[Nel] RE: Nel digest, Vol 1 #214 - 9 msgs

[Jon Watte]

>   2b) The final and worse form of this, Bots.  Auto-hunters that can run
> around, and hunt for players hour after hour without the player actually
> being there or only occasionaly monitoring.  Quite unfair from my stand
> point.

If this is a real problem, you should ask yourself what your game 
offers a real human being to actually enjoy. If the game is reducible 
to a simple series of scripted actions (or even a complex series of 
scripted actions) then it'll become monotonic for a human sooner rather 
than later. Witness EQ: if you didn't have the human communication 
element, it would SUCK as a game.

>   Possable solutions. These just came to me.  These will only work in a
> closed source solution.

Security through obscurity doesn't work.

>   1) Re-arrange the order of data in the packets every build or whenever

This leads to much more testing for you, and only deters hackers a short 
while when you update the version. It doesn't work over time. (Verant does 
it for EQ -- ShowEQ still lives)

>   2) Update/change your encription: Again, they will discover what you
> are using, and just changeing one of the keys won't be enough.  I don't

This leads to much more testing for you, and only deters hackers a short 
while when you update the version. It doesn't work over time. (Verant does 
it for EQ -- ShowEQ still lives)

>   3) Change the ports you use for communication: Again a delaying tactic
> at best.  It's not a great solution but, it's better then nothing.   You

This is not even a delaying tactic. Any packet sniffer will show you 
what the new port is, and changing that constant in the radar app is 
going to be a simple re-compile. If you do it a lot, and I was writing 
a radar app, I'd just have the radar app sniff the network and look at 
all UDP packets, and figure out what the port is automatically. It's 
so weak as to be fully ineffective.

Proper design and tight server-side control is the only way to avoid 
hacking users to have an advantage over non-hacking users.

-- Jon

PS: To the others replying on the list: PLEASE don't quote the ENTIRE 
messages. It's quite annoying in digest mode.