Drop Hack continues

The new patch dont fix this looser thing...

Its relic servers ffs

Its relic servers ffs

And the 2 players looses?

I think no, and i get it when the enemy see that he dont have any chance, curious...

I winning in points, troops, total control, then it happens...

Sometimes it's Relic servers but sometimes it's also deliberate drop hacking. I wish Relic would fix this but no......

You realize 99% of "drophacks" are just server connection issues right? With battle servers, if a player deliberately disconnects from a game, he will get a loss 100% of the time because the server knows which player is still connected. In order to "drophack" in CoH2, a player would have to either saturate your IP address with traffic in order to force you to disconnect from the server, or exploit some vulnerability in Relic's server code that allows them to boot one or all players from a game at once. The first requires your IP address, and the second is extremely difficult to achieve, since I doubt such an exploit has been discovered.

It's confirmation bias. For every "convenient" disconnect, there are a dozen that happen at random times during the game. Drophacking isn't as simple as pulling the plug. That hasn't worked for years.

I think sinse Western Fronts its possible to drophack. I encountered like 3 times today. Every time I'm winning, or a got a unit on the field that can change the game. Like a T34 when he doesnt have any AT the game starts lagging and I get disconnected. Every single time.

One time it was obvious:

I was playing vs someone with truck push. I said: fail buddy. But after a while I got the upper hand in the game. He said: Bah, loser opponent. I got to go. Few minuts later I got disconnected from the server.

Pretty clear isnt it? I can't show you the replay because I have replays disabled To have a performance boost.

Listen to inverse ... he knows. I expect that with all of the changes adding in Western Front and all of the increased traffic and depending on what you connection is to the battle servers these things are going to happen. I really doubt there are hundreds of network hackers out there playing this game and wasting their time looking for a win by drop hacking. IT's not a simple thing to do anymore.

I have experienced a lot of this lately as well, but I think it has more to do with instability somewhere else. Might be the extra traffic following the release of Western front?

At one point last night I had a sync error and lost a winning match. Upon cheking the public games list I noticed that it was only seven games, though it had been 30-40 games earlier, and it was growing rapidly, so it seems some of it is global.

I am sorry but this kind of shit is real and happened to me also. If it is "a system failure" please explain why it's only happening when you are winning, not ONE SINGLE TIME when the chances are even or when you are loosing. Explain that.

Listen to inverse ... he knows. I expect that with all of the changes adding in Western Front and all of the increased traffic and depending on what you connection is to the battle servers these things are going to happen. I really doubt there are hundreds of network hackers out there playing this game and wasting their time looking for a win by drop hacking. IT's not a simple thing to do anymore.

Please, explain to me (like SSHeini said) why does it only happen when you are winning?

And comon, if someone is saying: ouch I got to go. Bye. And one minut after that I get disconnected, how can that be a system failure? Explain that to me please.

If there was someone else at home I'd blame my internet, but at the moment I am the only one here, and nobody else is using internet.

I don't give a shit about my stats, but I love to play a fair fight.

Burn the cheaters and hackers in the public market place!! MUHAHAHAHA!!!! Aka give them BAN ON THE GAME KEY. This should be the penalty.

Please, explain to me (like SSHeini said) why does it only happen when you are winning?

It does, you just ignore it, move on and forget about it if you lose.

Yesterday I had a "game" where my enemy took extremely long to load up, and after ~1min in the game without the game actually starting (although I was able to give orders, scroll etc.), the game ended with a loss for me... don't know if it's a drophack, but still quite disappointing.

It happens to me all the time when losing.

Nobody listen to inverse. He doesnt know what hes talking About

You guys realize disconnecting and drophacking are two entirely different things right? If I'm playing against you and I ragequit and pull the plug, or ALT-F4 and leave the game without properly surrendering, it's going to show as a disconnection to you. But you're going to get the win, and I'm going to get the loss, 100% of the time. No exceptions. You probably won't even get a dispute, because the server knows I disconnected, and it knows you're still connected, and it's going to award the win to the player who's still connected to the server. Pulling the plug hasn't been a drophack since early in vCoH; hell, even later in vCoH it's pretty obvious that Relic had implemented more robust connection checking for disconnections. Anecdotal evidence, of course, but I had thousands of games and an insanely high trust rating, but if I was the cause of a disconnection (internet outage, computer crash, etc.), I got the loss every single time.

This is how CoH2's multiplayer is structured. Disclaimer that all of this is pure speculation based on the limited information Relic has released, but I do this sort of thing for a living and I have a decent understanding of what is possible in Relic's server architecture. It would be great if someone from Relic could clarify matters, but I think that is unlikely; they aren't going to admit if their system has a vulnerability or is exploitable in some way, so I'm probably the best you'll get.

Anyways, vCoH's connection model was pure peer-to-peer. The server facilitated matchmaking and stat tracking, but once you were in the game you didn't interact with the server in any meaningful way. This is why you could get a "Disconnected from Relic Online" message in the middle of a match and continue playing, even though stats wouldn't be counted at the end. It also meant Relic had no record of the state of games in progress, so they had to rely on game clients reporting the game outcome after the match had completed.

CoH2, on the other hand, uses a pseudo client-server model. All players are connected to a central node and send their commands to that central node, which in turn relays the commands to all players in the game. This is distinct from vCoH's system which had players communicating directly with one another and sending commands directly without a relay server. The downside to this model is if the server crashes, the game ends. Also, because you're connected to a remote server instead of directly to your opponent, you may experience higher ping in some situations. But it comes with a huge benefit: Relic knows a hell of a lot about every game that's played.

We already know Relic is leveraging this structure for anti-cheating purposes. Another nice bonus is how much easier it makes handling disconnections. Every time you play a game of CoH2, you and your opponent connect to a common central node. If I disconnect from the game, the central node knows this. It also knows that my opponent is still connected. It's going to show on your screen as a disconnection, but the server already knows how it's going to score the game. The player who remains connected is obviously going to receive the win.

Alternatively, something catastrophic could occur. The server could crash, or the server's internet connection could be terminated, or the routing to the server could be disrupted, or the server could simply be overloaded with requests and fail to respond in a timely manner. In all of these situations, the server lacks the information required to make a definitive judgement. That's when it resorts to the trust system, and that's when you might get losses that you feel you don't deserve.

It's also the only way you can "drophack". Simply pulling the plug does nothing, because it's just going to give the other player the win. Instead, you have to trick the server into one of those catastrophic states I mentioned above. That means compromising the security of the server itself, or exploiting a vulnerability in the server software that allows you to manipulate it in some way, or forcing you off your connection by spamming your IP with junk packets. These are all, to put it lightly, extremely difficult to do. Compromising the security of a machine is no simple feat, obtaining your opponent's IP address is not possible through the game client, and there likely aren't any known security vulnerabilities yet. If one did exist, someone would have to write a stand-alone application to exploit it; search around and you won't be able to find one.

So please, please stop complaining about drophacking. It's not what you think it is, and it has likely never happened to you. Sync hacking is a much bigger problem, since it's nearly impossible to prevent and more difficult to detect server-side. But even then, given the changes to server architecture Relic has implemented, I'm sure there's a record of every single sync hack game in a database somewhere in Vancouver.

Oke, thanks for the good explenation of drophacking Inverse.
But can you explain a bit more what sync hacking is?

Hey I just had a game won and when my opponent GG'ed my game froze for 30 seconds of which I could still move around the map and talk, then it gave me a loss. Any idea if this is a hack of some sort? Its kinda suspicious to have no lag the whole game and at the very end get a loss. I looked at the replay but there is nothing to glean from there.

I am interested what can cause a freeze of the match (not the game) then a defeat particularly because this happened when my King Tiger was in audio distance of the weakened opponent. No hiccups the rest of the game. I would like to know if it is possible this was player initiated.

Oke, thanks for the good explenation of drophacking Inverse.
But can you explain a bit more what sync hacking is?

i do believe you can get sync-errored naturally/unintentionally but most times its intentional.

when you are losing, you alt-tab and delete one of coh2's file in your computer. then all the players in that game gets "sync error". i have experienced this so many times as i like to play 3v3+ a lot. anyway, then everybody gets a loss. so basically, the user of this exploit is saying "fuck you, I ain't going down alone".

its really absurd and it has been there for like forever.

as Inverse said this is a much bigger problem and if it is that hard to detect it.... we'll just have to shine the light of justice on these mothe*fucke*s ourselves.... i'll start.

snip - apparently i cant accuse ppl on the forum my bad