Review [Issue 36] On the Subject of Hackers

[mcmonkey25 717]

It is a sad reality we have to face that in every game, there are players who will try to cheat their way to the top. They can employ many different methods, from stealing high-levelled accounts to giving themselves in-game boosts through technical practices. But we can at least be safe in the knowledge that the developers are there for us, trying to eliminate this dishonourable threat and that there is something we too can do.

 

There are four main hacks at the moment in the game. The first of which is the infamous Fly Hack. This is where hackers change the 'gravity' of the game in order to move upwards. This makes it very easy for them to catch gold boxes, parkour, or find a very good sniping position in maps. The no-reload hack is relatively new compared to the more traditional hacks. The ability to continually fire with any turret makes it incredibly powerful. Spray weapons will never stop, and the impact force from some turrets such as Hammer or Railgun would send other tankers flying away. This makes it astounding at parkour; Twins can get you up any slope easily whereas Railgun causes a player to flip continually. This hack wreaks havoc in battles and entirely disrupts any battle affected. There is one more type of in-game hack, the speed hack. This changes the timer so that it seems like the speed of a tank is incredible. The hack is a rarer one compared to the others, so you don't see it. It also doesn't pose a particular problem to other players, as their gameplay is generally normal.

 

The fourth and final main type of hack is hacking accounts. This is where you lose your account, generally through someone finding out your password. Unfortunately, the predominant way this happens is you having given your password to another player, or having entered it into a malicious site. Luckily for you though, Tanki has already set up a great system of helping to get people's accounts back. My advice: make sure you have your email linked to your account and that your password is something unique. That way, it is unlikely that you should lose your account and have to go through the worrying process of getting your account back and not being sure if you will ever see your precious tank again.

 

It can be shocking and infuriating if you see a hacker, but don't immediately leave the battle. In my opinion, there are two main ways one can react to having found a hacker. To act, or to turn the other cheek. Both achieve different ends, yet the former is certainly the better option. If no-one acted against cheaters and scammers, they would overrun the game. The key method of combatting a hacker is to confront them. Not many cheaters expect a player to ask “Why are you cheating?” This may seem to attain nothing, but it makes the player behind that screen consider for a moment. Unfortunately, many will swiftly brush off any such comments and think no more of it, and this is where any good player will ultimately act. To most of you, the course of action is obvious, so I won’t bore you with it too much. Evidence is the key to bringing down a hacker. Videos clearly work best and this is what you should strive to get. That’s the tough bit really, having enough time to get a video before they realise someone is against them. A good trick is to have a recorder handy at all times. I personally keep Bandicam open in the background, but I only turn it on for Gold boxes and anything I need as evidence. The minute or so of footage you may get could be the difference to defeating a hacker.

 

The issue I see is that lots of people simply can’t access a recorder; this is not their fault, but it can sometimes pose a problem for catching out hackers. The key solution, some might say, is a new /vote moderation system for countering cheaters, but if this isn’t implemented, there are very few other options. The moderators simply can’t get round to sorting out every hacker all the time, so players would need to gather evidence themselves. Perhaps a method of recording your battles through a Tanki Online database might work, we will have to see what the developers can do.

 

So now we know the hacks and how to catch cheaters, but even if you can’t catch a hacker using a video or through the Tanki Online help desk, it won’t mean that the game is doomed to fall to its knees. Like I said, Tanki has a great team of moderators, but as shown in an interview in the last issue, catching out mults or hackers simply isn’t their priority. This means that they can’t be solely depended upon for bringing down hackers. This is where an automatic system comes into play. The anti-cheat recently brought out by the developers has made a large step towards eliminating hackers. Despite its partial pitfalls, like for players with high PING, it is effective for stopping fly hackers before they can do any damage. Its method of irritating hackers to the point where they see that their efforts are useless, means that they will see that it is pointless to cheat in the game. Even those who perhaps don’t support this new advancement must admit that at the very least, it shows that the developers are doing their best to make this game free from hackers. For all we know, we may soon see radical changes to this update, making it quicker and more effective than the current one. Not only this, but perhaps a way to stop reload hackers or speed hackers, it may all be possible.

 

 

So, my message to you, the player, is to not be dismayed or infuriated by the threat of hackers. This problem is being worked on. But don’t feel helpless until a liberating update is brought out. You can help to eliminate hackers. Even if we have to do it hacker by hacker, I still believe in a day when there will be no more of them in Tanki Online, and I hope you do too.

Edited January 7, 2018 by Hexed

[ShyamNishanthMK 189]

Agreed!

[BlazingCoder 108]

I hope so. :D

[Truthteller 4,204]

great article!

[Pallidium 17]

The part about having Bandicam is great. I personally have it running as well, mostly for screenshot purposes.

[Shield_Jaguar 7]

I have the recorder and i have videos of many hacker, but I am too lazy to upload to YouTube and report them (may be becuase i have very slow upload speed).

There should be reward for reporting hacker. Like 20 of each supply for supplying a valid proof.

[superR2014 9]

What happens, though, is that when I parkour (no hacks), I self-destruct when I go too high. This is quite unfair, when I am about to get on a huge structure, and then it just self-destruct in the air. Sure, this might help hackers, but ruin parkourists?

[El_Jefe_Supremo 7]

I'm just irritated that their hacking can mess up my gameplay indirectly. The worst for me is when I self destruct due to their tank being strange. I was in a madness CTF the other day: somebody on my team was speed hacking around and kept ending up under my tank. The new anti-hack made me self destruct each time. My final D/L was about 48/9, with 3 or 4 of the deaths being due to that hacker. In the same game, another guy grabbed the enemy flag, moved beneath the bottom floor, and floated there for the last 5 minutes so we couldn't do anything more with the flag. We still won by a considerable margin, but it could have been a complete landslide. Nobody on my team ran a camera, though, so we couldn't do anything about it.

 

I get that the system helps keep them out, but I don't like that it hurts bystanders as well. (Not even going into gold box problems.)

[SwiftSmoky 8,445]

I still believe in a day when there will be no more of them in Tanki Online, and I hope you do too.

lol banning cheaters won't help, they can make new accounts, and I think most cheaters actually have one main acc in which they never cheat, and they only create new accounts for cheating just for fun and trolling... They are ready to get the ban on their low accs with a big smile on their face. ;)

 

Cheaters exist in every game, and if there was a good way to get rid of them I'm sure many game developers would already use it. But nope. Sad but true. Tanki can only make the cheaters take a break from cheating and give them a fun challenge to try to come up with a brand new way of cheating, this is what was happening all along the history of Tanki and pretty much every other game that tries to fight cheaters.

 

The only real way to prevent cheating problems is to create a game where you just don't mind that players will cheat, but Tanki is just one of these games where cheaters ruin the gameplay of others so they have to fight it.

[ariking777 940]

I have the recorder and i have videos of many hacker, but I am too lazy to upload to YouTube and report them (may be becuase i have very slow upload speed).

There should be reward for reporting hacker. Like 20 of each supply for supplying a valid proof.

I disagree about the Reward. 20 of each supply would be cool and they're nice, but the report and evidence you make to knock hackers out of the game are for your own benefit, to make the game better for you. Blocking hackers helps you more than it helps the Moderators that do it..

[SwiftSmoky 8,445]

I disagree about the Reward. 20 of each supply would be cool and they're nice, but the report and evidence you make to knock hackers out of the game are for your own benefit, to make the game better for you. Blocking hackers helps you more than it helps the Moderators that do it..

Moderators are players too, and they want to enjoy this game as much as normal players do.

[ariking777 940]

Moderators are players too, and they want to enjoy this game as much as normal players do.

Of course... I'm just saying that reporting players helps those who actually report already, so there ain't no reason for them to get a prize for making the game better for themselves.

[SwiftSmoky 8,445]

There should be reward for reporting hacker. Like 20 of each supply for supplying a valid proof.

I imagine cheaters creating alt accounts, cheating on them and recording it from the view of their main account and then reporting themselves and getting supplies using their cheats...

[applications_tanki 129]

Yes remove the bad apples!

[blackdiamand 0]

OUFA got banned!!!!!

[Guest]

nice

[Poseidon12345 7]

Please help me... My account got hacked after I clicked a site... First I got an email saying that someone from Ukraine was trying to access my email... I dismissed it... An hour later I was in a skype call with my mates... Wanted to have a batlle... COULD NOT GO INTO MY ACCOUNT! I cannot get it back either because it was not created by me... I must say that the account was given to me by my friend when it was about Warrant officer 4/5... Now it is colonel and I just got Rail m2! I really want it back!!! I even have video evidence on it!!! I posted some videos about me playing tanki on my account! Please help me to get my account back,i think i still have the link which got my account hacked,and also i can provide the links to the videos on my youtube account! Please help! My account username is 'sksbros'!

Also,one of my clan mates also got hacked after clicking on the link as we both got the link on skype!

Edited July 4, 2015 by Poseidon12345

[SwiftSmoky 8,445]

Please help me... My account got hacked after I clicked a site... First I got an email saying that someone from Ukraine was trying to access my email... I dismissed it... An hour later I was in a skype call with my mates... Wanted to have a batlle... COULD NOT GO INTO MY ACCOUNT! I cannot get it back either because it was not created by me... I must say that the account was given to me by my friend when it was about Warrant officer 4/5... Now it is colonel and I just got Rail m2! I really want it back!!! I even have video evidence on it!!! I posted some videos about me playing tanki on my account! Please help me to get my account back,i think i still have the link which got my account hacked,and also i can provide the links to the videos on my youtube account! Please help! My account username is 'sksbros'!

Also,one of my clan mates also got hacked after clicking on the link as we both got the link on skype!

I got a weird link on Skype from a tanki player too and I clicked it accidentally... I closed it just when it started connecting to the server of the site but I'm not sure if I did it in time. Might have to ask tanki to delete my account after I leave just in case lol

[Poseidon12345 7]

I got a weird link on Skype from a tanki player too and I clicked it accidentally... I closed it just when it started connecting to the server of the site but I'm not sure if I did it in time. Might have to ask tanki to delete my account after I leave just in case lol

U r so lucky...

[momy950666 960]

awsome article

[Natey16 2]

Please help me... My account got hacked after I clicked a site... First I got an email saying that someone from Ukraine was trying to access my email... I dismissed it... An hour later I was in a skype call with my mates... Wanted to have a batlle... COULD NOT GO INTO MY ACCOUNT! I cannot get it back either because it was not created by me... I must say that the account was given to me by my friend when it was about Warrant officer 4/5... Now it is colonel and I just got Rail m2! I really want it back!!! I even have video evidence on it!!! I posted some videos about me playing tanki on my account! Please help me to get my account back,i think i still have the link which got my account hacked,and also i can provide the links to the videos on my youtube account! Please help! My account username is 'sksbros'!

Also,one of my clan mates also got hacked after clicking on the link as we both got the link on skype!

Email help@tankionline.com, they helped me get my account back and they should be able to help you.

[Poseidon12345 7]

Email help@tankionline.com, they helped me get my account back and they should be able to help you.

i tried that already any other suggestions please helppppppppppplpgrpns hifjoknsruzidhvuibsjndzxfvbyuaeinhjgxvcyuinjkshhj

[canadarules 1,938]

Edited July 9, 2015 by canadarules

[Darren4Turbo 4,913]

Helpful article ;)