Anti-cheat system 'Punkbuster' gets attacked
A junior member of a hacking group and his "team" are focusing attacks on Battlefield 3 users--banning them from play--to show their disdain for the anti-cheating software Punkbuster.
One "junior member" from the game-hacking site Artificial Aiming and his team of anonymous hackers are going after the anti-cheat service Punkbuster, resulting in multiple reports of Battlefield 3 multiplayer bans.
According to a report from Kotaku, the hackers are "framing" innocent Battlefield 3 players to show their hatred for the anti-cheat software "integrated" into DICE's latest shooter.
Citing "very easy" access, the hackers are keeping their sights set on Battlefield 3 players tied to GGC-Stream. "We have selected ggc-stream as the target since they have the most streaming bf3 servers and makes it very easy to add fake bans. In 2011 we hit them with a mass ban wave and now were are banning real players from battlelog while ggc-stream is totally unaware. We have framed 150+ bf3 players alone," a forum post reads.
Users across the Battlefield 3 forums, Twitter, and Reddit have been appalled at the attack. EA has yet to address the concerns specifically, but have acknowledged errors with Punkbuster.
An official comment from EA to Kotaku focused only on Punkbuster's service status and not on unauthorized bans from playing the game, reminding users that the issues are PC-specific. Until Punkbuster issues have been corrected, EA recommends players avoid playing on servers requiring the software.
"We are actively looking into the specifics of this issue and we are confident that we will have a permanent solution in place shortly. In the meantime, if a player's connectivity has been affected, we recommend that in the interim they join servers that are not running PunkBuster. There is a filter setting for this in the multiplayer server browser," an EA spokesperson said.
Shacknews has contacted both Even Balance--operators of Punkbuster--and GGC-Stream for comment, but have not heard back at the time of publishing.
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Xav de Matos posted a new article, Anti-cheat system 'Punkbuster' gets attacked.
A junior member of a hacking group and his "team" are focusing attacks on Battlefield 3 users--banning them from play--to show their disdain for the anti-cheating software Punkbuster.-
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My favorite punkbuster story is how you had to manually download an update for it for BF2142 or else you'd get autobooted off of every server. There was no indication of this, or why it was happening, in-game. You simply were expected to psychically divine that punkbuster needed manual updating and find the methods of doing so by yourself.
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I used to play joint ops and it was the same way, but you also had to bring down the console
and type come pb command that would tell the server not to kick you out.
it was so bad some servers had the command noted on the welcome MOTD.
PB is fucking stupid and I'm surprised that modern games still use it -
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the sad thing is that this has been PunkBuster's MO for years. When Windows 7 came out, there was no way to get PunkBuster to work because they had ignored the Beta and RC releases of Windows 7 in the name of not supporting pre-release software. Also, even once they fixed it, you had to figure out where to manually download the services you needed to install because the installer wouldn't do it.... The software has been garbage since it's inception. It causes more problems than it solves even when it supposedly works right.
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I've been in several games with hackers with PB. But far worse than that, I've been kicked by PB countless fucking times for absolutely no valid reason in BF2 and BC2 and I'm sure it would have happened dozens of times if I owned BF3.
It's absolutely atrocious. In almost no other aspect of a product would that kind of shittiness be tolerated, but apparently PB gets a pass from developers and users.
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disagree. You make out like it's all benefit (even if minimal) and no cost. There is definite cost. Specifically the cost is getting non-cheaters banned, such as is going on here. This is essentially the exact same Cost-Benefit analysis as DRM, and most people seem to hate any and all DRM, but will gladly say that even shitty anti-cheat software is better than no anti-cheat software
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Punkbuster is not the best, but its the only truly available option if you aren't on VAC. How many competitors to Punkbuster are there?
Also, BF3 has client side hit detection. The client has been well hook'd, so PB really won't have any hope of catching the cheats since all screenshots and hooks can be perfectly fine during PB checks.
On the flip side, I'm not entirely positive the BF3 dedicated server can handle server-side only hit detection.-
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If PC anti-cheat is a losing game, why not go back to community-hosted servers with admins? The main reason is because the publisher and developer want absolute control over DLC and stat ranking, but then they're not doing the work necessary to police the community, or sometimes to support the community after launch.
I've seen news articles of this happening to MW2, BFBC2, COD:BLOPS, Brink, BF3, and MW3. They want to sell the game, sell the DLC, run the Pavlovian persistence rank system, but don't want to do the hard work of keeping up with hackers and cheaters.
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Never liked PunkBuster as a program or the arrogant people behind it.
Ever since they started back in Counter Strike the system has been a mess. I still also remember them giving a hissy fit, threatening and finally removing CS support just because Valve didn't wanted to integrate PunkBuster directly on Valve games.
And don't make me start about the issues I'm still having to this day with BF2142 because of PunkBuster. I hate cheaters just as much as the next guy, but fuck PunkBuster. -
GCC stream is too open , anyone can join it
PB vs VAC -> VAC has verry late "delayed" bans sometimes over 6 months after hackers are detected
Punkbuster on its own is a little more active as vac but both lack features
3rd party streaming services make punkbuster the better option.
Only if it requires a background check upon streaming registration.
GCC stream doesnt have these security measures ,.
Therefor PBBans is the only good option and punksbusted too with their autoMBL
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@ Autor: Who have you contacted at GGC as we never got any question from you?
Apart from that, please include our news in the article: http://www.ggc-stream.com/news/132/Fakebans+or+not%3F
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