A story about one admins struggle for a hack free server....

Rust general
#1

Okay let me just start by saying how awesome it is you banned so many cheaters yesterday. However I am a server admin on a very popular server that is averaging 50+ people each day and has maxed out at ~120 people a couple of times before and I am still having problems with cheaters.

Now I’m sure by now you’ve heard of the pay to cheat sites that are out there I will only mention them by their initials AA and AJ are the only ones as far as I know. Anyways it seems that within hours of cheatpunch being posted AA already had a work around and a whole bunch of new features for them to play with including invisibility. Now as a server admin I am grateful for these hackers being banned but it was only a temporary solution and the problem will not be fixed in this manner. I can tell you hours after cheatpunch being a thing I already have had to deal with many many hackers already. They seem to have an endless wallet and are always willing to buy another account to ruin our server.

As an admin the only things we have access to, to stop cheaters is our invis suit and the ability to teleport around the server to check in on things. However to anyone using ESP it becomes blatantly obvious when an admin teleports to you. And once they do, that is when the smart ones start to behave and hide their cheats discretely. We created our server because we were tired of hackers galore on the official servers, we tried other community servers and were banned falsely by their admins or ever saw admins that hackers or spawned in resources and so we finally decided if we want something done right we ought to do it ourselves. What we found out is there isn’t a whole lot you can do to stop hackers from roaming free on your server, we tried to take a very fair approach and only ban people when we are 100% sure we have proof of them hacking (usually only in the form of a video uploaded to the internet as proof). This turns out to be extremely time consuming, and we spent 30+ minutes discussing each and every individual potential hacker, hell we had people on our server that almost everyone assumed was cheating, however no one was able to prove it so we had to let them continue playing. In one case in particular our server almost turned into a lynch mob and went crazy spamming chat demanding a certain player be banned (one that we had no proof of at the time yet but were constantly fighting to get some) this resulted in a chunk of our player-base leaving.

Finally 2 days ago we caught one of our regulars cheating. He was playing on our server for about 2 weeks total and was doing so very discretely. I talked to him and he said something along the lines of can’t beat them join them, only toggle when we know someone else is cheating. He mentioned he really liked the way we were running the server and he listed off several groups on our server that he suspected of hacking. We asked him how he knew and he very passionately told us that it is very very obvious to see other cheaters with your own ESP on. He also mentioned how much he loved the way we were running our server and that he would even buy us AA just so we can compete with those other hackers. We accepted his offer.

Within minutes of using the cheat program I could tell what he was talking about. I ran around our server naked and harmless only trying to bait out other people with ESP. I would superjump behind some rocks and wait, just knowing that the guy on the other side saw me with ESP and knew I too was cheating and would position himself to defend his base from another cheater. Many times I would just wait on the top of the rocks near someones base and sure enough they would magically find me and kill me with 3 swift no recoil shots to the head. Other people were a little harder to catch, but you could see them go directly in straight lines between each victim they choose. Some were hilariously easy to catch and you would see them moving faster then they should or super jumping with ESP.

All in all, the ESP tool was absolutely amazing for catching hackers. I managed to catch ~15 people in the short 2 or so hours I managed to use it on my server. Then went to work and when I came back is when cheatpunch started banning. Now to ban 4500 people that is really impressive, however from my understanding on the AA forum not everyone got banned, people were saying they got banned using the premium or they didn’t get banned using it, it was seemly random who got banned and who didn’t. Not only that but my alternate account which I bought 2 days ago to admin the server was already banned (76561198125957444).

So these banning would be great in all, but now I have the problem of a new update to get around the latest cheatpunch, so now my server is again being flooded with hackers. All that is required of them is that they be in the lucky % that didn’t get banned by cheatpunch or they spend $20 (which they probably will because they already spent $20+ on the cheat itself) for another Rust account. Now all theses cheaters are back on my server and my broke ass can’t afford another Rust account to deal with them. All I can do is continue doing the best I can following them around invisible, however knowing now how the cheat works itself, I can almost 100% guarantee the moment I TP to someone with ESP that they will see me almost immediately and if they are smart will stop speedhacking and or aimbotting while I am around.

Now admins currently have the ability to abuse their powers by spawning stuff in, in fact MANY DO and it ruins the integrity of this game. However servers do exist like mine, where admins actually play this game legit. If you go on our server you will see that ever since we started getting a population of ~50+ our admins didn’t have time to build up their bases and as a result all of us still have 2x1s and one of us already got raided. The only time we spawn in stuff is to build an arena for server events with small responsible prizes to the 1 winner. There are servers like ours where we use our admin powers responsibly and do the absolutely best we can to make our server hacker free and admin abuse free. However without tools like FIRST PERSON SPECTATING for admins only, I really don’t feel like there is any efficient way for us to combat hackers without using hacks ourselves.

Admins already can abuse their power so I feel there is no reason to hold back in the power you give an admin. Why not give admins ESP or first person, the ones that will abuse it will have their server abandoned and the responsible admins like my group can have a trustworthy server that is hacker free.

#2

welcome to every server who wants to combat hacking

#3

+1

#4

Yea this seems to be the struggle everywhere there has got to be something we can do about it, if we know about it.

If garry was able to ban a huge wave of hackers with cheatpunch, he must’ve figured out how they work. What if he programmed a way into the game where admins names won’t show up while they were in a spectate mode. Imagine you could just no clip free cam around the server, or first person view another player. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about they hackers knowing they are being observed making them easier to catch.

#5

Nice ssansam, I’d love to see admins able to control more of the game, but specially be able to identify hackers. I’ve left a lot of servers 'cos of hackers (the notorious ones, like speed, jump, going through walls, not aimboting because I can’t judge if the player has skill or aimbot).

I hope your petition becomes real.

#6

So you downloaded ESP to combat ESP’s.

#7

To learn how to build harder and difficult bases I watch raiding videos, how people think to raid a base, so yeah, I find it a very good resource to know how the hack works.

I’ve seen videos on how the API looks like and how they see the screen to know what I’m facing.

#8

If you don’t know what you’re dealing with your ignorance is not going to stop it.

#9

I enjoy how judgmental people get. If an Administrator/Server Host is genuinely using hacks to only catch other hackers, I have no issue with it (not my opinion that matters, but whatever). I only wish you the best on your server, as it is only going to be an upwards battle for us unless some significant changes come to Rust.

#10

Not sure if these programs are reading memory or packet sniffing the traffic going between the client or the server. If its the packet sniffing method then why not simply encrypt the traffic going to and from the server. I know the idea is to keep a low send rate. However the overhead may be acceptable.

#11

DAFUQ…

#12

Hmm well you have an issue here. Your saying you used the cheat on your personal server. If that was only the case you should not have gotten banned because your server does not have cheatpunch enabled. It sounds like you may have crossed the line a bit an used the cheat on a public server also.

So you might have started with good intentions but it sounds like you may have not finished your journey with clean hands.

But yes, I imagine once they get the game substantially more finished they will work on admin tools. The ghosting is probably the best thing they could add in right away.

#13

CheatPunch isn’t something only on public servers… it can be enabled on private servers as well.

#14

I totally agree with the OP.

I cheat in private servers. As mentioned, it is SUPER easy to spot other cheaters with ESP.

After getting an updated cheat yesterday and logging in to my home server, I noticed immediately that there were way less cheaters running around. Then as the hours passed and more people grabbed the new cheats, everything went back to the way it was.

SINCE Cheatpunch, I’ve seen at least 8-10 cheaters in the server where I play. I’ve had to aimbot 3 of them to defend myself when they used ESP to come straight for me when I had never revealed myself to them and there was no way they could have known I was there.

You can berate me if you wish. I don’t care. You’ll be wasting keystrokes. I’m only here to offer up information that may or may not help with OP’s cause. Being completely honest: I want Cheatpunch to reach perfection and truly put an end to cheating in Rust. Until then, I will continue to use ESP to avoid others with ESP, and aimbot to kill the ones who do reach me.

#15

That’s how many cheaters get started. They see other players cheating, get tired of it and fall into the “If you can’t beat them, join them” mentality. At first, they just want to catch other cheaters or protect themselves from them…but soon temptation begins to creep in…soon anyone who manages to kill you becomes a cheater…and then one day…you stop caring completely about who is or isn’t a cheater. You go from, “Noooo! I’ll never join you!” to becoming a cackling old hermit with red eyes and shooting lightning from your fingertips at everyone…a pale shadow of what you once were.

#16

And that makes a difference why. So he cheated on a server that was not his to get banned… Why would he enable on his server and ban himself?

#17

Really??? Use Google properly…Currently Rust has 15 diferent paying hacks…all already bypassed Cheat Punch…so RIP Rust…the Oficial Cheat Punch server was owned today the entire day by hackers with mass kill…Rust is unplayable…Hackers are owning Rust plain and simple…playing Rust at the moment is just a waste of time…

#18

Cheats are cheats. Don’t cheat if you don’t want to get banned.

Cheatpunch is “enabled” only on certain servers in the sense that, those servers (official ones and some community ones) will kick you if you have been caught by Cheatpunch. Nothing about that statement prohibits Cheatpunch from watching you on any server and recording if you cheat. You’ll just be able to continue to play on servers that don’t use Cheatpunch if you get caught.

#19

Because his server is also my server (who has had CheatPunch enabled since it came out) and we wanted to see how quick it would ban him if at all, a small sacrifice :).

#20

I think you misunderstood, we had cheatpunch enabled the whole time. I only played on our server and I got banned.