I post the following to try and help anyone that is unlucky enough to have the job of providing anti-cheat protection to a bc2 server. Its just a basic outline of my understanding of the process with questions where my limited knowledge of the issues end.
I start with the following statments which I belive to be true.
A.) Its impossible to catch all players who cheat/hack in your bc2 server.
B.) With the proper precautions its possible to catch some of the hackers that play on your bc2 server and prevent some known hackers from playing on your server altogether.
Based on the above I ask...
What is the best course of action to prevent/catch hackers in your bc2 server?
The following is my very basic understanding of this process.
Basic Anti-Cheat Protection:
1. Basic protection is provided by Even Balance's punkbuster software which is included in every bc2 installation and only requires a bc2 server admin to turn punkbuster on for the most basic anti-cheat protection. (Punkbuster is required to run on ranked servers).
Moderate Anti-Cheat Protection:
2. Modify the punkbuster config files running on your bc2 server to include MD5 checks. Info on doing this can be found on pbbans under the Master Config Index. Subscribe to the thread that announces new MD5 checks for bc2 and update your files as necessary.
a. Are there other sources for MD5 checks besides PBbans? If so, how do they differ from those at pbbans?
b. Are there different methods of using MD5 checks or even an alternate type of check?
c. Why doesn't punkbuster automatically include these checks?
Advanced Anti-Cheat Protection
3. Make your bc2 server stream to a MBI such as that offered by pbbans. Streaming your server to a MBI allows you to prevent cheaters caught in other streaming servers from even entering your server and allows cheaters caught in your server to be automatically banned in other streaming servers.
a. There are alternate steaming MBI providers such as:
1. Punksbusted
2. GGC-Stream
3. GV
What are there advantages/disadvantages to streaming to these alternate providers specifically? (are there streaming providers besides the ones i mentioned above?)
b. Should I stream to all of them? some of them? Does steaming to more than one provider increase the anti-cheat protection of my bc2 server?
4. Screen shots on Bc2 are virtually useless because they can often be returned totally black by non-cheating players.
Please evaluate each of my statements (A & B); (1-4) for accuracy. Additionally, please fill in my lettered questions (a,b,c) under each number if you can increase my understanding of those areas. Any additional information that may help me or others in this endeavour is greatly appreciated.