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> To shield the game from hacks on PC, Bungie is preventing applications from injecting code into the game. What prevents hackers from simply forging the netwo

by Kiro 9y ago

> To shield the game from hacks on PC, Bungie is preventing applications from injecting code into the game. What prevents hackers from simply forging the network messages? How does loot, gear, economy, levelling up and other hard incentives work when a player is the host? Where's the authority?

nichochar 9y ago
From what I understood from the article, it's not a pure P2P model, but a hybrid model, which makes it particularly interesting. I think the conclusion of the article is very good: the experience is great in "free play" (when you're running around a world and people appear/disappear), but (very) bad for doom/overwatch/csgo style PVP (= the crucible).
- fokinsean 9y ago
  Yeah there's been many complaints of people getting DOS'd in pvp play because it is relatively easy to find the player's ip address.
  - drawkbox 9y ago
    This happens in most PvP games though, eventually a hack is found that allows people to spam messages to win battles/races. In racing games this happens alot to slow other players or force them to disconnect. In Madden when it was on PC, it was very common for people to run something like this as they started to lose, forcing the other player to disconnect and losing reputation while they gave the victory to the player that didn't disconnect. Spam disconnections are handled better now and incentive is mostly gone from that through game design and verification (a user spamming is booted in cheat detection systems), but you have to be aware of that in PvP especially real-time battles, sports or racing type games.
drawkbox 9y ago
The authority on these is validation against a server for verification when it comes to currency/purchasing and important events like leveling. You might be able to fake one and get one through (though difficult without understanding the system due to crypto/signatures/timestamps/one-time use) but it will be reversed in most good online systems after verification or not allowed due to that. The server/data is still the authority on the simulation and progress of all actors.
- cortesoft 9y ago
  Right, but you can do a lot just by adding variable delays. For example, delaying packets sent to a certain client while allowing others to go at full speed.
  - drawkbox 9y ago
    Definitely, a networking system today should expect that. Cheat detections can look for speed changes, origin changes, patterns of previous matches and more for helping this. The system running on the client or p2p or later verified part (physics/local client) might be better here as it can correct without too much degradation via smart interpolation and extrapolation. Well designed systems also are compact and could run even on older tech making slowing/spamming (sometimes causing verification or error overloading to slow everything down as well) techniques less impactful. In terms of large player bases, game design and level design can also help this, making sure everything is in smaller areas. Large scale games like Planetside 1/2 probably did the best at this early on, even big maps are designed in a way that you interact with less people depending on where you are. PvP cheating is still a big issue but there are lots of protections including social i.e. disconnect counts high, people don't play you.
failrate 9y ago
The loot server is hosted, not player authoritative.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
gambiting 9y ago
I don't know how Destiny does it, but in the game I worked on all messages are fully encrypted, so you can't just forge one unless you know the key, as far as I can tell no one has figured it out yet. Even if someone did, the server is authoritative for most things like loot and inventory.

by Kiro 9y ago

nichochar 9y ago

From what I understood from the article, it's not a pure P2P model, but a hybrid model, which makes it particularly interesting. I think the conclusion of the article is very good: the experience is great in "free play" (when you're running around a world and people appear/disappear), but (very) bad for doom/overwatch/csgo style PVP (= the crucible).

fokinsean 9y ago
Yeah there's been many complaints of people getting DOS'd in pvp play because it is relatively easy to find the player's ip address.
- drawkbox 9y ago
  This happens in most PvP games though, eventually a hack is found that allows people to spam messages to win battles/races. In racing games this happens alot to slow other players or force them to disconnect. In Madden when it was on PC, it was very common for people to run something like this as they started to lose, forcing the other player to disconnect and losing reputation while they gave the victory to the player that didn't disconnect. Spam disconnections are handled better now and incentive is mostly gone from that through game design and verification (a user spamming is booted in cheat detection systems), but you have to be aware of that in PvP especially real-time battles, sports or racing type games.

drawkbox 9y ago

The authority on these is validation against a server for verification when it comes to currency/purchasing and important events like leveling. You might be able to fake one and get one through (though difficult without understanding the system due to crypto/signatures/timestamps/one-time use) but it will be reversed in most good online systems after verification or not allowed due to that. The server/data is still the authority on the simulation and progress of all actors.

cortesoft 9y ago
Right, but you can do a lot just by adding variable delays. For example, delaying packets sent to a certain client while allowing others to go at full speed.
- drawkbox 9y ago
  Definitely, a networking system today should expect that. Cheat detections can look for speed changes, origin changes, patterns of previous matches and more for helping this. The system running on the client or p2p or later verified part (physics/local client) might be better here as it can correct without too much degradation via smart interpolation and extrapolation. Well designed systems also are compact and could run even on older tech making slowing/spamming (sometimes causing verification or error overloading to slow everything down as well) techniques less impactful. In terms of large player bases, game design and level design can also help this, making sure everything is in smaller areas. Large scale games like Planetside 1/2 probably did the best at this early on, even big maps are designed in a way that you interact with less people depending on where you are. PvP cheating is still a big issue but there are lots of protections including social i.e. disconnect counts high, people don't play you.

failrate 9y ago

The loot server is hosted, not player authoritative.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

gambiting 9y ago

I don't know how Destiny does it, but in the game I worked on all messages are fully encrypted, so you can't just forge one unless you know the key, as far as I can tell no one has figured it out yet. Even if someone did, the server is authoritative for most things like loot and inventory.