Originally Posted by herzog_zwei
Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2005 12:07 Post subject: Warden info

This post will hopefully offer a less biased view of the mousepad vs netter debates going around and give some people insight into what they and others are up against in dealing with anti-detection in Diablo II since v1.11.

First, the facts:

1) Contrary to what Blizzard tells people, the Warden does cause noticeable clientside lag (at approximately 5 sec intervals) when certain of its abilities are used. This cannot be avoided in order to catch certain hacks but it could be made more efficient at the expense of being easier to defeat. It is not the only reason for the extra lag (hellfire being another) but it is the reason for fps drops/slow responsiveness every 5 seconds. (As a simple way to improve responsiveness, they should do it at random intervals from 15-600 seconds and it'd be just as effective in catching the current maphacks as if it were running every seccond.)

2) mousepad released his maphack when Warden was and has been off for a while. Any defense mentioning that his 1.11 maphack has been war tested and is undetectable cannot be used because of that; the only thing that's been tested is its unload ability for unknown wardens.

3) netter has always claimed to his knowledge that his maphack is undetectable. Any time people get banned because of it, he has always blamed it on Blizzard updating Warden without him knowing when in fact, there was no update to Warden at all. netter's maphack was "undetectable" for a while because warden had been off. Not until weeks later did he even realize that Warden was off. netter's code has been war tested and has always been detectable (though the changes log for the latest version shows promise of him possibly getting it right one day).

4) Lesser known hacks/maphacks have only been safe because Blizzard didn't care/know about them.

Having said the above, I have more faith in mousepad's anti-detection than I would in netter's. netter has been irresponsible and should be held partially responsible for getting many accounts banned. Any good hacker would have realized very early that there was new hack detection in 1.11; mousepad and many others knew it. AFAIK, netter was told that there was hack detection in 1.11 and still ignored it. His knowledge of it came from other people and his work arounds for it also came from others... all of which weren't enough to get past the Warden. Choosing to completely ignore what more experienced people have mentioned, claiming that it's "undetetectable" to his knowledge, and then encouraging thousands of people to try it is irresponsible. I don't understand why so many people still choose to trust netter's anti-detection so quickly after getting burned multiple times.

mousepad, on the other hand, choose to spend more time at it to do it well, thus his maphack wasn't released as quickly because proper anti-detection takes much longer to do than the maphack itself. He's not waiting to release it because he's afraid of the Warden. The argument that mousepad's maphack would have caused as much bannings as netter's if netter didn't release his first is ignorant; mousepad is just more responsible while netter isn't and/or isn't good enough to deal with anti-detection himself.

IMO, the wardens have and still are jokes of hack detectors. The Warden system itself shows promise of being a decent detection system. The early wardens of it were buggy and very easy to get past. It was improved slightly before being turned completely off for weeks. The ones released in 1.11b are a great improvement over previous versions but still leaves lots of room for other anti-detection measures. An almost "undetectable" reveal map only map hack is possible w/o having to implement any special anti-detection at all because some things are not practical to detect when there are restrictions it must follow.

The current crop of wardens show promise that they've got people that somewhat know what they're doing. However, even the perfect hack detector falls prey when not used properly, which is how it's being used now. The current ones are using some of its abilities better than before, but it's only being used for detection of simple hacks and not for anti-anti detections. Also, the current wardens have a very questionable ability legally (however, they aren't being used yet), but they've probably covered themselves with the EULA and, if that doesn't hold up, in how it was implemented. Hopefully they'll be pressured enough to remove it or are kept from enhancing what it can report.

The war between the Warden and the anti-Wardens is in favor of the anti-Wardens side because there are fewer restrictions imposed upon them; while the Warden can do everything but x, y, z to win, the anti-Wardens have no such restrictions as long as the users of the hacks are fine with using it. The Warden has so far followed a predictable path and they're already using something (earlier than I predicted but knew it would eventually come) that Mousepad and netter have just recently found out, which is what's causing all the problems with the unloading of mod files. netter suggests ignoring it; DON'T if you value your keys/accounts. Under the right anti-detection design, it would be safe to ignore. I haven't looked at neither mousepad's nor netter's but gauging from things I've read, they probably don't have the proper anti-detection design to ignore them. Blizzard is using a "last resort" sort of tactic to give them an advantage in the war. Think four different versions (less the loader) of wardens is plenty to deal with? That's how many were in 1.11. Think fifty different versions is a lot? There are several times more than that in 1.11b currently in use. Those wardens probably won't be the last wardens either; they've still got things they could add and they'll probably fix (what appears to be) a bug in one of their hack detection code; I wouldn't be surprised if the fix for it came out after a public maphack came out that can handle all/most of the current wardens and they release several hundred more wardens.

Can the Warden be defeated? Absolutely. It'll all depend on who has better tools and can use it well, and who tires first. Blizzard is currently ahead in the tools department and that'll be the key to winning the war.

i think blizzard killed the game after all the patches and updates. I think it was fine before they had to do all the anti-hacking updates.