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https://twitter.com/#!/planetside2/status/202179813786656770

It's been almost 9 years since PBBans was created and now the MBi has just passed the quarter of a million bans mark. Seems like yesterday we were the little guy trying to make a name for ourselves. With the addition of PBUCON which resulted in the creation of the PBBans Hub, there was no more need for admins to choose which anti-cheat community they wished to stream to and streaming to multiple log repositories became a reality.

Over the years we grew from a community of less than 100 streaming servers, using just phpBB forums to submit new bans by posting server PB logs (before streaming existed) to the community we are today. For anyone that never saw our old website from way back in 2004 you can view it here.

We wish to thank all the server admins over the years who have made it possible by: streaming their servers to PBBans, submitting PBSS and demos, and adding cheat related MD5 and CVAR checks to their servers. They are the ones who helped make this happen. We also wish to thank the many people who donated funds over the years that covers our hosting and hardware costs.

After the recent fake ban events at GGC-Stream this week it's no secret that streaming is not completely secure. It has never been completely secure and the events of 2008 brought that to light. At which time we informed our streaming admins about the situation and possible solutions. The solution was to either close down for good or continue and tighten our security. Streaming admins wanted to continue so that was our decision.

The known fake bans exploit involves using an application to hook into a server and edit its memory to falsify PB logs streamed to a 3rd party. In order for that to happen the person must have full access to the server. In the case of Battlefield 3 the leaked server files could be used to achieve that goal.

The mass fake ban attack in 2008 was a wakeup call for us and we took it very seriously. That is the reason we have the high streaming requirements of requiring teams to have a working website, roster, forums showing activity to name a few. The rest of those requirements can be found here.

It's why we:
- manually approve all newly added servers to stream
- manually approve all newly added users to existing streaming accounts
- don't allow free online email accounts for streaming applicants.
- don't allow home servers to stream
- don't allow teams with cheaters to stream
- don't allow any server whose IP is found in the MPi (used by a player) to stream
- don't allow cracked servers to stream
- don't show the full 32 character GUID for clean players.

We also provide many details for all our bans to aid players in the appeal process should they wish to do so. That includes the server log entry of the violation raised, the server ip and group it belongs to, the guid, alias and IP address of the player.

Should any player end up on our banlist they always have the option to appeal. We treat ban appeals very seriously at PBBans. For example if a ban was the result of a PB raised violation from Even Balance (Violation #50000+) then we have the user submit a ticket to Even Balance. If they say it's a false positive or there is no record of a person with that violation (can be caused by network errors) then we lift the ban. For MD5 tool bans if we do not have the exact cheat file (using MD5 checksum) in our database we lift the ban. Better to let a cheater go free than to keep an innocent player banned.

Streaming was never a 100% secure system and technically any system where logs are sent to a remote location could also suffer the same problem. We knew the problem existed in 2008 and took the above steps (plus others) to help protect server admins and players from being exploited.

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http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=announce.php

As another year comes to an end we would like to take this time to thank all of our streamers, donors and supporters for making PBBans what it is today. Without you there would be no PBBans.

It has been another great year for PBBans. While we had a few ups and downs again, overall it's been very positive. From new site features such as our new forums to new games such as Red Orchestra 2, Battlefield 3 and Battlefield Play4Free. We wish to thank Tripwire Interactive for all their work of integrating the extra features of PB into Red Orchestra 2 based on our bug reports and suggestions. We also wish to thank Mikael Kalms of DICE for his work on Battlefield 3 with the AC and RCON tool developer community.

Happy Holidays from all of us at PBBans. Have a safe and cheat free holiday season. We look forward to seeing you in the new year.