting this stuff, nor do I agree that discussing it is > useless. The more people understand how they work - the more likely it > will > be detected and dealt with. > > > Frazer > > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, > please visit: > http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds > -- _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
