Checksum: Safe Against Cheaters?

How safe it is the checksum in MP servers?

 

Nothing is safe. Cheaters can bypass checksum

 

how exactly?
wouldnt they would have to hack the server and alter the executable to disable the checksum test?

 

There comes a known one telling about disturbing stuff...
TDS:... breath, get calm..., mind your!
What are you up about?

 

LOL
Curious to know from the techy guys if its Safe, Safer or Safe-ish.
Encrypting the Sum number into a 256bit or 512 bits key wouldn't make it very hard for cheating?

 

Ok, nothing that should disturb ME...
Or should it.... this paranoia...
Cheers

 

Simple way would be for example:
When the server asks for the checksum, your pc answers with the correct one instead of the one calculated by the AC client.

But also if this is much more secured, there are also much more complicated ways:
Your cheat software could change the values after all this validation. So you connect, the correct checksum are exchanged and varified, all is fine and then the values are changed for the client.

Cheating and Anticheating is always an ongoing war.

 

I simply can't stand people that cheat.. what sad loosers imo. i had a strange experience the other day. I never recieve checksum errors however on this one server i could not drive the McLaren F1 GTR without recieving the error however the Cobra 427 was fine.. what may have caused this?

 

For the files checksum works on I cant say I have ever seen evidence of someone in my servers cheating. With stracker running and monitoring laptimes, lines and speeds it would stand out if someone was to be cheating fairly obviously. If people are cheating then they cant be very good at cheating if they still cant do better then those not cheating.

Some of the names that pop up failing a checksum on stock content where there has been no update in a long time is surprising. Of these normally they fail once then come back and get in so its clear they knew why they got the missmatch and so were trying to get in with modified files.

The only suspicion of a cheat I have seen by some is that it seems possible to disable penalties for some people, a few people I have seen seem to never get called a cut even when server is at 2x and the same lines by anyone else will be called a cut. Many of the people that happen to have this also seem fairly aware of it as they exploit it to make huge cuts on track. My theory is that possibly they could modify the track kn5 file and rename surfaces for objects. Simply making all surfaces tarmac would allow them to get full tarmac grip everywhere and also make all parts valid track. The surface checksum wouldnt be able to be touched and so they still couldnt actually gain extra grip like the old surface dial your own grip cheat many were doing before this was removed with the checksum on surfaces.

Ideally I think all kn5 files should be checksum as somebody could modify the original track mesh and surfaces at that level without any issue in a server. However pretty much all those seen blatantly cutting in my servers via stracker data get instantly blacklisted so it doesn't work out well for them.

If you have a valid unedited game with the latest version then it simply means the server hasn't been updated, quite often when AC gets an update only some cars physics will change and so a server that hasn't been updated will still let people in to some cars but not those that have been updated.

 

If its the admin then they can simply chooser not to run checksums, its possible some may do this on purpose. Many do simply because they don't know how to set a server up properly. However doing that would mean the checksum doesn't work for anyone and so all could just dial in their own basic physics and grip.

Still its likely there are cheaters in some way around, those more committed to cheating will always find a way for whatever unknown reason they have to do so. I wouldn't say its widespread as I have seen very little evidence of people in my servers doing this and there have been quite a few laps recorded in them so far.

 

Need minor adjustments.

I can confirm your suspicions.There is a way to get asphalt an disable penaltys without any change in the original kn5 or sufaces.ini
At the time, it was reported to Kunos, but fortunately they already knew the existence of this way to cheat.

 

I honestly dont feel that cheaters are such a issue in a game like AC. If someone have a bit more grip it doesnt destroy my race but if someone is able to only shoot headshots in a first person shooter it does. In a racing game they cheat themselves but in a shooter they cheat everyone else.

 

I wondered about some guys cutting on every lap as well and they don't seem to be penalized, so yeah, there are some cheaters out there.

But since it's so obvious, I don't care too much and in fact, the ones I've seen were rather slow overall anyway.
Nobody is going to be impressed by them.

 

@martcerv - that makes sense marty. Im up to date and clean so it is the servers problem.. shame

 

Im sure there are some servers setup and just left to run for months, no idea who pays to put these up but then many could be also using a free host service so they dont care much or even forget they put it up.