Few questions about cheaters.cfg

Garry's Mod general
#1

I have a few questions about the cheaters.cfg file which appears to contain 300+ Sethhack users’ Steam IDs and bans them.
Garry might be the only one able to answer some of these.

How was this list compiled? Was it received from some random server (which could have false positives or could include people they dislike)? Or was it generated by Gmod itself and sent to Garry to include with this update?
I’m concerned the list could include people who haven’t cheated, if it was provided to Garry from a random server. Gmod itself should do the detection and send that to Garry - that way we know it is valid and doesn’t include people a particular server dislikes.

Will the list be updated over time with more IDs? Will these IDs be collected the same way as in the above question, or will it come from another source (eg other random servers)?

Is there a way to manually exclude someone from the list on a community I administrate?
One of our moderators is in the list (we already knew he had Sethhack), but he doesn’t use it on our servers (verified by our own Sethhack detection system, which has logged others but not him).
In addition, one of our administrators has Sethhack which he uses to help us develop and test our hack detection system (for Sethhack and other assorted hacks). He isn’t on the list (yet).
We do not want to lose these people, so I’d really like to be able to manually exclude specific Steam IDs on our servers.

#2

This is my case, where i am now banend of All servers for playing the game lawfully. This is just one big joke, Seriously.

#3

It’s not wise to reveal how it works publically - for obvious reasons.

The list that went out yesterday went out accidentally. People shouldn’t have started getting banned yet - those are some of the ID’s on the watch list.

Since the cat is out of the bag It’ll be updated tonight with some of those bans removed, and with the system active.

#4

I’ve sent you an email about the list Garry, would really appreciate if you could give it a read.

#5

Without revealing how it works, can you confirm the method is reliable and not subject to 3rd party influences? (eg it isn’t a ban list recorded by a particular community).

I just want to know the list is 100% trustworthy (once you’ve made it active), or if we should consider the possibility that some of these people haven’t been hacking. I can’t trust the list if it has been given to you by some random community who could easily forge logs to put people they dislike on it. But I’m happy to trust it if it has been compiled by you and your own detection systems (or Valve if they are involved).

#6

Is it only SethHack that gets you on the list? Or is it all aimbot/ESP type hacks?

#7

I don’t know how you expect me to answer this. “No, the way we ban SteamID’s is unreliable and anyone can get banned for no reason at all because the system is shit”?

#8

What I think he wants assurance on is that its not handled like other SH banlists that have influence from random people.

I.E.
Player A plays on a server, does something, Player B gets pissy and complains to Community, Community adds Player A to SH Ban List because Player B said A was using it despite having no proof of use or even ownership of SH.

#9

Garry can do far more than what communities can do to detect SH. I’m fairly sure he wouldn’t put anything in that could have a huge margin of error.

#10

Well assurance should be easy to come by then.

#11

I hope all the stupid cheaters crash and burn. Garry I applaud you for taking the time to do this. One step closer to kicking all the cheaters in the muff.

#12

lol’d

#13

Hows this list going to work? Is it updated when the server iniates?
Updated only when gmod updates?

Either way surely you could just remove a banid from the server.cfg file or simply empty it and make it read only. I’m sure Garry will make it optional to have activated on a server anyway. Having it mandatory wouldn’t be good.

Although I will have it activated on all my servers, but having it mandatory wouldn’t feel right.

#14

Not sure if it’s just my old version of ULX, but when it tries to write the hundreds of SteamID’s from memory to banned_user.cfg, this happens and the server crashes



(ADMIN) -=[UH]=- Gen. HeX banned STEAM_0:1:46527909 permanently for "Speedhack"
Writing cfg/banned_user.cfg.
Writing cfg/banned_user.cfg.
Giving mohdal a jump_stick
Cbuf_AddText: buffer overflow
Cbuf_AddText: buffer overflow
Cbuf_AddText: buffer overflow
Cbuf_AddText: buffer overflow
Cbuf_AddText: buffer overflow
-snip hundreds of these-
*crash*

I’ve since deleted “cheaters.cfg” and written my own ban system.

#15

You also seem to have some duplicate steamID’s on the list.

#16

So my question is, are people who bought and use SH purely for anti-cheating purposes gonna get unfairly banned now?

#17

From what garrys said, I don’t think he’s detecting everyone who uses GMod, it looks like he’s using community hack ban lists, adding them to a “watch-list” and then if they’re on that list checking if they have a hack on the next time they play GMod. Presumably if you bought SH purely for anti-cheating purposes you wouldn’t be banned from someone elses community for it.

#18

Out of interest, how does buying and using a hack prevent others from cheating?

#19

Yes. I’m not going to detect that you have a cheat installed and then contact you and ask you if you were using it to cheat. I’m going to assume you were cheating - because it’s a cheat.

#20

Because clearly you detected it with some sort of anticheat that you made even though it doesn’t even detect everyone who uses it, only people who were banned by anticheats on specific servers. Right?