types of hax and how it works
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16 Oct 2006, 20:31
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Journals
How Hacks Work?
In the world of cheating today there are many types of hacks and cheats with multiple ways to combat them. From simple script exploits to advanced client hooks game hacks can be three lines of codes to a whole rewrite of your OpenGL driver. With games becoming more advanced hack programs have had to keep up and become more creative. This section is meant to help understand how hacks are made and what anti-cheats are doing to combat them.
What is a hack?
A hack is a program that alters a games performance, usually enhancing the abilities of the player, or giving an unfair edge over others that was not intended in the game. There are thousands of ways they are made and loaded into the game, but we won’t go into too great of detail about how hackers make their hacks.
What is an exploit/bug/script?
A bug is a bit of code in the program that was not intended to be in the game. An exploit is a bug that can be used to gain an unfair advantage, like being invisible or seeing through a wall on a buggy map. A script is a chain of in-game commands executed by the press of a button, like jumping and crouching at the same time by pushing just one button in first person shooters. Scripts can be used to execute exploits in a game.
In general, exploits and scripts are greatly simpler then a hack. Why? Most exploit scripts are a few lines of the games scripting language, while a hack can have hundreds, if not thousands, of lines of code in C++ or another programming language. Exploits are also much easier to correct, since the error is in the game’s code, while with hacks the game programmers must code their own ways to protect against the hack’s method of altering the game.
Exploit Scripts
Lets make up a game, we will call is Ultimate Carnage. In Carnage, you can hold only one primary weapon. However, while we were playing it we somehow tricked the game into letting us pick up two primary weapons. Instead of ignoring the fluke, we tried to pick up two weapons again. We finally figured out that if you drop your primary weapon, and 6 seconds later you pick it up and another weapon at the same time and it tricks the game into giving you both. But its extremely hard to do this, so, we make an in-game script to do this for us. We write a small Config file for the game called two.cfg and set the button “f6” to execute the script. Our script could read a little like this:
Dropweapon; // Drops your weapon Wait; // Each Wait is 1 second Wait; // So we wait for 6 of them Wait; Wait; Wait; Wait; Pickup, pickup; // We use the pickup command twice to pick up both weapons.
Now, when we hit "f6" while holding a Plasma Rifle and standing over a Chain Gun, we will pick up both. This would easy for a hacker to program and a cheater to download and use. However, there are two huge negative issues for the cheater, 99.5% of all exploits are obvious, like wearing another teams skin, walking in the sky, holding multiple weapons, or being invisible. Any admin can spot them and say "Hey, they are cheating" and kick them. Also, if a bug becomes public, which means more then a handful of players know about it, the game programmers can make a patch for the issues and release it for everyone to download.
Hacks
There are several methods how hacks manipulate the game data to give an unfair advantage to the cheater. Below are a few methods with diagrams to help understand how hacks can alter the games data.
Hard Coded
This is usually the first generation of hack for a game, and the easiest to protect against for game programmers. This is good for anti-cheaters, and bad for cheaters. This style is usually hard to install on a computer when downloaded from the Internet, and usually the cheater will mess up his game files instead of correctly install the hack. See the small box inside the game program? That is where the hacker changed some of the game’s files, such as a engine.dll or main.cfg. This type of hack could be a wall hack, aimbot, or just about any of type of hack, but very easy to block.
External
We will use and external aimbot example to demonstrate. An external aimbot is the worst aimbot. It cannot aim very well, and is ineffective. Basically, a hacker creates models of players that are 1 solid color, usually one team a bright green and the other a bright red. Before running the game, they run an external program that scans the screen for that exact color. If it see the color of an enemy, lets say your team red and your enemy is green, the hack will lock your crosshairs on that color by telling Windows, "move my mouse up 7 pixels." It will stay locked until the color is lost. This is a sloppy way for a hacker to try and cheat since it will usually hinder cheater’s aim and movement. There a very few hacks around to this day that use this method.
OpenGL Hack:
This is the most popular method of map hacking. Current games are being created for OpenGL, a popular video driver which does it's rendering on the videocard rather then eating up computer resources. All games tell the driver what to draw on the screen such as walls, doors, players, and HUD displays. The OpenGL driver can also make things transparent, like windows or water. A hacker will take the OpenGL driver and modify it to draw all the walls semi-transparent, allowing players to see others through walls. They write their own OpenGL driver, and have the game load the original OpenGL driver with their modifications in their hacked OpenGL driver. So when the game starts, it loads the hacked OpenGL drivers. This type of hack can also be used in Warcraft 3 to disable fog of war. This hack is semi-hard to install, which filters out many lame players who have very little computer skills, and will probably delete or move important system files and screw their system up.
Client Hook
This is the most popular style of hack today, especially in games like Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat, though now VALVe software has stepped up and started to provide anti-cheat solutions for their games. This style works efficiently with any games that have .dll files. When the cheater goes to play, instead of launching the game.exe file, they launch a client loader, which injects code into the game’s memory. It is in the memory of the game that the hack alters information. It can convince the game to do many things. If a first person shooter, it can aim for them, make certain sprites on the map transparent, draw text or signs on players to show where they are at, and a number of other things. Games like Unreal Tournament (because of their advanced engine) are not at stake, but games like Quake III, and Half-Life are targets for Client Hooks. Client hooks are deadly when it comes to cheating because they are very easy to use (usually 1 click install and run), and very effective, giving the hacker a variety of options of what to do with their hack.
For game companies it is very hard to create a game, and then implement an anti-cheating system later. Maybe thats why Blizzard and Battle.Net just threaten everyones who has a cheat with legal prosecutions. With games that are fading into the past, dying because of games overran by cheater, developers are now realizing whither or not their product succeeds is if a player can play the game on-line without worrying about someone cheating. The future looks bright, but we still have to deal with today.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Types of Hacks
There are many different types of games, and each has their own way that a cheater can make a hack to give them an unfair edge. From seeing through walls on First Person Shooters, to see the whole map unfogged on Real Time Strategies, cheaters can take advantage of programming skills and security leaks in games. This section is meant to give you a basic background of what type of cheats there are for all multiplayer games.
First Person Shooters
Since First Person Shooters is one genre of games that requires a lot of skill from a player (ability to aim, knowing the maps, etc), cheats and bots have been created to take the place of a player’s skill and have the hack do the work for them. There are aimbots, god hacks, wall hacks, speed hacks, and a dozen other style of hacks, and we will try to describe them well enough that you can see exactly was a cheater can do, and can not do/
God Hack
Ever heard of God Mode? This hack gives you that ability, invincibility. This is also one hack that is almost impossible to do these days. Why do we start off with this? I’ve seen more people kicked for not dying when people think they should have. Unless you are playing on an extremely old game where the health variable is stored on a player’s computer, and not the server, you can’t perform this without access over the server. Do not ban someone because you aim was so bad you missed more then you thought.
Aimbot
A bot is something that performs a function for the player. Hence, and aimbot is a bot that aims for the player. Since the whole purpose of a First Person Shooter game is to aim and shoot at your enemies, having perfect aim would not be fair. Aimbots can external programs, client hooks, or hacked drivers.
Wall Hack
A wall hack allows you to see people through walls using Transparency. What is transparency? It allows you to see the wall, but also what is behind it, somewhat like a foggy window.
See how you can see a sniper through two parts of the wall, but not the third part of the wall? The first two parts are have certain levels of transparency. The last is solid.
Anti-Recoil
Anti Recoil, or No Recoil, allows you to shoot your gun without any recoil. You will notice that there cursor will move up or down every time when they spray, and move up or down slightly in a mechanical reaction with single shots, such as the "AWP", or AK-47 when you tap the fire button for example.
Whitewalls
A Whitewalls hack makes all the walls on the cheater’s screen white. Now this isn’t as deadly as a wall hack, but remember your favorite dark corner to hide in where no one can see you unless your gun’s blast gives it away? Now the cheater can see you as well as anywhere else. Some form of Video Driver Hack usually accomplishes this style of hack.
Lambert
Most 3D game engines have some form of "shadows" or lighting effects on the player models. Some rooms are darker then others. The lambert hack makes player models "full bright" removing the shadows that different areas of the map cast. Remember that favorite dark spot again? Won’t do you any good against someone using a lambert hack. Lambert hacks are usually tacked onto another hack, usually with an aimbot and other cheat functions.
Speed Hack
A speed hack makes a hacker faster then everyone else, letting a cheater run away or get to important points on a map faster, or shoot the enemy faster. This style of is almost always an external program altering the information between you and the server. Good thing about this hack is that it is obvious, and administrators can spot them easily and ban them quickly.
Real Time Strategy Hacks
In a Real Time Strategy (RTS) a player must build their units up and attack other player. There are not as many types of hacks for RTS games, but they still exist.
Map Hack
A map hack lets you see the whole map, even without discovering the unknown parts for yourself. This hack is very dangerous, because the cheater can see what you are doing, know exactly where you are, and rush you without doing any wandering around the map. It is impossible to tell if someone is map hacking after just one game, but if they continually rush straight for you, they are map hacking.
Speed Hack
A speed hack makes you faster then everyone else, letting a cheater mine resources and move units faster. Again it's obvious to spot.
Disconnect Hack
This hack allows the cheater to legally or by brute force disconnect from the game without recording a loss.
For more information pm me <3
In the world of cheating today there are many types of hacks and cheats with multiple ways to combat them. From simple script exploits to advanced client hooks game hacks can be three lines of codes to a whole rewrite of your OpenGL driver. With games becoming more advanced hack programs have had to keep up and become more creative. This section is meant to help understand how hacks are made and what anti-cheats are doing to combat them.
What is a hack?
A hack is a program that alters a games performance, usually enhancing the abilities of the player, or giving an unfair edge over others that was not intended in the game. There are thousands of ways they are made and loaded into the game, but we won’t go into too great of detail about how hackers make their hacks.
What is an exploit/bug/script?
A bug is a bit of code in the program that was not intended to be in the game. An exploit is a bug that can be used to gain an unfair advantage, like being invisible or seeing through a wall on a buggy map. A script is a chain of in-game commands executed by the press of a button, like jumping and crouching at the same time by pushing just one button in first person shooters. Scripts can be used to execute exploits in a game.
In general, exploits and scripts are greatly simpler then a hack. Why? Most exploit scripts are a few lines of the games scripting language, while a hack can have hundreds, if not thousands, of lines of code in C++ or another programming language. Exploits are also much easier to correct, since the error is in the game’s code, while with hacks the game programmers must code their own ways to protect against the hack’s method of altering the game.
Exploit Scripts
Lets make up a game, we will call is Ultimate Carnage. In Carnage, you can hold only one primary weapon. However, while we were playing it we somehow tricked the game into letting us pick up two primary weapons. Instead of ignoring the fluke, we tried to pick up two weapons again. We finally figured out that if you drop your primary weapon, and 6 seconds later you pick it up and another weapon at the same time and it tricks the game into giving you both. But its extremely hard to do this, so, we make an in-game script to do this for us. We write a small Config file for the game called two.cfg and set the button “f6” to execute the script. Our script could read a little like this:
Dropweapon; // Drops your weapon Wait; // Each Wait is 1 second Wait; // So we wait for 6 of them Wait; Wait; Wait; Wait; Pickup, pickup; // We use the pickup command twice to pick up both weapons.
Now, when we hit "f6" while holding a Plasma Rifle and standing over a Chain Gun, we will pick up both. This would easy for a hacker to program and a cheater to download and use. However, there are two huge negative issues for the cheater, 99.5% of all exploits are obvious, like wearing another teams skin, walking in the sky, holding multiple weapons, or being invisible. Any admin can spot them and say "Hey, they are cheating" and kick them. Also, if a bug becomes public, which means more then a handful of players know about it, the game programmers can make a patch for the issues and release it for everyone to download.
Hacks
There are several methods how hacks manipulate the game data to give an unfair advantage to the cheater. Below are a few methods with diagrams to help understand how hacks can alter the games data.
Hard Coded
This is usually the first generation of hack for a game, and the easiest to protect against for game programmers. This is good for anti-cheaters, and bad for cheaters. This style is usually hard to install on a computer when downloaded from the Internet, and usually the cheater will mess up his game files instead of correctly install the hack. See the small box inside the game program? That is where the hacker changed some of the game’s files, such as a engine.dll or main.cfg. This type of hack could be a wall hack, aimbot, or just about any of type of hack, but very easy to block.
External
We will use and external aimbot example to demonstrate. An external aimbot is the worst aimbot. It cannot aim very well, and is ineffective. Basically, a hacker creates models of players that are 1 solid color, usually one team a bright green and the other a bright red. Before running the game, they run an external program that scans the screen for that exact color. If it see the color of an enemy, lets say your team red and your enemy is green, the hack will lock your crosshairs on that color by telling Windows, "move my mouse up 7 pixels." It will stay locked until the color is lost. This is a sloppy way for a hacker to try and cheat since it will usually hinder cheater’s aim and movement. There a very few hacks around to this day that use this method.
OpenGL Hack:
This is the most popular method of map hacking. Current games are being created for OpenGL, a popular video driver which does it's rendering on the videocard rather then eating up computer resources. All games tell the driver what to draw on the screen such as walls, doors, players, and HUD displays. The OpenGL driver can also make things transparent, like windows or water. A hacker will take the OpenGL driver and modify it to draw all the walls semi-transparent, allowing players to see others through walls. They write their own OpenGL driver, and have the game load the original OpenGL driver with their modifications in their hacked OpenGL driver. So when the game starts, it loads the hacked OpenGL drivers. This type of hack can also be used in Warcraft 3 to disable fog of war. This hack is semi-hard to install, which filters out many lame players who have very little computer skills, and will probably delete or move important system files and screw their system up.
Client Hook
This is the most popular style of hack today, especially in games like Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat, though now VALVe software has stepped up and started to provide anti-cheat solutions for their games. This style works efficiently with any games that have .dll files. When the cheater goes to play, instead of launching the game.exe file, they launch a client loader, which injects code into the game’s memory. It is in the memory of the game that the hack alters information. It can convince the game to do many things. If a first person shooter, it can aim for them, make certain sprites on the map transparent, draw text or signs on players to show where they are at, and a number of other things. Games like Unreal Tournament (because of their advanced engine) are not at stake, but games like Quake III, and Half-Life are targets for Client Hooks. Client hooks are deadly when it comes to cheating because they are very easy to use (usually 1 click install and run), and very effective, giving the hacker a variety of options of what to do with their hack.
For game companies it is very hard to create a game, and then implement an anti-cheating system later. Maybe thats why Blizzard and Battle.Net just threaten everyones who has a cheat with legal prosecutions. With games that are fading into the past, dying because of games overran by cheater, developers are now realizing whither or not their product succeeds is if a player can play the game on-line without worrying about someone cheating. The future looks bright, but we still have to deal with today.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Types of Hacks
There are many different types of games, and each has their own way that a cheater can make a hack to give them an unfair edge. From seeing through walls on First Person Shooters, to see the whole map unfogged on Real Time Strategies, cheaters can take advantage of programming skills and security leaks in games. This section is meant to give you a basic background of what type of cheats there are for all multiplayer games.
First Person Shooters
Since First Person Shooters is one genre of games that requires a lot of skill from a player (ability to aim, knowing the maps, etc), cheats and bots have been created to take the place of a player’s skill and have the hack do the work for them. There are aimbots, god hacks, wall hacks, speed hacks, and a dozen other style of hacks, and we will try to describe them well enough that you can see exactly was a cheater can do, and can not do/
God Hack
Ever heard of God Mode? This hack gives you that ability, invincibility. This is also one hack that is almost impossible to do these days. Why do we start off with this? I’ve seen more people kicked for not dying when people think they should have. Unless you are playing on an extremely old game where the health variable is stored on a player’s computer, and not the server, you can’t perform this without access over the server. Do not ban someone because you aim was so bad you missed more then you thought.
Aimbot
A bot is something that performs a function for the player. Hence, and aimbot is a bot that aims for the player. Since the whole purpose of a First Person Shooter game is to aim and shoot at your enemies, having perfect aim would not be fair. Aimbots can external programs, client hooks, or hacked drivers.
Wall Hack
A wall hack allows you to see people through walls using Transparency. What is transparency? It allows you to see the wall, but also what is behind it, somewhat like a foggy window.
See how you can see a sniper through two parts of the wall, but not the third part of the wall? The first two parts are have certain levels of transparency. The last is solid.
Anti-Recoil
Anti Recoil, or No Recoil, allows you to shoot your gun without any recoil. You will notice that there cursor will move up or down every time when they spray, and move up or down slightly in a mechanical reaction with single shots, such as the "AWP", or AK-47 when you tap the fire button for example.
Whitewalls
A Whitewalls hack makes all the walls on the cheater’s screen white. Now this isn’t as deadly as a wall hack, but remember your favorite dark corner to hide in where no one can see you unless your gun’s blast gives it away? Now the cheater can see you as well as anywhere else. Some form of Video Driver Hack usually accomplishes this style of hack.
Lambert
Most 3D game engines have some form of "shadows" or lighting effects on the player models. Some rooms are darker then others. The lambert hack makes player models "full bright" removing the shadows that different areas of the map cast. Remember that favorite dark spot again? Won’t do you any good against someone using a lambert hack. Lambert hacks are usually tacked onto another hack, usually with an aimbot and other cheat functions.
Speed Hack
A speed hack makes a hacker faster then everyone else, letting a cheater run away or get to important points on a map faster, or shoot the enemy faster. This style of is almost always an external program altering the information between you and the server. Good thing about this hack is that it is obvious, and administrators can spot them easily and ban them quickly.
Real Time Strategy Hacks
In a Real Time Strategy (RTS) a player must build their units up and attack other player. There are not as many types of hacks for RTS games, but they still exist.
Map Hack
A map hack lets you see the whole map, even without discovering the unknown parts for yourself. This hack is very dangerous, because the cheater can see what you are doing, know exactly where you are, and rush you without doing any wandering around the map. It is impossible to tell if someone is map hacking after just one game, but if they continually rush straight for you, they are map hacking.
Speed Hack
A speed hack makes you faster then everyone else, letting a cheater mine resources and move units faster. Again it's obvious to spot.
Disconnect Hack
This hack allows the cheater to legally or by brute force disconnect from the game without recording a loss.
For more information pm me <3
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