Cheating Prevention in Multi-Player Online Games - Essay Example

CHEATING PREVENTION IN MULTI-PLAYER ONLINE GAMES by Multiplayer online games have become very popular since the birth of the Internet. Millions of people play games such as poker and world of war craft among other games that are developed for such purposes. Academic research into such games has been minimal contributing to the fact that the games are not well understood. Multiplayer online games have become a major force in the growth of online gaming industry attracting attention worldwide. These games are hosted on servers and played by thousands of people using the internet at the same time (Joshi, 2008). The games allow people to collaborate or play against each other irrespective of the location they occupy around the world. The use of the internet has made this possible because people far away from each other can connect and play without having to meet or see each other face to face. Many only games have become famous where players can form friendships. However, multiplayer games have been subjected to issues of cheating and hacking. Hackers can interfere with the graphic rendering to reveal information that would be hidden in a normal game. Cheaters, on the other hand, can use software robot to play the game automatically and gain an unfair advantage over their counterparts. Because of the above weaknesses, some games have released software patches or anti-cheating software to detect the known cheats (Yeung, Lui, Liu, & Yan, 2006:1180). However, this has not been a success because cheats still find a way of bypassing such software because the software creates a difficulty for deployment but cheats still breach the normal game logic until the patches are available. Moreover, the cheats can still bypass the software by hacking them. There are many different ways of cheating in multiplayer online games. However, this paper will focus on two types that include cheating by exploiting misplaced trust and cheating by abusing game procedure. 1. Cheating by exploiting misplaced trust In this type, the game player is given to a game client that performs a number of functions. It directs commands to the game server, receives commands from the server and uses a graphical engine to make a graphical representation of the game on the player’s computer screen (Webb, 2006:25). Here, the game client is a target to a player who has the ability to modify the client using a disassemble. The fact that it is in the cheaters possession makes it complex because the cheater can reverse engineer it passively. This modifies the client to perform cheats such as the wall hacks and map hacks. Map hacks occur when the player has a map that only shows the areas that he should control and happens in real time strategy games. On the other hand, a wall hack happens when the cheat allows players to see through walls and happens as the first person shooter version of the map hack. It involves a scammer working to earn the trust of a player over a period of time to gain advantage over that player. The trust can be assumed immediately because of contact information status and physical appearance among other issues. This form of cheating can be visualized by a player that has been tasked to watch over himself in a game, for instance a player who is asked to do something in order to get a favour or another thing for free. If the actions of such a player are not monitored, he or she can exploit the misplaced trust and claim to have made his end of the deal when he has not. This form of cheating can happen between multiple players when one player gains the trust of others and uses it to achieve a sinister goal. 2. Cheating by abusing game procedure Another type of cheats is cheating by abusing game procedure that happens when a player exploits an aspect of the game to create an advantage that other players do not have (Webb, 2006:26). This happens when the game has certain flaws in operational procedures or rules. This type of cheating does not require a cheat to have any special technical knowledge. An example of this can happen when a player shuts off his or her game when he knows he or she is certain to lose in the game and cannot be saved when the player comes back to play. This happens mostly in games where the number of losses or wins is recorded in a player’s game. This has happened in a game like War craft. Cheats became smart by hacking and disconnecting legally from the game, which is within the rules of the game making it hard to control the cheating behaviour. How cheats work Cheats work through many ways. First, this occurs through client side cheating which occurs because the internet is not able to prevent a lag or delay when a player issues a command. The internet is only used as a communication tool and as such cannot transfer the game state to all clients. For a client to enjoy the game, lags and delays should not be there when a client issues a command. However, this is not possible because game traffic consists of periodic bursts of short packets that interfere with smooth game process allowing cheats to use this. Cheating also occurs through hacking the game client. This happens through reverse engineering the game client that allows the cheater to access the data that is hidden from a player (Kabus & Buchmann, 2007:114). This data shows the location of other players or information hidden from players but important in helping them win. This gives a player a massive advantage over others. Thirdly, cheats use decompilers, which allow the decompilaton of binary codes to readable source codes. It enables the cheat to see programmer comments and variable names, which enables him to see how the code works and use it against the other players. Fourth, debuddgers are also used by cheats to cheat in multiplayer online games by allowing them to access the game client code when the program is actively running. It allows them to determine the state of the program and change the variable values and make the execution stop at the breaking point. Cheats can also use disassemblers, which change binary codes to assembly languages that are easily understood compared to binary codes. When the attacker understands the code, he or she changes the values that give them more ammunition or advantages than the other players enabling them to score more than any other player does, which is unfair. Dynamic library links can also be used in cheating. It is a shared library concept used by Microsoft in the implementation aspect, which is needed by an executing program to gain access to library functions. A cheat can use it to introduce a new code into a game, which allows him or her to exploit the game (Yan & Randell, 2005:34). There are two types of dynamic link libraries that include dynamic and state types. The dynamic type occurs when a program has already been executed but the static type occurs before execution. This enables cheats to manipulate the multiplayer games for their own benefits because it gives them an advantage that the other players do not have. Other cheating methods include client data modification, network data modification and hardware data modification. Therefore, cheating occurs mainly through hacking or manipulation of the game provisions. Cheats use these methods to be one step ahead of the counterparts in the gaming process. Suggestions on how to protect cheating in multiplayer online games There are several ways that can be employed to prevent cheating in multiplayer online games. The most common method, which still has the potential to prevent cheating is the use of bots. This method is used to accumulate virtual items that can be sold later. It prevents cheats from manipulating it because it is valuable. Preventing data exposure is one of the methods that can work well in preventing cheating. Game clients are put in the form of executable files which have been targeted by cheats through the use of things like debuggers and disassemblers that reverse engineer the executable files. Preventing data exposure will ensure that reverse engineering becomes difficult. Packing the executable files will ensure that data is protected from reverse engineering. This can be done by compressing and encrypting executable files. It also offers protection against the use of debuggers and disassemblers. It also entails the removal of the comments put by programmers to ensure that cheats do not have access to such information. Leaving comments on the code has been a mistake by programmers which cheats have taken advantage of and found areas where they can manipulate using the information. A number of packers exist that provide different options for protection against cheating. Debugging has been used extensively by cheats to access the game client code when the program is actively running. For this particular method, there are several anti-debugging measures that can be taken to ensure that cheats do not use this method. Anti-debuggers ensure that cheats cannot use debuggers to access the code completely making it difficult for them to use values of variables as they please. Another way would be to prevent a dishonest command from being accepted on an honest player’s machine. This can also be achieved by enabling the game to determine whether a player is sending an honest command and also inform the other players that a cheat is in their midst and enable them to take action (Meyer, 2011:32). To deal with such an issue game developers should add synchronization checking to the game. This will ensure that the machine that a player uses for the game creates a status summary of the entire simulation on the computer. The status summary generated each time should be the same for all players. If a player has a different status summary then the game can take action against that player. This will prevent cheating. Another method would be to easing the received command evaluations. Game developers should build games in a manner that allows command requests to bypass the verification check only in the computer that issues the command request. This will ensure that the game shuts off when the verification process reveals it has been hacked or manipulated. This will also help other players deal directly with cheating players by booting them from the game. Cheats have often accessed the control variables to initiate the cheating process. A method that can help prevent this is to compile abstract statistics on the things that come to the computer screen where the game is played. These statistics can be derived from the game simulation data and be filed. Despite the fact that this may not immediately prevent cheating, it will be important when the statistics are sent to other players as part of the status synchronization. As part of this, it becomes easy to fight off cheats. To deal with passive cheating, encryption of major values in game memory helps in a major way. Most game variables are not bug to call for such protection. However, cheats are innovative and use the slightest opportunity they get to initiate cheating processes (Van Summeren, 2011:12). encryption does not have to be complex. Simple techniques can be used, for instance, when access must pass through the variables and the assessor functions. Communicative functions will be important in this strategy in helping to ensure that cheats find it difficult to access the variables. Game developers should also slow down the passive attacks by ensuring that cheats do not have any access to major values from outside the class hierarchy. This can be done by placing small and randomly sized spacing buffer allocations in the game set up to ensure that the game memory handles vital information which is differentiated from one game to the other. In conclusion, cheating in multiplayer online games has become a common problem that game developers and players have to deal with. The ever improving technology and the flaws in games has made it possible for cheats to use various methods and tools, such as debuggers and disassemblers to cheat in games through data modification and manipulation, hacking and through abusing game procedures among other ways. However, prevention against cheating can be achieved through various means such as the use of anti-debuggers, anti-disassemblers, slowing down passive attacks and encryption of major values in game memory among other methods. Reference List Joshi, R 2008, Cheating and virtual crimes in massively multiplayer online games. Technical Report RHUL-MA-2008-06, January 15, 2008 (Department of Mathematics, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2008). Retrieved September 19, 2009 from http://www. ma. rhul. ac. uk/static/techrep/2008/RHUL-MA-2008-06. pdf. Kabus, P & Buchmann, A. P 2007, Design of a cheat-resistant P2P online gaming system. 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