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Crazy Squirrel

Crazy Squirrel

<b>***** *****istrator</b><br>Keeper of the BOOM S
May 28, 2001
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London, UK
Well its been a rumour for long enough, but heres an exclusive that those powerful Jolt peeps got on admin levels and banning :)

On the subject of banning it has been confirmed to us that ALL banning is done against a unique player key that’s assigned when a player registers his cd key with the master server. Allowing for those with dynamic IP addresses to stay banned.
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Full article @ http://www.ut.jolt.co.uk/index.php?page=articles.html&article=612


I even suggested that way of banning back in March on the infogrames forum here but they no doubt already had the idea ;)
 
Originally posted by Japster
Key - generators own :D
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Unless I got my maths wrong, using 16 alphanumeric characters (non case sensitive) there are almost 8,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 combinations

Then when a copy of the game is published:
  1. Generate a unique key
  2. Add the key to the central server so it can be registered
  3. Put the key in the game box & dispatch it to distributors
  4. Customer buys game and registers/activates online
  5. Customer gets a player key (+pw capability i hope :P)
    [/list=1]
    If someone guesses & trys to activate with invalid keys 3 times then the central server blocks the IP for x hours to stop brute force 'hackers'. The only possible combo's to guess would be those sitting on shop shelves or in warehouses.

    No idea if this is the way they are going to do it, but that would be my first draft at specifying such a system. Case sensitive would increase the number of combinations ~6000 times :)

    @Ace
    HL has won authentication or something doesn't it? And it's a couple of years old and i've never heard of a key gen (i may be wrong)... a proggy with a list of pre-stored keys yes (but thats cause people give em out). & Dunno if u can ban by the key ID....
    rtcw, still not got that game :(
 
but some systems take so much time to break, it's not an realistic option

If it would be so easy you wouldn't still be seeing ppl looking for CounterStrike keys.
 
lol I have loads of CS and HL keys here, you just gotta know where to look for em. :D
 
My comment on geygens was just statement that everything is breakable, prolly best example is DVD code : Bunch of companys hired coders that were ment to come up with unbreakable code, took em over 6 months. Then 16 year old norwegean student hacked it in 7 days. Oh and 16 digits mean shit, RTCW has 18 and the codes were available day after it was released. Im hoping too UT2003 has sumkinda new key :D
 
Originally posted by Japster
Oh and 16 digits mean shit, RTCW has 18 and the codes were available day after it was released. Im hoping too UT2003 has sumkinda new key :D
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Well those codes would probably have got blocked...

The way to do it would be to randomly generate the key for online activation because that would be quite simply impossible to hack. If its not random u'd still need a hell of a lot of keys too look at and try and work out the algorithm.

Ultima Online uses this kind of activation and i've never heard of any problems. Few years old and they've alwasy been able to ban accounts. Same for WinXP no key gen for that - they could prolly throw a switch which would stop any illegal versions from using windows update......if they havn't already :P
 
I have never heard about the keys being used to ban players in any of the games mentioned above. I assume we are talking about the freakin spoilers.
 
If i remember rightly, about 1-2 years ago someone posted a thread in a CS cheat forum with over 300 working online cd keys for halflife, basically he made a hack (variation of the OpenGL hack) that worked but when run also sent the cdkey of the cheater to his computer... So thats how most of the widespread online cdkeys for CS have come about.

Also i know a couple of people that have been banned for cheating, they used a keygen and within about 20 randomly generated keys they found a working online one - probably just luck though lookin' at Crazy Squirrel's figures
 
so.... if i buy an original copy, and i'm very happy coz i have an originial key... it isn't nice to see some cybernerd scum already generated your key and registered it. Or am i wrong?
 
Yeah those are the 2 problems.
People stealing ur key with a trojan mod or program
or by guessing the key however incredibly unliky it is.

UT mods can't access your disk afaik so UT2 ones won't either. Which leaves the conventinal windows utilities.... which u can all rely on me for, and u trust me... ;) ;) :P

I would hope they use some asymmetric cryptography to encrypt the key stored on your HD. Encoded when u enter it, decoded only by the master server.

Of course they do need ways of helping innocent people..... but who's innocent....
 
From the horses mouth, well from Dr Sin:
The master server generates a unique id from your CD key, but your CD key is never sent 100%. And yes, if the master server see to many people using the same CD key (probably at the same time) it will shut that key down.
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Same for WinXP no key gen for that - they could prolly throw a switch which would stop any illegal versions from using windows update......if they havn't already
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eep:eek:
 
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