Cheat-proof playout for centralized and peer-to-peer gaming.pdf

Cheat-Proof Playout for Centralized and Peer-to-Peer Gaming Nathaniel E. Baughman, Marc Liberatore, and Brian Neil Levine, Member, IEEE Abstract—We explore exploits possible for cheating in real- time, multiplayer games for both client-server and serverless architectures. We offer the first formalization of cheating in online games and propose an initial set of strong solutions. We propose a protocol that has provable anti-cheating guarantees, is provably safe and live, but suffers a performance penalty. We then develop an extended version of this protocol, called asynchronous synchronization, which avoids the penalty, is server- less, offers provable anti-cheating guarantees, is robust in the presence of packet loss, and provides for significantly increased communication performance. This technique is applicable to common game features as well as clustering and cell-based techniques for massively multiplayer games. Specifically, we provide a zero-knowledge proof protocol so that players are within a specific range of each other, and otherwise have no notion of their distance. Our performance claims are backed by analysis using a simulation based on real game traces. I. INTRODUCTION THE three primary factors that affect the quality of on-line, massively multiplayer games are: timely playout of real-time interaction; scalability of communication and game architectures to large numbers of users; and the prevention or detection of cheating players. Although cheating abounds in current game play on the Internet, there is little or no real security to prevent cheating in online games. Previous work in prevention and detection of cheaters in games has been largely relegated to mental poker [1] and similar games. Modifications to games are often sophisticated open-source, community efforts at reverse-engineering the games. For ex- ample, the Decal project offers to expose information about game play normally hidden from players1. Such modifications are simple to download a