PUBG announces new anti-cheat measures

Ana

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Hello players,

This is Taeseok Jang, Executive Producer of PUBG PC.

With the entire world facing the threat of COVID-19, let me start by wishing you and your loved ones good health. Like everyone, PUBG’s teams around the world have had to change our work practices a bit, but we’re doing all we can to safely provide new content and uninterrupted live service to you all.

2019 was a busy year for us, with lots of new content, updates to some of our maps, and a number of quality of life fixes. While much of this content was very well received, we know some of our other efforts didn’t land as well with you. We also had trouble nailing down the causes of a few persistent bugs and struggled against a relentless onslaught of cheat programs. These are some of the things I’ll be talking with you about today.
Two-factor Authentication System
We receive countless support tickets from players whose accounts have been permanently banned after their Steam account was hacked and used with cheat programs. The sellers of cheat programs often trade these accounts due to the high account turnover their customers experience. The vast majority of hacked accounts do not have Steam Guard activated and many have their login information compromised through phishing sites that lure players in with the fake promise of free in-game items.

To help prevent account hacking and improve security overall, we will be adding SMS authentication and a secondary authentication system using a one-time password. Your account will need to have two-factor authentication enabled in order to participate in ranked games to help ensure the fairest environment possible.

Improve hack vulnerabilities in code

Cheat programs target specific factors to manipulate our code. Here’s what we’re doing to prevent manipulation to weapons, vehicles, and character movement.

  • Weapons
    • Reinforce server authentication related to the gun’s firing angle, recoil, ballistic trajectory, etc.
    • Analyze and overcome the vulnerabilities of client logic related to aiming.
  • Vehicles
    • Reinforce server authentication related to the vehicle’s speed, moving angle, the time period it can remain in the air, etc.
    • This will not only ban accounts that are detected, but will also deter cheating tools in real-time, kick cheaters out of the match, and issue instant bans.
  • Character Movement
    • Reinforce server authentication related to a character’s move speed, the time period they remain in the air, etc.
Toughen HWID Bans
When a Hardware ID ban is issued, it records information on the specific components inside a PC so that even when a new account is purchased or stolen, our servers know that PC is blacklisted. The more information collected, the more accurate the ban is but by seeking this additional information, our methods become easier to get around as sometimes replacing a single component is enough to bypass the ban. In addition to this, the developers of cheat programs have found ways to falsify Hardware ID data, which renders these efforts much less effective as well.

We have recognized the limitations of the existing HWID ban system and are developing improvements. These improvements will seek hardware information at the user and kernel level using specific algorithms so that even if a cheat program tries to bypass, we will be able to quickly block the program again. This should help apply bans to PCs as well as accounts that use cheat programs.

Strengthen the Level of Bans

One of the ways we detect cheaters is through the reports you send in during your games. Among those reported users, we instantly ban those who have direct evidence of cheating and impose a temporary 24-hour ban on others that need further investigation.

The majority of temp banned users convert to a permanent ban, but a small portion are cleared due to either lack of evidence or us finding that the account was falsely flagged.

Our goal is to avoid false bans as often as possible, so we’re cautious when taking action against an account; however, we’ve come to realize that being too cautious here can negatively impact far more people than the suspected account. Thus, we’re changing our investigation methods to be more strict against accounts that have been temporarily banned on suspicion of using cheats.

In addition, we will target suspected cheaters for additional monitoring. If an account has been temp banned at least once, it will be added to a management list to be investigated further, sometimes including live monitoring of how they play the game.

 

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