Suspected cheaters

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kevin6625
Posts: 14
Joined: Tue Sep 18, 2012 7:32 am
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Suspected cheaters

Post by kevin6625 »

@Tommy One suggestion of preventing turbulence: set an account check for guestbook. I think you may not be happy if someone is posting anonymous ads below your post and you even cannot find who did it.

This is part of my original post on Guestbook. Some suspected cheaters are listed below in the quoted context. I think our admins should take it seriously and investigate whether they are really doing so.
@Guo Jin Yang Can you take some deep analysis on some people that you have suspected of cheating? I remember that you have once talked about some suspected cheaters in a Chinese-speaking QQ group, such as Shen-jia Zhang and Guang Shao, whom you suspected of cheating, and it seems that some other people are also following your opinions. For example, someone (I can show the chat record later if you have any interest. No one replied to these words at that time, maybe lest they offend the webmaster Shenjia Zhang) in that group mentioned something like 'In fact, Dan Shen is the real LEI DI (ranked the first in saolei.wang) for so many years', and 'For so many years, the real sub40, is achieved by that only one Dan Shen'. (Dan Shen got her first sub40 in 04/01/2011, but what is the situation before that? No Exp sub40 in China?) As a community with minesweeper players around the world, I think we should make better efforts to keep this community as a cheater-free environment.
P.S. Shenjia Zhang and Guang Shao have their world ranking on this website, but now someone have suspected them of cheating for their records, that is why I am considering if some further analysis of these records are needed. BTW: @Guo Jin Yang How is your analysis of the suspected cheater Stevan Gvozdenovic?
As what I heard, Yunshui Qi admitted his cheating behavior for his 0.11s on Beginner for saolei.wang that happened several years ago, that means at least someone is becoming honest about the problems he had. But how about other players? Someone once mentioned 'cultural difference' as suggestions for recovering lost videos (another matter discussed in this forum). As a person who grows up in one type of East-Asian cultural environment, I am very clear that our people tend to consider 'face' (a type of subjective impression which denotes a type of fundamental benefit) as something that they cannot lose in any ways. But this topic of suspected cheating attempts has nothing related with cultural difference, since everyone should be considered equal for world ranking criteria.

What I am considering is what steps we shall take for these suspected cheaters. Since someone even said something that deviates from my previous understanding (No Exp sub40 in China before 04/01/2011?), that raises more of my doubts regarding the 'genuity' of these records.

Just remember, cheaters in China does not represent all the Chinese people, especially not those honest people. They only represent their individuals. If any 'cultural difference' must be forced to violate the rules, this 'cultural difference' is just a bullshit.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Beg=0.74rt[NF] int=9.75rt[NF] exp=39.09rt[NF] (until 04/13/2020)
gacord
Posts: 127
Joined: Thu May 17, 2012 5:14 am

Re: Suspected cheaters

Post by gacord »

My personal opinion:
1) As Zhang is the owner of saolei.wang I really don't want this topic appeared here.
2) The fact that Zhang benefits from funny mode is definite.
3) Govzidenovic's video's avg "click-holding" time < 0.06s and far too much 0.01s & 0.02s which help me confirmed him as cheater.
4) The answer of the investigation reprot that I did several years ago Almost 40% of sub60 players of "that period" benefit from funny mode or else.
5) But Damien also said let's stop this topic as he also suffered the similar situation before.
Sorry for the broken english :?
kevin6625
Posts: 14
Joined: Tue Sep 18, 2012 7:32 am
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Re: Suspected cheaters

Post by kevin6625 »

gacord wrote:As Zhang is the owner of saolei.wang I really don't want this topic appeared here.
This is what you think, but it has nothing related with whether somebody is cheating for the rule on minesweeper.info.
gacord wrote:The fact that Zhang benefits from funny mode is definite.
Let's look at the definition of Funny Mode on minesweeper wiki:
http://www.minesweeper.info/wiki/Funny_Mode
Abiu claimed he had discovered the cheat in June 2008 and inserted the 'Funny Mode' text into the videos to be obvious. If he had wanted to cheat, skipping that line would have made it impossible to tell he was cheating.
Unfortunately, Clone 0.97 is still the standard version for the Chinese community, as it is the only version that works without Chinese users having to change their computer setttings. For the rest of the world, only later versions are accepted for the World Ranking. It is hoped the next version of the Clone works universally.
We know that before 2013/07/01, Minesweeper Clone 0.97 is an accepted version exclusively for people with Chinese nationality in minesweeper.info. But...

It DOESN"T say Minesweeper Clone 0.97 Funny Mode is allowed for people with Chinese nationality in minesweeper.info.

As the definition of Minesweeper Wiki, using Funny Mode is considered as CHEATING.

We also know that more than one person agrees that cheaters should be removed from world ranking, as some Guestbook comments quoted as belows:
Guo Jin Yang wrote:Why are Rank.34 Stevan Gvozdenovic who is definitely a big cheater still on the ranking
pauv wrote:Damien is too busy and he has not answered my latest email. Have a vote? I will vote yes for removing cheaters.
KAmil wrote:me 2
Restate the logic and basic deriavation from the meaning of the quotes above:

Someone benefited from Funny Mode --> Someone is cheating on minesweeper.info
Shenjia Zhang benefited from Funny Mode
--> Shenjia Zhang is cheating on minesweeper.info
Someone is cheating on minesweeper.info --> Someone should be removed from world ranking on minesweeper.info
--> Shenjia Zhang should be removed from world ranking on minesweeper.info

So what? This is LOGIC! Anyone is unhappy about it? I know that for some of the quoted stuff above, there is still not sufficient proof to confirm their truths or shown in official rules, but what if everything is proved true or had rules set up?
gacord wrote:3) Govzidenovic's video's avg "click-holding" time < 0.06s and far too much 0.01s & 0.02s which help me confirmed him as cheater.
4) The answer of the investigation reprot that I did several years ago Almost 40% of sub60 players of "that period" benefit from funny mode or else.
5) But Damien also said let's stop this topic as he also suffered the similar situation before.
For the rest of things, we can also analyze all of them by using logic, instead of 'cultural difference' and 'emotions'. I think that it might cause many people unhappy if 40% of sub60 players are cheating and removed from world ranking, and it might cause serious turbulence for Damien who is managing this website. But once we set up a rule, why should we violate it before the rule itself changes? Cultural difference? Cool, setting up a multi-language interface or just reject people with language disabilities are both good choices, and don't forget to write them in rules! 8-)
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Beg=0.74rt[NF] int=9.75rt[NF] exp=39.09rt[NF] (until 04/13/2020)
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Tommy
Posts: 257
Joined: Mon Dec 01, 2008 9:22 pm
Location: Vienna

Re: Suspected cheaters

Post by Tommy »

Hi all,

Sorry for not replying here for a while. I don't have the time for an in-depth reply right now, but I'd like to state a couple of things.

Everything in this list is my personal opinion.
  • Rules should apply to everyone equally, without exceptions for contributions to the community.
  • The rules in place at the time when someone played a game should apply. Some people retired before there were clones, their winmine scores are still on the ranking, and that's the way it should be.
  • I don't think that it's very productive to talk about cultural differences much here. We're all Minesweeper players, that's what's important, and the thing that should count when we make/enforce rules.
  • This doesn't mean that cultural differences don't exist, just that we shouldn't make fixed assumptions about people or use it as an excuse for anything.
  • However, the chinese community evolved in relative isolation to the western community, and there may be implicit disagreements what exactly should be OK. For example, we agree that UPK is bad, but does funny mode count as UPK?
  • Funny mode is a thing of the past, and that's good. It isn't a threat anymore.
  • However, if you could get into funny mode just by editing a config file, I doubt that it should be considered cheating at all - in this case, people were using a feature, even if it was well-hidden. If you're tech-savvy, editing config files is natural.
  • Of course, this means that that clone should never have been legal with that feature. But it was, and people got highscores that way.
  • I'm not saying that it was ethical to use the feature, but I'd also argue that it wasn't technically illegal, and, when in doubt, should be treated as an honest mistake.
  • For me, that means to leave those scores on the ranking. It's too late to confront people and ask them to get new scores without that feature. Some of them may be dead by now.
  • Also, it's not like this was game-breaking enough for people never to beat those scores.
  • It's better to have a couple of cheaters on the ranking than to exclude honest people that happen to look suspicious. At least as long as they aren't all the way at the top, which I'm pretty sure isn't the case (I can personally vouch for Kamil and Fritz, just for instance).
Feel free to ask for my opinion on other things, I'm going to leave this here for now.
Don't anthropomorphize computers - they don't like it.
gacord
Posts: 127
Joined: Thu May 17, 2012 5:14 am

Re: Suspected cheaters

Post by gacord »

I would like to offer all the chinese minesweeper group stories to you if you are interested.
I started to do stats analysis of all the 100000+ games of saolei.wang 3 years ago.
As I'm very familiar of all the top players' stats I found that some games are odd from others.

4 major cheating method in saolei.wang:
Speed up.
This can be detected by FreeSweeper.The speed up-ed games has a much faster clicking-hold time.

Funny mode.
One old player of us group has made a tool to select games under certain 3bv automaticlly.This can hardly be found.

Button clicking automation.
Which always found in BEG time records.This can be detected by FreeSweeper.Watch the curve and clicking time to find it out!

ReWright the video file.
This is possible! But I can swear that I never cheated even though I know how to.There seems no way at the moment. :cry:
KamilSaper
Posts: 149
Joined: Mon Dec 01, 2008 7:16 pm

Re: Suspected cheaters

Post by KamilSaper »

How to rewrite a video file? Can u create an example sub30 Exp video?
0.49 - 7.03 - 31.13
NF: 0.49 - 7.03 - 31.51
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Tommy
Posts: 257
Joined: Mon Dec 01, 2008 9:22 pm
Location: Vienna

Re: Suspected cheaters

Post by Tommy »

you can create pretty much any video if you know the format (and they're both pretty easy to decode and implicitly documented via the source of the converters). The only problem is creating the right checksums, that requires disassembly of the binaries of the clone in question to figure out how it's calculated. Ultimately, given that clones run on people's computers and can be looked at and/or altered, there's no way to completely prevent it.
Don't anthropomorphize computers - they don't like it.
gacord
Posts: 127
Joined: Thu May 17, 2012 5:14 am

Re: Suspected cheaters

Post by gacord »

It is very easy to rewrite a video file. What actually difficult is to crack the checksum.
I had successfully cracked the checksum of stats.dat file several month ago but not yet tried to crack the checksum of the video files.
http://www.saolei.wang/BBS/Title.asp?Id=14764
If I want to crack it may takes me about 2 or 3 days.
However I believe that someone had already cheated this way. :evil:
kevin6625
Posts: 14
Joined: Tue Sep 18, 2012 7:32 am
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Re: Suspected cheaters

Post by kevin6625 »

But I can swear that I never cheated even though I know how to.
If someone found a way that video file can be cracked, and if this way is considered as cheating, then there is no way to guarantee any of us is not cheating, even if you 'swear' it, and this software will immediately be considered illegal unless author updated the encryption mechanism of videos.

In fact I am interested in hacking the video file, and if I can successfully crack it, I might consider creating new videos for fun, even at the cost of not being able to upload videos. Computer software engineering is fun, and it might even cure my minesweeper addict.(DON'T pretend you are innocent so that you have excuse to obtain everything) :mrgreen: :?
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Beg=0.74rt[NF] int=9.75rt[NF] exp=39.09rt[NF] (until 04/13/2020)
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