Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Cheating detection through game time modeling: A better way to avoid time cheats in P2P MOGs?

  • Published:
Multimedia Tools and Applications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Cheating is a key issue in online games. Whatever the rules that govern a game, some players will always be tempted to break or elude these rules so as to gain an unfair advantage over other players. Mitigation schemes are thus needed in online gaming platforms. However, it is widely recognized that typical cheating prevention schemes introduce complications and overheads in the distributed game system, which may seriously jeopardize the online gaming experience. It turns out that, often, detecting the cheaters, instead of preventing the cheats, could represent a viable solution, especially for time cheats. We present a general framework able to model game time advancements in P2P online games. Based on this framework, time cheat detection schemes can be easily devised, which monitor the communication patterns among peers and do not affect the performances of the game system. To provide evidence of our claim, we present in this paper two different time cheats, namely fast rate cheat and look-ahead cheat, and discuss on practicable methods to detect them. Simulation results confirm the viability of the proposed approach.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Armitage G, Claypool M, Branch P (2006) Networking and online games - understanding and engineering multiplayer internet games. John Wiley and Sons, Inc

  2. Banks J, Carson II JS, Nelson BL, Nicol DM (2000) Discrete-event system simulation. Prentice-Hall

  3. Baughman NE, Levine BN (2001) Cheat-proof playout for centralized and distributed online games. In: Proc. of INFOCOM 2001, Anchorage (USA), IEEE, pp 104–113, April

  4. Baughman NE, Liberatore M, Levine BN (2007) Cheat-Proof Playout for Centralized and Peer-to-Peer Gaming. IEEE/ACM Trans Netw 15(1):1–13, February

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Borella MS (2000) Source models for network game traffic. Comput Commun 23(4):403–410, February

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Cecin FR, Real R, de Oliveira Jannone R, Resin Geyer CF, Martins MG, Victoria Barbosa JL (2004) FreeMMG: a scalable and cheat-resistant distribution model for internet games. In: Proc. of International Symposium on Distributed Simulation and Real-Time Applications, Budapest (Hungary), IEEE, pp 83–90, October

  7. Chambers C, Feng W, Saha D (2005) Mitigating information exposure to cheaters in real-time strategy games. In: Proc. of the International Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support For Digital Audio and Video, NOSSDAV ’05, ACM, New York (USA), pp 7–12, June

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Cronin E, Filstrup B, Jamin S, Kurc AR (2004) An efficient synchronization mechanism for mirrored game architectures. Multimedia Tools Applications 23(1):7–30, May

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Cronin E, Filstrup B, Jamin S (2003) Cheat-proofing dead reckoned multiplayer games. In: Proc. of 2nd International Conference on Application and Development of Computer Games, January

  10. Crovella M, Lipsky L (2000) Simulations with heavy-tailed workloads. In: Self-Similar Network Traffic and Performance Evaluation. Wiley-Interscience

  11. Di Chen B, Maheswaran M (2004) A cheat controlled protocol for centralized online multiplayer games. In: SIGCOMM 2004 Workshops: Proc. of ACM SIGCOMM 2004 workshops on NetGames ’04, ACM Press, Portland, Oregon, USA, pp 139–143

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Di Chen B, Maheswaran M (2004) A fair synchronization protocol with cheat proofing for decentralized online multiplayer games. In: Proc. of Third IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications (NCA’04), Cambridge (USA), IEEE, pp 372–375, August

  13. Cristian F (1989) Probabilistic clock synchronization. Distrib Comput 3(3):146–158

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  14. Cristian F, Fetzer C (1999) The timed asynchronous distributed system model. IEEE Trans Parallel Distrib Syst 10(6):642–657

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. DeLap M, Knutsson B, Lu H, Sokolsky O, Sammapun U, Lee I, Tsarouchis C (2004) Is runtime verification applicable to cheat detection? In: Proc. of ACM SIGCOMM 2004 Workshops on Netgames ’04: Network and System Support For Games, Portland (USA), ACM, pp 134–138, August

  16. Drummond R, Babaoglu Ö (1993) Low-cost clock synchronization. Distrib Comput 6(3): 193–203

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  17. El Rhalibi A (2004) Peer-to-peer architecture and protocol for a massively multiplayer online game. In: Proc. of 1st IEEE International Workshop on Networking Issues in Multimedia Entertainment (NIME04), Las Vegas, NV, pp 519–528, November

  18. Farber J (2002) Network game traffic modeling. In: Proc. of the 1st Workshop on Network and system support for games, Braunschweig (Germany), ACM, pp 53–57, April

  19. Ferretti S, Roccetti M (2005) Fast delivery of game events with an optimistic synchronization mechanism in massive multiplayer online games. In: Proc. of ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (ACE 2005), Valencia (Spain), ACM, pp 405–412, June

  20. Ferretti S, Roccetti M (2006) AC/DC: an algorithm for cheating detection by cheating. In: Proceedings of the ACM International Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV 2006), ACM, Newport, Rhode Island (USA), pp 136–141, May

    Google Scholar 

  21. Ferretti S, Roccetti M (2006) Game time modeling for cheating detection in p2p mogs: a case study with a fast rate cheat. In: Proceedings of the 5th ACM International Workshop on Network · System Support for Games 2006 (NETGAMES 2006), Singapore, ACM Press, October

  22. Ferretti S, Roccetti M, Palazzi CE (2006) An optimistic obsolescence-based approach to event synchronization for massive multiplayer online games. In: International Journal of Computers and Applications, ACTA Press, vol 29, no 1, pp 33–43, February

  23. Fiedler U (2003) Bernhard Plattner: using latency quantiles to engineer qos guarantees for web services. In: Proc. of the 11th International Workshop on Quality of Service, (IWQoS 2003), LNCS 2707, Springer, Berkeley, CA, USA, pp 345–362, June

    Google Scholar 

  24. Fujimoto R (1999) Parallel and distribution simulation systems. John Wiley and Sons, Inc

  25. GauthierDickey C, Zappala D, Lo V, Marr J (2004) Low latency and cheat-proof event ordering for peer-to-peer games. In: Proc. of the 14th International Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support For Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV’04), Cork (Ireland), ACM, pp 134–139, June

  26. Gibbon JF, Little TDC (1996) The use of network delay estimation for multimedia data retrieval. IEEE J Sel Areas Commun, IEEE 14(7):1376–1387

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Guo K, Mukherjee S, Rangarajan S, Paul S (2003) A fair message exchange framework for distributed multi-player games. In: Proc. of the 2nd Workshop on Network and System Support for Games, pp 29–41. ACM Press

  28. Gusella R, Zatti S (1989) The accuracy of clock synchronization achieved by tempo in Berkeley Unix 4.3BSD. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 15(7):47–53, July

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Henderson T, Bhatti S (2001) Modeling user behaviour in networked games. In: Proc. of the 9th ACM International Conference on Multimedia (ACM Multimedia), Ottawa (Canada), pp 212–220, October

  30. Kabus P, Terpstra WW, Cilla M, Buchmann AP (2005) Addressing cheating in distributed MMOGs. In: Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Network and System Support for Games (NetGames’05), ACM, New York (USA), October

    Google Scholar 

  31. Kuhl F, Weatherly R, Dahmann J (1999) Creating computer simulation systems: an introduction to the high level architecture. Prentice Hall

  32. Lee H, Kozlowski E, Lenker S, Jamin S (2002) Synchronization and cheat-proofing protocol for real-time multiplayer games. In: Proc. of the International Workshop on Entertainment Computing, Makuari (Japan), May

  33. Liang YJ, Farber N, Girod B (2001) Adaptive playout scheduling and loss concealment for voice communication over IP networks. IEEE Trans Multimedia, IEEE Signal Processing Society Press 5(4):532–543, April

    Google Scholar 

  34. Mauve M, Vogel J, Hilt V, Effelsberg W (2004) Local-lag and timewarp: providing consistency for replicated continuous applications. IEEE Trans Multimedia 6(1):47–57, February

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Mills DL (1991) Internet time synchronization: the network time protocol. IEEE Trans Commun 39(10):1482–1493, October

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Palazzi CE, Ferretti S, Cacciaguerra S, Roccetti M (2006) Interactivity-loss avoidance in event delivery synchronization for mirrored game architectures. IEEE Trans Multimedia, IEEE Signal Processing Society Press 8(4):874–879, August

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Palazzi CE, Ferretti S, Cacciaguerra S, Roccetti M (2005) A RIO-like technique for interactivity loss avoidance in fast-paced multiplayer online games: a preliminary study. ACM J Comput Entertain, ACM Press 3(2), April/June

  38. Park K, Kim G, Crovella M (2000) The protocol stack and its modulating effect on self-similar traffic. In: Self Similar Traffic and Performances Evaluation, John Wiley and Sons, Inc

  39. Pritchard M (2000) How to hurt the hackers: the scoop on internet cheating and how you can combat it. In: Gamasutra Web Site, http://www.gamasutra.com/, July

  40. PunkBuster Online Countermeasures (2007) http://www.punkbuster.com/, accessed

  41. Smed J, Hakonene H (2006) Algorithms and networking for computer games. John Wiley and Sons, Inc

  42. Yan J, Choi HJ (2002) Security issues in online games. In: The Electronic Library: international journal for the application of technology in information environments, Emerald, vol 20, no 2

  43. Yan J, Randell B (2005) A systematic classification of cheating in online games. In: Proc. of the 4th Workshop on Network and System Support for Games (NetGames’05), New York (USA), October

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Bologna, Mura Anteo Zamboni 7, 40127, Bologna, Italy

    Stefano Ferretti

Authors
  1. Stefano Ferretti
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefano Ferretti.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Ferretti, S. Cheating detection through game time modeling: A better way to avoid time cheats in P2P MOGs?. Multimed Tools Appl 37, 339–363 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-007-0163-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-007-0163-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation