Thread: [Guide]The Ultimate GM compendium of Knowledge

How to catch a hacker

This part will teach you how to identify a hacker, the types of hacks most common, How to catch him red handed, keeping an archive in case he cries croc tears, and how hunt a hacker and get rid of him.



First of all, why do people hack?
There are three conclusions that i came to
1) they suck at PvP, and need an edge.
2) they enjoy the 'on the edge' feeling of hacking. (Daredevils)
3) they are feeling bad that day, and want to make other people feel mad that day.

With these things, you will be able to tell where hackers will want to hack from, and how.
Lets look at the first part. PvP hackers.

These hackers just are not good at PvP, they can get all the gear they could possible want, but are unable to score a kill in PvP. So they hack to give themselves the edge. Most of my observations of these types of hackers, is two common hacks that they use. Speed hacking, and fly hacking. You will find them often at BGs, the arenas (including the one in STV) And PvP hotspots. [Player known gathering points for PvP. In retail, one famous one is the south shore tug-a-war, it still brings back delightful memories in me whenever i hear these words =) ]

The second type are daredevils. They are not out to harm the server, or tip the balance of PvP, or mess someone's life up. Actually they want you to try and find them, and bust them. These sort of people view hacking as more a game, and are by far the least offensive hackers there are. Their most common hacks are Wall hacks, Exploits, and general mischief in order to get people talking about them and get you on their tail. They don't hack because they need to, or want to mess others, they hack because they have already beaten WoW, gotten all the gear, became a PvP god, and want more from the game. To them, what's better then a high speed chase running around the world trying to avoid a god like entity known as a GM.
It's just an other cop chase for them, except this time, they have a chance at getting the cops to lose.

The last type of hacker is the worst kind. They are an absolute nightmare. These people will not care for your server (most hackers wont, but this borders open warfare). hell they might just make an account to screw over your hard built server just because they want to screw someone up. They are not very mature people, often they are 7-10 year old kids. Their most known hack is a program that makes any admin and GM shudder in their chairs: WoW crash. The Most pointless piece of crap ever made. Why would someone deliberately send evil out, or want evil on to someone that never did anything to them? Some people are like that. WoW crash will ruin everyone's fun, including the people that have not even said a word to the hacker, let alone even know their name. And at one point, you will face someone that crashes the server with that.

As a GM, your powers against these mentally ill people is limited. Your power comes from in-game, and Wow crash stops the game for everyone. Not only that, but your will be looking for one player, out of the hundreds that will be constantly crashing your server.
And the worst part, he is invisible. There is no way to tell who is crashing the server as a GM. However, fortunately for you, they often are stupid people that will announce themselves on the general chat of your server, either to say "Haha its me that doing this!!11!" Or to say "Ill keep crashing your server until you give me awesome gear/donor gear" If they do, your job will be to ban every single IP that they change it to. Because they will try to shift their IP. You will be able to hold them off for a bit, but only an admin can Finnish him off for good. Keep banning any account he makes, and IP banning any IP he changes it to, as quickly as you can. Alert your players what you are dealing with and ask them for help. The hacker has only two eyes, you have the whole server's eyes to help you should you call upon them.

Now that you know a bit about hackers, this is a simple step by step guide to dealing with them and getting rid of them.

First, make yourself a macro, this is the one i use

/s You have been caught hacking %t , A screenshot has been automatically taken by the time you read this, and your account name, your IP as well as other confidential information has already been identified and is being possessed. Resistance is futile. Should you attempt to log out now, you will find your account banned, and if the hack you are using is serious enough, your IP may be banned. Your best hope is to stay online, and plead for a lesser sentence.
/s .debug root
/s .player info
(( and press print screen really quickly. =P))

With this, you should stop them dead in their tracks at your robotic like voice. act as if you had busted a hundred hackers before and that you are a vet at this. This will make his attempts at explaining himself either extremely well thought out, or make him blurt out his hack and say "Pleze dont ban me!!" Usually they will say this instead of thinking about an excuse. At this point he will be putty in your hands. take a screenshot of the dialog, and now if he tries to come back one month latter to plead himself innocent and hope you wont remember, he will be in for a rough ride.

Second, Your going to have to find the hacker. you only have two eyes you know.
That's where a few tips might come in handy.

First of all, most of the server will not like hackers, at all. So as soon as they see a hacker they will blurt out somewhere they think your chat log will show their message, and say "Hackzorz is FLY HACKING, BAN him plea!" That would be the 911 call, and you are the police. Strap your uniform with ".gmon", and ".invisible". Then type ".summon Hackzorz" if the player reported hackzorz, and use that macro of yours. If he was not hacking, well, send him back to where he was, if he was, well you just netted yourself a hacker.

If it was a fly hacker, as soon as you summon him, go a few feet in the air, and .summon him again. If he does not fall, you caught him. take the SS of that now.

If he is a speed hacker, you will have to use a different thing. First, .appear to the player that asked for help, send him a whisper saying this, or something like this:

/w <name> Hello <name> I am invisible and at your location, please remain calm to not alert the speed hacker that i am here. You will not be able to talk to me, so move to the location of the speed hacker, i shall remain at your side for 5 minutes. If we cannot find the speed hacker, i will move on. Should others see him speed hack as well, i shall investigate him further.

He should start running into the battle as he was doing before. Keep a close eye, because the speed hacker will not suspect anything and will rush out at the person you are monitoring. If you are sure he is speed hacking, .recall port <your Special Anti-hacker place> And summon him there, click him and use the macro. The time it takes him to read it, you will already have everything you need. Make sure you summon him in a confined area where he cant run out, i cant stress this enough.

Once you have caught the hacker, continue on and administer the correct punishment that the rules in your server define. Keep in mind, of all my experience, a hacker will always turn back to hacking. Even if he swears to you that he wont. I have never met a hacker that will not turn back to hacking when he says he will. the only thing is the time he takes to turn back. Some will pass a week without hacking, others will pass 5 minutes and start again when they think you are not looking. hackers are NOT to be trusted.

In dealing with hackers, speed is important. when you summon a speed hacker, do so in the GM Box at GM island, that way he has no where to run to. when you catch a fly hacker, do so in a place where there is a roof, because when you summon them, they might already still have the up arrow key pressed and will speed out of your area.

Make sure you extract info from the hackers, this will help you deal with other hackers. having experience in where hackers come from, and what they usually do, will help you a lot in dealing with hackers.

Again, NEVER trust hackers to say they will stop. Hard and swift on the wicked, Kind and helpful to they who earn it

Also, make sure you have an achieve of all the hackers you caught. Drag their SS, and a short notepad with a tiny description of what they were doing when you caught them, to a folder. Think of this as your Hacker collection. Be proud of it, the bigger it is, the better you are =]


Good luck, and may your hands smite hard with .account bans!


On a personal note, My morals about banning is that they remove from both the server and the community. If you ban a bad person, everyone is happy as you removed a negative impact on your server.

If you accidentally ban a good person that was at the wrong spot and the wrong time, his friends might get angry, and leave as well, you're standing among the people will lower, on top of that, and all the real hackers will laugh at you. (triple ouch! FTL)

You hurt the server MORE by banning 1 innocent person, then by NOT banning 3 hackers. When you ban, your trying to clip out the bad stuff from your server, not the good stuff. Don't ban for personal reasons, don't ban because someone said something halfway bad about you. Don't ban unless they are negative to the server. Hackers, scammers, nasty people that are rude to Everyone, (not just you. People that are rude to you ONLY, are telling you that you are doing something bad and need to improve at that field.) All need to be clipped and removed. Especially Scammers, they are 3 times worse then hackers.
moral of this short story: DON'T BAN UNLESS YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SURE.

Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.