Can you say fooked!?

[ECF]

http://www.artificialaiming.net/forum/general-discussions/18646-unerring-punkbuster-season-2-we-did-lulz.html

 

While this does not surprise me since I am not a big fan of PB, I felt that you folks would want to be forwarned of this issue.

[nosit1]

Oh wow, that's horrid... So, how many players are there playing games protected by PB? None!

[ECF]

TWL and CAL require that servers stream to PB if the game is PB enabled. This puts a damper on that.

 

Also I would assume that PB must wipe their entire banlist as people can now start a class action lawsuit against them for banning them.

 

Think of the entire banlist of thousands if not millions of bans that can now sue PB for unjustified bans due to this. Multiply that times the dollar amount of a new game or games for each player banned. I am sure PB will simply wipe the banlist clean instead of paying out the nose. And then I am sure there will be reprocussions for game publishers such as EA as well.

 

Not a very good sign of things to come. Hopefully another anti-cheat program will step up and fill PB's shoes.

[JasonF]

The streaming servers and master ban lists are maintained by other people, not punkbuster (i.e. pbbans.com and punksbusted.com).

 

The only bans that I know pb maintains is hardware bans and they don't advertise who is banned.

[jcroom]

I have never had any faith in PB, I reported many hacks to them, uploaded the apps straight to them, and it would take them about a year to update PB to detect it.

[VicToMeyeZR]

Punkbuster is useless. What else the reason for all these anti-cheat scripts on PB servers? Useless.............

[ECF]

The streaming servers and master ban lists are maintained by other people, not punkbuster (i.e. pbbans.com and punksbusted.com).

 

The only bans that I know pb maintains is hardware bans and they don't advertise who is banned.

 

It doesn't matter who keeps the ban database it will need to be wiped due to this security hole in the PB Software. I am sure evenbalance will feel the heat as well even if they do not keep the list on their servers.

[JasonF]

But I don't think PB ever intended to offer streaming servers into their software, it was just something that was done by the 3rd party people so the guilt is on them no evenbalance.

[ECF]

If you read the entire post I linked to it is an exploit within the PB software itself. They are simply using the streaming system to get the bans into PB. This tells me they are global bans within the PB system and not strictly limited to PBBans.

 

Regardless, this means some serious issues for all gaming leagues since most of them require that you stream to at least PBBans.

 

Now the post was made by someone who was simply pointing out the flaw and showing that it could be done. What worries me is I am sure there are others out there doing it maliciously to players.

 

What a mess.

[Johnny5_Hull]

Indeed, although a mess is a fair bit short of what I would call it. After all, how many times have we come up across that 13 year old admin, who bans you because you shot him!!

 

Just imagine, if those admins got, or indeed already have, their hands on this exploit.

 

I think the only possible way forward is as said, PB MUST clear the banlists AND fix the exploit. Any other decision will certainly see it's reputation dissolve rapidly, no doubt along with it's use.

 

The only question is, what will replace it Anti-Cheat wise

[VicToMeyeZR]

Actually if you read on ALL the EULA's for every game with PB, any and all AUTOBANS are against their policy. This has been proven time and time again, but yet they all fail to acknowledge it. One group just shot down an autoban with Americas Army. If you ask Pragmatic or Americas Army, they will tell you the use of an Autoban script within their servers, is strictly against their EULA.. SO all these PBBans type groups, really need to go away anyways. They are NOT helpful to the community.

[VicToMeyeZR]

I don't like the idea of my customers being AUTO banned from their own servers, because of a autoban third party and their lack of acknowledging faults with in their system.

[Derek]

I don't like the idea of my customers being AUTO banned from their own servers, because of a autoban third party and their lack of acknowledging faults with in their system.

 

Agreed. That's what server admins are for.

[ECF]

Well if you customers use their servers for CAL, CEVO, TWL etc... thay are required to steram to PBBans. Kinda sucky if you ask me.