[VAC] Database & Definition Update for Counter-Strike: Source

[N3tRunn3r]

Hello Devs,

after I had opened an official Support ticket which was welcomed by Steam Support, they also transferred me to this sub-forum!

So again, please for the love of Counter-Strike: Source, update VAC's database and definitions for Counter-Strike: Source and its Engine...

Players still cheat with wallhacks/esp, linked no-spread aimbots, no-spread-no-recoil hacks for MONTHS!!

Player join with alt-accounts and rage cheat with aimbots..

No-Smoke-No-Flash hacks ...

Do something, update VAC ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!!

[William Shakesman]

I'll ship this one up to Gabe. He should have his top men on it shortly.

[Gwarsbane]

Początkowo opublikowane przez N3tRunn3r:

Hello Devs,

after I had opened an official Support ticket which was welcomed by Steam Support, they also transferred me to this sub-forum!

So again, please for the love of Counter-Strike: Source, update VAC's database and definitions for Counter-Strike: Source and its Engine...

Players still cheat with wallhacks/esp, linked no-spread aimbots, no-spread-no-recoil hacks for MONTHS!!

Player join with alt-accounts and rage cheat with aimbots..

No-Smoke-No-Flash hacks ...

Do something, update VAC ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!!

Steam support told you to post here because anything that even smells like a suggestion they don't deal with because Steam support is account and billing issues only.

You should also be posting in the games discussion area as this has nothing to do with the Steam client or website which is what this area is for most games have their own suggestion areas.

Copy and paste for every time a "I have a great idea to stop cheating" and the "DO SOMETHING" posts that always happen because people don't bother to use the search feature...

While below is mainly aimed at VAC, it can be said about any anti-cheat software.

Do you really think that they just sit there saying, "oh we have the perfect way to stop all hackers/cheaters once and for all, but we're just not going to do it cause we're lazy, ohh look at that, more money just rolled in, time to sit back doing nothing again"....

You have no idea how hard it is to stop hackers/cheater.

Blocking IPs are pointless, IPs can be changed in seconds, also if you block a single IP you could end up blocking lots of innocent people specially if the ISPs reuse IPs.

Blocking Hardware IDs is also as pointless, they can be changed and if you sell off your hardware, anyone who gets it will be banned.

Asking for some form of ID is pointless without anyway for Valve to actually Verify that ID is actually real. There is this thing called photo editing, its easily done by just about anyone. So sending pictures of the ID is pointless. There is no government databases that Valve can tap into from every single country they sell in the world because no government in their right mind would ever allow a game company access to private information.

Take the US all on its own, there are 50 different states, each with their own IDs, there is no single US ID so that would be 50 different databases Valve would need access too. Canada, same thing, each province and territory has their own Provincial ID, no actual Canadian ID. Now think about the hundreds of countries out there that are setup the same way.

There is no place that people can take their IDs to get verified because it would cost Valve a lot of money to pay those places to do that for them. You would also need a lot of places because no one is going to drive even miles every time they need to get their ID checked.

Most people do not have passports and to get one is very expensive, least it is in my country and its only good for a few years. If I'm not traveling outside of my country why do I need a passport?

Phone calls to talk to someone, pointless & expensive.

Require phone numbers won't work because there are free services out there that allow you to get free numbers and free texting. Also not everyone has a cell phone.

Sending someone to persons home, very expensive.

Limiting the number of accounts people can make is not possible. For one thing, Valve has no idea who is sitting at the keyboard. If you have 1 PC but have a family of 4 or 5 or more that all use that PC for gaming, and each of them has their own account, you just made it impossible for that family to have their own games on their own accounts, which is better then every single game for kids and adults on one account.

Valve can't even use a camera on the PC to see who is behind the keyboard because not all PCs have webcam. I (and may of my friends) don't use webcams. If I had a laptop with one, I would have tape over it. Cell phone has a case that covers the selfie camera.


Valve has to know about the hack and has to get their hands on it.
Then they have to figure out how it does its thing.
Then they have to figure out how to detect someone using it.
Then they have to figure out how to make sure they don't get any false positives.
Then they make it go active for a few weeks before actually hitting the kill switch.

Even before hitting the waiting time, this could be a few weeks work or more.

Why do they wait a few weeks to hit the kill switch? To get as many cheaters as they can in the net so that once they turn it on, the roaches don't go screaming to people "don't turn on the hack, its been detected".

Valve is also working on an automated way to detect cheating with teaching an AI what to look for. BUT this takes a long time to do and even then its not going to be perfect. Valve needs it to be perfect, to not create false positives that ban people who didn't actually cheat.

Now, do you know how easy it is for a cheat maker to change the cheat to make it undetectable? Sometimes its as simple as changing a few lines of code and thats it. Basically a few minutes work, then compile the program, test it, and upload it somewhere.

So if you want to help Valve, stop making posts like this. Look for people spreading urls to websites with hacks and send those urls (for the hacks and hack sites) to steam support. Don't post them in public, just send it to steam support.

If the game is not VAC protected, then you have to contact the game developer/publisher via the games discussion area and ask them how to submit the stuff to them.

[[?]legit]

Początkowo opublikowane przez N3tRunn3r:

Hello Devs,

after I had opened an official Support ticket which was welcomed by Steam Support, they also transferred me to this sub-forum!

So again, please for the love of Counter-Strike: Source, update VAC's database and definitions for Counter-Strike: Source and its Engine...

Players still cheat with wallhacks/esp, linked no-spread aimbots, no-spread-no-recoil hacks for MONTHS!!

Player join with alt-accounts and rage cheat with aimbots..

No-Smoke-No-Flash hacks ...

Do something, update VAC ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!!

I fully support this suggestion .

[Ben Lubar]

If you have actual cheat software that isn't getting caught, you can send that to the VAC team. There's no magic database update button that makes it catch all cheats that currently exist without them doing manual reverse engineering work.

[N3tRunn3r]

I kindly want to remind the VAC Developers to update their VAC Databases and Definitions for SOURCE-based games as Counter-Strike: Source!!

90° insta turn headshots via aimbot
silent aimbots
linked no-spread aimbots
trigger bots
no-spread/no-recoil
anti-flash/smoke
the good old wallhacks and ESP hacks .. and even radar hacks are re-coming ..

..

.. being freely used by people for months and years without any consequences !!

Community Server Admins barely ban these, as no one records demos nowadays anymore, or simply as these cheaters enable and disable their cheats and hacks in a subtile manner .. using them in a non-obvious and non-blatant way for untrained eyes .. then these go rampant for 2 rounds to push their stats so none will notice ..

There are still usually the same players in CS:S around who push their KDs of 100:30, 50:5 ...

[Gwarsbane]

Początkowo opublikowane przez N3tRunn3r:

I kindly want to remind the VAC Developers to update their VAC Databases and Definitions for SOURCE-based games as Counter-Strike: Source!!

90° insta turn headshots via aimbot
silent aimbots
linked no-spread aimbots
trigger bots
no-spread/no-recoil
anti-flash/smoke
the good old wallhacks and ESP hacks .. and even radar hacks are re-coming ..

..

.. being freely used by people for months and years without any consequences !!

Community Server Admins barely ban these, as no one records demos nowadays anymore, or simply as these cheaters enable and disable their cheats and hacks in a subtile manner .. using them in a non-obvious and non-blatant way for untrained eyes .. then these go rampant for 2 rounds to push their stats so none will notice ..

There are still usually the same players in CS:S around who push their KDs of 100:30, 50:5 ...

And as mentioned in all these "DO SOMETHING!!!!!!!!!" threads (including this thread already), anti-cheats can't do anything about a cheat till they can get their hands on it and dissect it.

There is no magic button to just ban all current cheaters.

And also as mentioned, they also let the number of cheaters with known cheats build up and get more over all because as soon as people start getting banned, others get warned.

There is also the fact that there are many private cheats that are super hard for Valve to get a hold of because its hard to get into those communities that don't have their groups on Steam.


You can also see by the number of complainers in the VAC section that Valve is banning cheaters. But its never ending and no it doesn't matter how much they charge for a game, there will always be cheaters and they will always keep coming back. All Valve can do is keep smacking them down with a hammer till they pop up again. (Its a never ending game of whack-a-mole)

[N3tRunn3r]

Hello dear VALVe ..

The most common cheats in Counter-Strike: Source are wallhacks and no-spread triggerbots as well as silent aimbots.

Cheater so commonly use wallhacks for YEARS without being VAC-Banned, as their wallhacks work like "r_drawothermodels 2". So their wallhacks render as r_drawothermodels 2 behaviour does, and not further and earlier. This system as it works like this should make you think about ..

Their triggerbots are also very annoying, doing 50% headshots ...

Lately we have finally banned a "wallhacker" by demo proof, a cheater which has used a wallhack AT LEAST and for MINIMUM a whole year!! additonally a very adjusted and hardly to prove aimbot.

Please... update or even upgrade your crappy VAC and its databases and definitions, for CS:S .. why in the name of GabeN is VAC that heavily sleeping ?! DO SOMETHING !!

One cheater in our CS:S community gone, thousands to go .. accounts which havent been sent into VACation for YEARS ... YEARS .... !!!!!!!!!!

Just by now I have tried to report an other common cheater in CS:S again, using Steam's reporting function. It told me as I have already reported him.. Nothing is working on Steam, really .. I am absolutely disappointed and upset (calmly talken) .. !!

[Ben Lubar]

The way VAC works is that the developers manually analyze the behavior of cheat software and try to find a piece of evidence it leaves behind, then add that to VAC and once they've collected enough of a list of accounts that have that evidence on their computers and they've verified that it's not catching a ridiculous number of people (because the evidence is also left by something legitimate), they ban the people whose computers had that evidence.

If they don't have a copy of the cheat software, they can't do step one.

[Tito Shivan]

The problem of anticheat and F2P games is not that much about hjow updated the cheat detection is but with there being no actual drawback to being banned. With F2P games, the barrier of entry is zero, so there's no drawback in getting banned. Cheaters can simply go and make a new account.

That's an issue F2P games need to address from beyond simply anticheat detection.

[Gwarsbane]

You posting pretty much the same thing... "DO SOMETHING !!" will not actually get anything do because as mentioned in my copy and paste message.... they have to have access to the cheat before they can do something in most cases.

Also if you want to see how effective VAC is, go look at all the whining going on in the VAC discussion area about being banned.


I will repeat what I said earlier.... please read it and please understand it.

Początkowo opublikowane przez Gwarsbane:

Copy and paste for every time a "I have a great idea to stop cheating" and the "DO SOMETHING" posts that always happen because people don't bother to use the search feature...

While below is mainly aimed at VAC, it can be said about any anti-cheat software.

Do you really think that they just sit there saying, "oh we have the perfect way to stop all hackers/cheaters once and for all, but we're just not going to do it cause we're lazy, ohh look at that, more money just rolled in, time to sit back doing nothing again"....

You have no idea how hard it is to stop hackers/cheater.

Blocking IPs are pointless, IPs can be changed in seconds, also if you block a single IP you could end up blocking lots of innocent people specially if the ISPs reuse IPs.

Blocking Hardware IDs is also as pointless, they can be changed and if you sell off your hardware, anyone who gets it will be banned.

Asking for some form of ID is pointless without anyway for Valve to actually Verify that ID is actually real. There is this thing called photo editing, its easily done by just about anyone. So sending pictures of the ID is pointless. There is no government databases that Valve can tap into from every single country they sell in the world because no government in their right mind would ever allow a game company access to private information.

Take the US all on its own, there are 50 different states, each with their own IDs, there is no single US ID so that would be 50 different databases Valve would need access too. Canada, same thing, each province and territory has their own Provincial ID, no actual Canadian ID. Now think about the hundreds of countries out there that are setup the same way.

There is no place that people can take their IDs to get verified because it would cost Valve a lot of money to pay those places to do that for them. You would also need a lot of places because no one is going to drive even miles every time they need to get their ID checked.

Most people do not have passports and to get one is very expensive, least it is in my country and its only good for a few years. If I'm not traveling outside of my country why do I need a passport?

Phone calls to talk to someone, pointless & expensive.

Require phone numbers won't work because there are free services out there that allow you to get free numbers and free texting. Also not everyone has a cell phone.

Sending someone to persons home, very expensive.

Limiting the number of accounts people can make is not possible. For one thing, Valve has no idea who is sitting at the keyboard. If you have 1 PC but have a family of 4 or 5 or more that all use that PC for gaming, and each of them has their own account, you just made it impossible for that family to have their own games on their own accounts, which is better then every single game for kids and adults on one account.

Valve can't even use a camera on the PC to see who is behind the keyboard because not all PCs have webcam. I (and may of my friends) don't use webcams. If I had a laptop with one, I would have tape over it. Cell phone has a case that covers the selfie camera.


Valve has to know about the hack and has to get their hands on it.
Then they have to figure out how it does its thing.
Then they have to figure out how to detect someone using it.
Then they have to figure out how to make sure they don't get any false positives.
Then they make it go active for a few weeks before actually hitting the kill switch.

Even before hitting the waiting time, this could be a few weeks work or more.

Why do they wait a few weeks to hit the kill switch? To get as many cheaters as they can in the net so that once they turn it on, the roaches don't go screaming to people "don't turn on the hack, its been detected".

Valve is also working on an automated way to detect cheating with teaching an AI what to look for. BUT this takes a long time to do and even then its not going to be perfect. Valve needs it to be perfect, to not create false positives that ban people who didn't actually cheat.

Now, do you know how easy it is for a cheat maker to change the cheat to make it undetectable? Sometimes its as simple as changing a few lines of code and thats it. Basically a few minutes work, then compile the program, test it, and upload it somewhere.

So if you want to help Valve, stop making posts like this. Look for people spreading urls to websites with hacks and send those urls (for the hacks and hack sites) to steam support. Don't post them in public, just send it to steam support.

If the game is not VAC protected, then you have to contact the game developer/publisher via the games discussion area and ask them how to submit the stuff to them.

[N3tRunn3r]

Some guys of you dont understand that players use their cheats and hacks for YEARS without being catched and VAC banned.. year!! i am not talking about creating new accounts..

[Gwarsbane]

Początkowo opublikowane przez N3tRunn3r:

Some guys of you dont understand that players use their cheats and hacks for YEARS without being catched and VAC banned.. year!! i am not talking about creating new accounts..

And YOU do not seem to understand that Valve can't stop cheats that THEY CAN NOT GET THEIR HANDS ON. As mentioned already in MANY threads about this topic.

YOU do not seem to understand that there is no actual bulletproof way to actually stop cheaters. As mentioned already in MANY threads about this topic.

YOU do not seem to understand just how easy it is to change a cheat to make it undetectable again. As mentioned already in MANY threads about this topic.

YOU do not seem to understand VAC is being updated all the time and that there are many people being banned all the time. As mentioned already in MANY threads about this topic.

YOU do not seem to understand this will ALWAYS be an unending game of whack-a-mole. As mentioned already in MANY threads about this topic.

YOU have not bothered reading and understand its FAR more complex of a job then you think it is. As mentioned already in MANY threads about this topic.

There are multi billion dollar companies DEDICATED to anti-cheating software that have NEVER been able to solve cheating in games.

From another thread on this exact same topic....

Początkowo opublikowane przez Mad Scientist:

How much of your CPU, Memory, GPU & Network use are you willing to use to have a live-ban service?
How much are you willing to pay per month or annually to play the game to keep the anticheat as updated as humanly possible?
How intrusive should we allow it to be to ensure not a single cheater remains?
How intrusive can we be before customers get sick of the performance hit, claim to be "spied on" etc?

People had an issue with BattleEye and refused to purchase some games with them, the majority of the ones I saw complaining had long standing accounts that were still in good standing.

Most people want more, but when they get more they seem to believe it's some super overseas spyware bent on data harvesting everything the user is doing & refuse to install it.