Well, I know a lot of games I play, for some reason, seem to have a lot of trouble keeping people banned. Despite trying Comp IDs, and IPs, and such, I know Proxies, and other things can fool those.
However, keys tend to remain a pretty foolproof method. My question is, mainly, would it be illegal to create a library, and release it, that gives a server a set of ban verbs that (hopefully) work right.
Essentially, the library itself would upload each players key, IP, Comp ID, ect, into a database server with world/export or similar. Then when an admin goes to ban someone, it looks up their key, ip, ect, in the database, and returns with all associated keys, ips, and comp ids, and bans them all at once from that specific server or game.
I think it'd be an effective method, but I am unsure on the legality of such a thing, is all.
ID:884483
 Jul 22 2012, 3:28 pm
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Yes, I was thinking about MySql. I got your page, but being I can't afford a byond membership at the moment, I'm kind of unable to reply.
Help would be good, I'm not experienced with using mysql. Or very experienced, I've only done so once or twice, and it was rather basic, and not using byond. | |
So long as you don't have a privacy policy stating otherwise, I believe its perfectly legal to track user IPs and more. I'm not a lawyer, however.
There was a service like this on BYOND a while back that I believe Chatters and a few other games used, but I can't remember its name. Basically it associated keys and IPs (this was before computer_id) so that when banning a key, all other keys previously associated with it could be banned as well. | |
Wiznet?
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There is no ultimate ban. As long as you have a spoofer and a proxy, you can't be banned. I've proven this before.
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A collection of IP's connected to comp ID key and other things grabbed by JavaScript , flash or even a activex control can make it harder..
[EDIT] Our perception of the "ultimate ban" is obviously completely different I in no way mentioned it will stop people, my meaning was that it would be more sophisticated than the already existing tools. In exception to WizNet although I am unsure how deep that goes in terms of grabbing different information about a user. | |
It always comes down to a bit of an arms race between the attacker and developer. The unfortunate reality is that every defense a developer uses will also inconvenience some legitimate users. It's a tradeoff.
I suppose I would say the ultimate ban is a whitelist. If someone's attacking your server, (temporarily) change it to allow only pre-existing users access. You could even allow users to "invite" new users (and remove that privilege if they invite the attacker). It requires some micro-management from the developers/moderators, and is somewhat of a "shotgun" approach as a lot of potential new users may be lost while it's active, but it will allow the current users to have an uninterrupted session. Also, you can preemptively ban most proxies, especially the well-known ones that are likely to pop up in Google's search results. For a big website, it's usually not worth the performance cost. However, for BYOND games where you only need to check on initial connection, it would probably be feasible. The trick would be finding a good public resource of proxy IPs to work from. <edit> This looks like a good start: http://www.shroomery.org/ythan/proxyblock.php | |
Another way to block proxies/spoofers is by listing them all to BYOND. I am most certain that if you login BYOND with Hotspot Shield on, you won't be able to log. However, if you are already logged in...then that's a different case. Most Proxies such as hidemyip have different IPs. About 72, I heard. However, only two are open for free users.
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Is there a significant amount of developers who would like to see a library that allows them to check if a particular player is using a proxy service?
If so, I'll set out to write one when I have some spare time. I could use it to protect my own server against proxy users but I'll be more inclined to write this if I know it's going to be used by others. (We don't have many people using proxies to get back into the server, but it's a good measure of protection that I could add should it ever come to that.) | |
If you were to have a TOS (terms of service) or T&C's (terms and conditions) stating that you will be logging all of this info, then yes I suppose that's fine.
It's a great idea then you can link COMP ID to key's and IP to key's making it the ultimate banning tool.
This would be best done using a MYSQL database and the MYSQL lib on BYOND.