Cheater Boards (How to Stop Them)

[SlartyBartFast]

Originally posted by Miscue
How do you know that they are actually shooting 20bps, but it hits 25bps? You've measured the bps that the gun is shooting, you've yet to record legitimate trigger pulls for comparison.

Originally posted by nuclear zombie
but even with an additional enhanced board, what is stopping the ref from grabbing the gun from the player mid-game and shooting a couple of times to test it for cheating. I know many refs won't do this unless they are very suspicious of a person cheating as it could disturb the game.

Originally posted by Miscue
If you supposedly have this standardized pop-in chip, it is completely pointless to compare the trigger inputs to the solenoid outputs... you already know that the code is fair and will only shoot once/trigger pull.
If you have an inline oscillator between switch and CPU, a "special" switch, have another hidden microcontroller that taps into the fair CPU's input line, a method to put noise into the input line, or whatever creative thing that can be come up with... the fair CPU will be oblivious to this.

[hitech]

Originally posted by Sir_Brass
What you do is have code that is passive, and is encoded into an external interrupt that's activated whenever the trigger is pulled. When the switch is activated the trigger detect line goes high, and the passive code notes this. It also notes how many pulses the solenoid recieves. If the number of pulses sent to the solenoid are > 1 during that one trigger pull, then the code goes from passive (does nothing but monitor) and sets a bit high that will shut off the firing capability...

My separate cheater board would efeat this easily. It would be undetectable by the "passive" code.

[hitech]

Originally posted by SlartyBartFast
Examination of the boards after a tourney win would easily uncover many of the other strategies that have been suggested to circumvent the code.

Who is going to do it? Besides, if you think you are going to win you just remove the evidence before the last game.


If I can come up with all these ideas, just think what someone who actualy wants to cheat in a tournament can come up with.

[SlartyBartFast]

Originally posted by hitech
My separate cheater board would efeat this easily. It would be undetectable by the "passive" code.

And would be IMMEDIATELY visible and detectable once the grips were removed and someone with a modicum of intelligence bothered to look at the board.

[hitech]

Originally posted by SlartyBartFast


And would be IMMEDIATELY visible and detectable once the grips were removed and someone with a modicum of intelligence bothered to look at the board.

Nope. You're assuming that it would be located in the grip frame and in plain site.

[SlartyBartFast]

Originally posted by hitech
Who is going to do it? Besides, if you think you are going to win you just remove the evidence before the last game.
If I can come up with all these ideas, just think what someone who actualy wants to cheat in a tournament can come up with.

Already beat you to it.

If you read back you'll see that I advocated that the guns be inspected before the tournament and afterwards for the winners.

Open it up, verify it matches approved layout, reprogram/install chip, seal with tamperproof seal.

Counterfitting boards or chips is an expensive proposition. Paintball doesn't pay enough to justify that level of cheating.

[SlartyBartFast]

Originally posted by hitech
Nope. You're assuming that it would be located in the grip frame and in plain site.

Doesn't matter where you put it. You'd have to conceal a modified mainboard, a connector, and wiring.

Yes, it will always be possible to get past rules. If you're motivated enough, IF you can spend the time money and effort to do it, and IF the benefit outweighs the possible concequences.

Same goes for car anti-theft devices. No matter how many thousands of dollars you spend on an alarm, someone, somewhere, can get away with you car in 30 seconds. Or failing that, they can dress up as traffic control and tow it away without anyone paying attention. Does that mean we should just all leave our cars unlocked with the keys in the ignition?

[SlartyBartFast]

Another thing to consider is the "swiss cheese" approach to security. No one measure will stop all events/cheaters. The idea is not to build up one solid wall of regulation and testing, but to develop an interleaved system where the holes of one layer are blocked by another.

[RRfireblade]

I give you all an A for effort,and I understand how you feel about this issue but I just have to say one last time.None of these "solutions" are going to happen,period.Paintball is still WAY to grass roots and low tech with even the biggest Tournys being made up of a high percentage of volunteer and untrained workers.You don't have the level of testing that you are suggesting in most of the highest profile sports yet.Geez, Sammy Sosa made it on the field with a corked bat!Nascar teams getting caught for all kinds of stuff(almost always way after the fact),it's just not going to happen in paintball.You'd have to coordinate EVERY MANUFACTURER IN THE WORLD to get even close to a standardized software system,these same people who still can't agree to something as simple as a BPS cap!

If your going to have ANY effect at all,you'd have to come up with some testing completely independant of the marker,would have to be manufactered so cheap as to be typically donated for use on a regular basis and so simple that any Ref could use it easily and precisely with out any training.Then you'd have to get PSP or NPPL or whoever to agree to impliment it as well as each Tourny head to agree that it's use is merited,not to mention any manufacturer that feels that such a device may be "unfair" on thier specific marker design and states so to the Tourny,because that's all that would take as well.

Until "cheater" boards are running wild and easily accessable,no one is going put any effort into this "testing" idea unless it's designed,financed,produced and distributed by a fully independant,outside source.

Sorry,but that's the fact.

Jay.

[SlartyBartFast]

Originally posted by RRfireblade
unless it's designed,financed,produced and distributed by a fully independant,outside source.

Well, it's all just waiting for the first lawsuit. As far as verifying the 'legality' of boards it should be handled to a large extent by the manufacturers. If a reprogrammed board is responsible, how much is the manufacturer going to be hit for when the tournamnet is celeared of responsibility because they can't test the gun and the manufacturer didn't take steps to avoid tampering.

Someone just needs to talk to the ASTM and the insurance industry and all of this could explode in the industry's face. We'd see rental only fields and even tournaments because insurance companies won't allow markers that can't be guarenteed to follow some strict minimum requirements.

The first injury resulting from a broken mask WILL immediately result in the manufacturers having a HUGE problem. They'll have to recall all markers sold since the ASTM decided on a limit AND come up with a way to guarentee that the limit can't be tampered with.

[raehl]

I think you guys are underestimating the major leagues...

NPPL and PSP would both be amenable to spending a reasonable amount of money on a procedure to detect cheater boards, say a few thousand dollars on equipment and some staff to do spot checks.

So, maybe a better question would be:

"With $5,000 and three people per tournament, what procedures would you put in place to curb cheating?"

I'd invest in a device to read microcontollers and demand that board manufacturers submit their authorized code.


- Chris

[hitech]

Re: I think you guys are underestimating the major leagues...

Originally posted by raehl
"With $5,000 and three people per tournament, what procedures would you put in place to curb cheating?"

Compare downloaded code against manufactures certified code. You would show up ready to play with your download port available. Once certified your marker (and you) would be “held” in a “secure” area awaiting the game. You should chrono in here also. The only tools would be those supplied by a tournament official to reattach anything removed (i.e. grip panels) to gain access to the download port. It’s a good first step. And at least it would make cheating harder than reprogramming an existing board.

[cledford]

Why not tag the firmware with a checksum that is randomly created? Then not every marker even needs to be checked - but if one is pulled or random checks occur there is no way to put it back to where it was. Get caught with cheater software, get banned for life - and have the leagues ENFORCE it for real.

-Calvin

[lamby]

Hitech's therory is the only thing that I think is possible to eliminate the chip programming issue, but it still has holes.

You can run a morlock and still have the required components connected to the factory processor to get diagnastic information from it even if the chip is isolated from the circuit.

You can't use a check sum because there are viables (dwell, cops setting, max rof, debounce, intellifeed duration ect. that are user controlled.

Look at a company like Directv, they have a simple card that decodes and authorizes channels. These were easy to hack until they pulled all the old cards out of the system and released new cards that the average canadian could not hack.

What I am saying is:
1. make a chip that locked to the board via encripted serial number.
2. use chips that can only be programmed once (ePROMS)to feed a dedicated non-programmable processor like a 8088 persay.
3. Store user data and settings in a non-volital ram chip outside of the processor.
4. use a security tag to secure the chip to the socket with the manifactures code to verify it is legit.

if these are all done, you can easily verify the chip to the master reference for that software version.

the hard part is all chips would have to be programmed indepently and not in mass like current. Also blank ePROMS are more expensive than pics or atmels, and the programmers are much more expensive than a "data cable" that any monkey can wire from a 9 pin serial port n a computer. Upgrades would be much harder to achieve as only the company could do it. Programming will have to be done in the assembly mode, not in dos anymore so you will need to understand c or c++ because basic is out. (unless there is a complier for that eprom that supports basic.. I dought there are any)

The way to fix the problem is simple.. The manifactures have to WANT to fix it!! Software security is not that hard on a chip that does not need to be written to for any reason, and there is no intercompatibility issues!!

[hitech]

Originally posted by lamby
Hitech's theory is the only thing that I think is possible to eliminate the chip programming issue, but it still has holes.

Lots and lots of holes.

Originally posted by lamby
The manufactures have to WANT to fix it!!

And THAT is the reason it's not going to happen. The "manufactures" (as a whole, not singling anyone out) have to WANT to fix the problem. Tournament promoters have to WANT to fix it. PLAYERS have to WANT to fix it. Everyone has to REALLY want to fix the problem. NONE of these groups REALLY want to fix it. Hence, it's getting worse, not better.