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Punkbuster

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PunkBuster is a computer program to prevent cheating in online games published by Even Balance, Inc. It has recently been deployed in several popular multiplayer online games, including Battlefield 2, Battlefield 1942, Battlefield Vietnam, America's Army, Call of Duty and Quake III Arena.

Contents

History

The first beta of PunkBuster was announced on September 21, 2000 for Half-Life. Valve Software was at the time fighting a hard battle against cheating, which had been going on since the release of the game. The first game in which PunkBuster was integrated was id Software's Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Basics

PunkBuster for Half-Life was a standalone application that ran in the background at the same time as the game. Since the release of PunkBuster for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the program has been integrated with the game engine. The game server can communicate with the PunkBuster program and check if the client is following the rules set down for the game. PunkBuster also communicates with dedicated servers to check for updates.

Published features

Unpublished features

Attacks on PunkBuster

Being a security system of sorts, PunkBuster is an obvious target for attacks. As PunkBuster is frequently updated (using an autoupdate feature) cheats are blacklisted shortly after being reported. Theoretically it is possible to create a new program, following the PunkBuster protocol that always reports that everything is as it should be. However, the frequent updates are a deterrent, as such a program would quickly be outdated. Today people are less likely to share the cheats, as a widely spread cheat is more likely to get blacklisted soon. So far there have not been any successful large-scale attacks on the system.

In addition PunkBuster incorporates a system called global banning. Either the GUID (generated from the CD key) or parts of the computer hardware are banned from PunkBuster enabled servers. Most cheats simply will get a detection, but cheats that interfere with PunkBuster's software could get a global GUID ban. This will disallow access to PunkBuster enabled servers for that particular game. Cheats which are even more interfering could end up being the user banned from all PunkBuster enabled games by a hardware ban. Hardware bans work by banning the serial numbers on hardware, so if any hardware with blacklisted serial numbers connects to a Punkbuster game, the user will be kicked. It is unknown exactly what hardware is banned, though it is speculated that Punkbuster bans the harddrive and the network card. There are efforts to bypass hardware bans, however like cheats themselves, this area evolves as PunkBuster detects and shuts down methods.

Games which use PunkBuster

PunkBuster in MMORPGs

On June 18 to 19 of 2006, the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) Ultima Online (UO) announced that it was testing PunkBuster for use in that game. UO at this time had been plagued with cheating and exploiting on a massive scale for some time, especially with Player vs. Player (PvP) combat and resource gathering.

The announcement, located here:

http://www.uo.com/punkbuster_faq.html

met with mixed but generally positive reactions from UO players.

If PunkBuster is indeed used in UO, this appears to be the first big use of PunkBuster in an MMORPG, a new era for the anti-cheating software. And, arguably, a new era for MMORPGs, which can no longer afford to ignore their cheating problems.

At the time of writing, UO's manufacturer, Electronic Arts (EA) estimated that public testing of PunkBuster would begin in July of 2006.

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
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