Flashpoint global blacklist

[Lt_Damage 0]

We need an email list for all server admins so we can pass around a blacklist of UserIDs of known cheaters.

That way a cheater is not only banned from 1 server, but all servers simultaneously, thus discouraging even the "occasional" cheater.

i'll start it off, my email is adamm_@hotmail.com, use subject like OFP SERVER BLACKLIST otherwise i'll never see it

This is a good idea,  You should make a new thread for people/admins to post to other admins about cheaters so they can be banned from all servers (hopefully)

Ok here is the new thread.

I have already received a few emails from Server admins around the world and all of our ban.txt files have been updated.

I would like to suggest some guidelines for emailing banlists to other admins:

Are the bans temporary? If so do not include them.

Have the bans been in place for more than 1 week? If not do not include them. (That gives time for a ban to be undone if it was a mistake.)

IDs MUST be sent via email privately to another admin. Not posted on the forums. Admins who wish to receive updates from other admins can post their email address.

Other than that, I encourage all admins to share their banlists, it will not only stop known cheats from going elsewhere to ruin other peoples games, it will also discourage players who are thinking of cheating as the consequences are much worse if the server they cheat on is part of this alliance of admins.

Regards,

[iNeo 0]

This is good as long as it's very very certain that the person being blacklisted really has been cheating.

[DanAK47 1]

Cheaters will probably be using the ID changer, you might just be causing more problems..

[benu 1]

The ID Changer does not work anymore since 195 afaik.

[acidcrash 0]

we had a guy on our server yesterday that was able to and we are running 1.95, he was also able to remove himself from the #userlist meaning we couldnt kick him, so evidently someone somewhere has made one

[Uziyahu--IDF 0]

What about banning Warez owners of OFP?  I've spent HUNDREDS of dollars on this game, gladly, but others are getting the game for free.

I.D.# **** is a definite warezer ID (except for the guy who owns it legally, I guess) and ****** could possibly be one (saw 2 or 3 people using that ID).

Is it even an issue now that OFP2 is in the works?

[venmaster 0]

This is good as long as it's very very certain that the person being blacklisted really has been cheating.

Thats a great point.  How do we know who the legitimate server admins are?  How do you know that someone hasnt just added someone to the banned list because the admin got pissed off?  Now that person is banned from a huge list of servers, not because he was cheating but because he pissed off one admin and it was passed around.  How do these names get corrected?  Sounds like a lot of work to add and remove ID's of potential cheaters when there is no proof that someone cheated.  There is a need to fix this, but I'm not sure this is the right approach.

[benu 1]

What about banning Warez owners of OFP?  I've spent HUNDREDS of dollars on this game, gladly, but others are getting the game for free.

I.D.# **** is a definite warezer ID (except for the guy who owns it legally, I guess) and ****** could possibly be one (saw 2 or 3 people using that ID).

I can get you a number of this ids from my logfile. Whenever an id is used by 20+ different nicks in a few days you can be sure it is a pirated id.... **** definitively is, although there are other ids used more often...

Your other id is not in my logfiles though.

[Lt_Damage 0]

Well the idea is to share those IDs that you are sure have been cheating. The guys that cheat blatantly, give you the finger and say "Haha suck shit i'll just cheat somewhere else" well this is what I want to stop, I want them to have nowhere to go.

Cheers,

[Harnu 0]

the idea is to share those IDs that you are sure have been cheating.

I'd be all for a global blacklist, but I'm not that trusting of people, not even admins.  Whats to stop an admin from putting a players ID on the list that he/she is mad at?

The only ID I know for sure is pirated is ****.  I remember seeing 5+ of these on each server I'd go on a while back, since then it's been less and less.

[Major Fubar 0]

As LD pointed out in his initial post, do not post ID's here. This has been discussed to death before, and is too open to abuse.

ID's will be deleted.

[benu 1]

I'd be all for a global blacklist, but I'm not that trusting of people, not even admins. Whats to stop an admin from putting a players ID on the list that he/she is mad at?

I don't do either, that's why i do not send ids to other admins and especially will not ban players because some other admin i do not even know says so. I already wrote that in the original thread. I would only ban people when people i trust tell me that player was cheating. Like my co-admins for example...

Quote[/b] ]The only ID I know for sure is pirated is ****. I remember seeing 5+ of these on each server I'd go on a while back, since then it's been less and less.

Hehe, i recognize that one even in this form. There is at least one id used even more often. On my server i use kickduplicate, so you will never see a single id used more than once at a single time.

[Certa 0]

I'm thinking of writing a ban-proxy. It would not just work for OFP but any server based network game using UDP/IP as the main protocol.

It would be installed on the game machine as a proxyserver, redirecting the network traffic to the real server. The player would not notice any difference but the admin would be in control of the connections to his/her server without installing an advanced firewall.

It could monitor the connection packages and detect nicknames for common games (OFP included of course). The admin would then be able to see a list of IP's (perhaps even nick names if the game is supported) connected to the server and place a ban on a specific IP or even subnet, permanent or for a period of time.

What do you think?

Unless I make it GPL, I could make a server system for it banning well known cheaters/teamkillers from several servers or games. For instance: a person being banned on multiple OFP servers will get a ban on all CoD servers using the system too.

[Lt_Damage 0]

Sounds bloody good man, go with it.

[—=R.I.P.=—™ 0]

I've recently set up a dedicated server ver 1.96 and it seems that most players with cracked ids get disconnected but sometimes they don't.  How do I ban that id?

[Gadger 0]

This has been done before, a couple of admins had a vendetta against one player which resulted in said player being banned from at least 10 servers. Anything which could reproduce this can only be a bad thing imo.

[joltan 0]

Being able to see and ban ips would be great. Public banlists are doomed to be abused, tho.

[benu 1]

I've recently set up a dedicated server ver 1.96 and it seems that most players with cracked ids get disconnected but sometimes they don't. How do I ban that id?

Create a file called ban.txt in the server directory and write the ids you want to ban in it, one id per line.

[—=R.I.P.=—™ 0]

Thanks benu.

I'm sure I will have more server questions in the future.

[Lt_Damage 0]

So basically this concept is flawed inherently because we have a lot of very pathetic admins who shouldn't be in a position of responsibility to begin with?

Then make it work both ways. Report which servers have irresponsible admins that should be banned from being able to submit IDs.

[Certa 0]

Well, making a ban network would take quite some tweaking. Of course anyone should not be able to add IP's at will. It would rather be a trust value based system where admins can verify eachothers bans, making it harder to scam.

Still figuring on how it could be done in the safest possible way.

[Certa 0]

Draft of an IP blacklist network

Text is under construction, sorry for bad english

[killbox90 0]

Quote[/b] ]we had a guy on our server yesterday that was able to and we are running 1.95, he was also able to remove himself from the #userlist meaning we couldnt kick him, so evidently someone somewhere has made one

this has happened on my clan server too, maybe even the same lifeless bum...

[mads bahrt 0]

Certa, I don't think a IP-based banning system is a very good idea since too many people are using a dynamic ip address. The problem isn't that the cheaters might change their IP adress - it is that someone else will have that address assigned afterwards. Even though the ID's may be faked i still think they are the best approach.

My idea for a system that is reasonably safe against abuse:

Let every admin deside how he would use the information about ID's being banned. Overall i agree with your suggestions, but it could be more dynamic, enabling the admin to define his own filter regarding how the banning database should be used. This is a quick and dirty writup of my thoughts.

I expect the system (called Global Blacklist in the rest of the text) to have a webbased front-end (most likely implemented in PHP) backed by a relational database.

Registration and verification

Game server admins would have to register to use the system. On registration the would have to submit their abusemail-address and the address of the server they are administrating. To verify that they really are the admins of that server, the Global Blacklist admin would have to log on to their server and verify that the same mailaddress is mentioned in message of the day on that particular server. (Maybe this could be automated....) After that has been verified a confirmation mail would be sent to that address. The game server admin would then have to reply to the mail (or use a link in it) to activate his account.

Reporting / Banning

When a game server admin wants to report a ID, he'll log int his account and specify:

-The ID that he wants to ban

-The nickname used

-The date and time of the incident

-The server the unacceptable behaviour happened on (the game server admins login may be associated to several game servers)

-The character of the unacceptable behavior (cheat/teamkilling/foul language)

-A description of the unacceptable behavior

-A timelimit for the ban

Everything except the ID is optional. On the other hand many admins might choose to ignore incomplete reports.

After writing these parts down (should take less than 5 min.) the game server admin hits the submit button and the system is updated with the new report.

Setting up your customized banlist

Each server admin will also have an interface in which he can customize his servergenerated banlist.

A example banning profile could be something like:

-All the ID's banned by himself

-All the ID's banned by someone he trusts (he can then define a list of other admins)

-All the ID's banned by more than 5 admins except those for banned for foul language (since this particular admin doesn't care about this) within the last 3 months.

-All ID's where the nickname contained Lt_Damage :-) (I hope it's ok - i needed an example...)

-No ID's banned on the first of april

The community should agree on a common banning policy that would be used as a default unless the server admin defines his own.

Letting the server know....

To get the resulting banlist to the server i suggest using http. on each gameserver the admin would have to schedule a job running a simple http client. It would then make a httprequest to the Global Banlist system specifying the admins username and as a result get a ban.txt file which it would put into the ofp dir. each time the gameserver requests a new banlist the server would generat a new one based on the game admins preferences and the current database of reports.

This system isn't safe against all serveradmins just choosing to ban all ip's in the list. But at least it allows the game admin to make a more balanced decision. There might even be a appeal system where people with banned ID's could present their view of a certain incident, but I haven't figured that through yet.

EDIT:

The Global Banlist system should at regular intervals for example once every hour check to see if the different gameservers are still online. If they havent been online for a week (or some other period) the system should disregard reported ID's.

It should also be possible for the admin to specify how long the systems should be acitve for the reports to be considered "true"

In this way we'll avoid someone setting up 6 servers in order to ban someone he has a grudge against (at least he would have to run the servers for maybe a month and i consider it unlikely that anyone would do that)

[Harnu 0]

How would one go about getting his/her ID removed from this blacklist?