Anti-Cheat RCON tool

Post » Fri Oct 05, 2012 5:00 am

Hi all!

This post is meant mainly for server administrators, but I believe others may find it interesting as well.

I would like to present/give you the tool that was developed by me and my brother (non-Crysis player). It is an RCON tool and the original idea for its creation was to prevent certain type of hacks/cheats you may encounter. It is definitely not a holy grail, it doesn't deal with cheats like wallhack, aimbot, etc. Crysis 2 server's output is quite poor and despite of the fact that we're trying to get max out of it, it cannot be used to deal with everything.

What this tool does deal with:
1) Name-hackers
There are special characters that Crysis 2 displays differently. Because of this, it's often difficult to votekick such a player. Kicking/banning namehacker is very easy via this tool as the names are translated correctly in it.

2) Renaming hackers
This hack is not really new, but it's been used quite a lot recently. This is when cheater/hacker changes the name at any attempt to votekick him/her. This tool recognizes this action and bans the player.

3) Automatic execution of actions
I've mentioned what kind of cheaters/hackers this tool can deal with. The banning/kicking can be done automatically, so no action from the side of server administrator is required. This automatic execution is enabled when "Automatic refresh" feature is enabled. The default time for this refresh is set to 15 seconds which I've found to be completely satisfying. I strongly recommend enabling this feature.

4) Rules management
I've mentioned that this tool is able to ban players automatically. In the rules section, you can specify the exact conditions under which the player should be kicked/banned or even removed from ban list. By default, the tool will permanently ban the players whose names includes this characters: "@", ";", "|", "~". You can of course add, remove, modify the rules.

Rules are applied for every refresh, this is why I recommend enabling automatic refresh option.

5) Reconnect
If your server restarts, this tool is able to automatically reconnect to it and keep protecting the server.

Few more details:
- Most of the features (automatic refresh, reconnect, autologin) are not enabled by default (I recommend to enable at least autorefresh and reconnect)
- Manual kicking/banning/unbanning can be done via context menu (right-click on player's name)
- Automatic refresh option generates quite a lot of unnecessary information in "server.log" file.
- Rules are stored in "rules.xml" file. Be careful not to overwrite this file as the rules specified by you will be lost (mainly when applying new version of this tool).

I've been happily using this tool so far, but I'm sure as more users will try this, some new bugs might appear. Please send me PM in this situation. I will discuss any technically related issues in only private discussion, not publicly. Of course, I will answer any other that technical/implementation details publicly as well.

Regarding the requirements, .NET Framework 4.5 is required to be installed. It can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30653

The RCON tool itself can be found here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/crysisconsole/

Any feedback (good/bad) regarding this tool is greately appreciated!
User avatar
bimsy
 
Posts: 3541
Joined: Wed Oct 11, 2006 3:04 pm

Post » Fri Oct 05, 2012 3:14 am

Hi all!

This post is meant mainly for server administrators, but I believe others may find it interesting as well.

I would like to present/give you the tool that was developed by me and my brother (non-Crysis player). It is an RCON tool and the original idea for its creation was to prevent certain type of hacks/cheats you may encounter. It is definitely not a holy grail, it doesn't deal with cheats like wallhack, aimbot, etc. Crysis 2 server's output is quite poor and despite of the fact that we're trying to get max out of it, it cannot be used to deal with everything.

What this tool does deal with:
1) Name-hackers
There are special characters that Crysis 2 displays differently. Because of this, it's often difficult to votekick such a player. Kicking/banning namehacker is very easy via this tool as the names are translated correctly in it.

2) Renaming hackers
This hack is not really new, but it's been used quite a lot recently. This is when cheater/hacker changes the name at any attempt to votekick him/her. This tool recognizes this action and bans the player.

3) Automatic execution of actions
I've mentioned what kind of cheaters/hackers this tool can deal with. The banning/kicking can be done automatically, so no action from the side of server administrator is required. This automatic execution is enabled when "Automatic refresh" feature is enabled. The default time for this refresh is set to 15 seconds which I've found to be completely satisfying. I strongly recommend enabling this feature.

4) Rules management
I've mentioned that this tool is able to ban players automatically. In the rules section, you can specify the exact conditions under which the player should be kicked/banned or even removed from ban list. By default, the tool will permanently ban the players whose names includes this characters: "@", ";", "|", "~". You can of course add, remove, modify the rules.

Rules are applied for every refresh, this is why I recommend enabling automatic refresh option.

5) Reconnect
If your server restarts, this tool is able to automatically reconnect to it and keep protecting the server.

Few more details:
- Most of the features (automatic refresh, reconnect, autologin) are not enabled by default (I recommend to enable at least autorefresh and reconnect)
- Manual kicking/banning/unbanning can be done via context menu (right-click on player's name)
- Automatic refresh option generates quite a lot of unnecessary information in "server.log" file.
- Rules are stored in "rules.xml" file. Be careful not to overwrite this file as the rules specified by you will be lost (mainly when applying new version of this tool).

I've been happily using this tool so far, but I'm sure as more users will try this, some new bugs might appear. Please send me PM in this situation. I will discuss any technically related issues in only private discussion, not publicly. Of course, I will answer any other that technical/implementation details publicly as well.

Regarding the requirements, .NET Framework 4.5 is required to be installed. It can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30653

The RCON tool itself can be found here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/crysisconsole/

Any feedback (good/bad) regarding this tool is greately appreciated!

Image
No really, finally a Crysis 2 Rcon tool.
User avatar
dean Cutler
 
Posts: 3411
Joined: Wed Jul 18, 2007 7:29 am

Post » Fri Oct 05, 2012 4:14 am

Nice work. I will try it out on some servers.
Is there a chance that you can add a feature that would allow admin to switch a player to another team?
how about increasing the idlekick timer?
Auto ban feature for kills per minute?
Any way to add more invalid characters in names?

Do you accept donations? If so, please give details

again, congrats on a job well done
User avatar
Brentleah Jeffs
 
Posts: 3341
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:21 am

Post » Fri Oct 05, 2012 2:26 am

Any way to add more invalid characters in names?

Its in the Rules tab. You can add as many as you want.
User avatar
cosmo valerga
 
Posts: 3477
Joined: Sat Oct 13, 2007 10:21 am

Post » Thu Oct 04, 2012 11:13 pm

Yeap, saw that.
I will send you a PM shortly. Please have a look and see what you think.
User avatar
Anna Beattie
 
Posts: 3512
Joined: Sat Nov 11, 2006 4:59 am

Post » Fri Oct 05, 2012 2:44 am

Source? How can we know there isn't a trojan in there? Or some other malware?
User avatar
DAVId MArtInez
 
Posts: 3410
Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2007 1:16 am

Post » Fri Oct 05, 2012 4:26 am

Source? How can we know there isn't a trojan in there? Or some other malware?
https://www.virustotal.com/file/516f73edede4c28c713934663c8519be995faeb6c4cb4bb0cba2af2ef212d9b3/anolysis/1349350687/
User avatar
Eliza Potter
 
Posts: 3481
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2007 3:20 am

Post » Thu Oct 04, 2012 4:35 pm

Without a virus-definition it would obviously display false-positives.
User avatar
Robyn Lena
 
Posts: 3338
Joined: Mon Jan 01, 2007 6:17 am

Post » Thu Oct 04, 2012 10:49 pm

Respect!
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Hannah Whitlock
 
Posts: 3485
Joined: Sat Oct 07, 2006 12:21 am

Post » Fri Oct 05, 2012 5:27 am

Respect!

+1
User avatar
Veronica Martinez
 
Posts: 3498
Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2006 9:43 am

Post » Fri Oct 05, 2012 5:30 am

Awesome. Great job, well done and thanks.

Unfortunate that I'm shutting down the server...
User avatar
El Khatiri
 
Posts: 3568
Joined: Sat Sep 01, 2007 2:43 am


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