Reply To: How to "fix" the Arena from cheaters

Home Forums Angry Birds Epic Forum How to "fix" the Arena from cheaters Reply To: How to "fix" the Arena from cheaters

@tigerussell, @angryjohnny, the problem with this kind of stuff is that the infrastructure in place is based on the regular client-side gaming. It was never meant for this type of pvp play. I believe Rovio never even anticipated cheating in the first place (which is kind of stupid).

Now they are trying to implement solutions based on an infrastructure which was never designed for PvP playing. To do it right, they would have to change way too much.

A possible intermediate approach could be not to do everything server side, but do some basic checksums client side. So, instead of only transmitting numbers, do a checksum on the data of the birds and the prizes. This can easily be incorporated in the client device.

Something like the checksum of the XP level, Rank and gear in relation to health and damage which ends up with a 1 or 0. 1 for correct and 0 for incorrect. Any modified birds would end up with 0 while normal birds would end up with 1. The same can be done for the prize wheel.

Then the score which would be submitted for a diamond 175+35+50 score should be formulated as 1*1*(175+35+50) with normal birds and correct prizes. In case of modified prizes, the checksum reaches 0 and the submitted score would become (1*0*(175+35+50)). In that way the scores end up as 0.

There is another problem though. I’ve tested the method used for the hacked scores and I am able to simply alter the total score on the local device (i added the insane amount of 15 points to my score! Oh yeah, and removed it again…). Remember the players with -1 being on top of the board? This is something which should not be possible. Letting the server add scores incrementally should not create a large amount of additional server load on Rovio’s side. Therefore that is something which should be changed in the infrastructure.

I think the current strategy on the last topic is that these people are banned or something, since I haven’t seen any of these anymore, at least not on my board. In the cheaters thread there is one reported so far, but I would not be surprised if that one would disappear.