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ValveSoftware
Fake servers in Counter-Strike
This is not a bug, but rather a feature request to fix an annoying thing in Counter-Strike. The server list is plagued with redirect and fake servers. It's really hard to find a regular server, most of the servers redirect to a specific one.
In order to spot a fake server I have to right click it and check "show server info". On fake servers everyone has played the exactly same amount of time.
It's really annoying, I guess it shouldn't be too hard to do something to them. Most of these servers also rebind your z, x, c keys to spam a specific spam message. Some of these servers also change my Gamemenu.res so I can join their servers from the main menu. They also bind some keys to join their servers. Ridiculous!
Most of these servers are also still Protocol 47 (with some kind of a compatability patch for 48 clients).
I hope you could do something about this. I want to play CS the way it's supposed to be played. This affects all OSes.
Yes, it affects all mods, regular Half-Life as well. All GoldSrc based games are affected by this, on all OSes. It's really a game breaker. I thought I report this "bug" here since it affects all OSes.
At the moment, 75% of servers are like this. It tries to connect to them (3 bars), then it joins an another server, which will hack my game.
The best solution would be getting rid of the fake servers on the main server list.
Sadly, this is not the place to report it; this is for bugs regarding the linux version, not the service (which is causing the issue).
But it affects the Linux version too, and it should be fixed. I don't get why Valve allows players to host fake servers and hack other players' computers. It's impossible to play the game via server list.
As I said, it's not a bug, but it's a game breaker. It's a feature request just like https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/1006 is and it should have been in first place already. The game is completely unplayable to me because of this.
I hope Valve could AT LEAST take a look at this.
How is this NOT a bug? If this is the way you treat your customers I'm pretty so I won't be buying anything from you again. I'm in the same situation as nullcollision is. I can't find any proper games, just a list full of fakes.
This seems to also affect the Steam server browser.
@unrealz0r. I'm not a Valve employee, first and foremost. Second, this isn't a bug regarding the linux client; there are other places for this report to go.
Being the linux client is still in beta and so many people are having a problem even connecting, you'll probably see a change in what servers are available. The issue is a well-documented one with a LONG history. Lets not forget that the game is from '99~'00. Many of the servers available were created ages ago and were hijacked sometime in the recent past (I'm reading some of the hijack articles going back 5 years).
The solution will be twofold. First, as more legit players come to play, there will be more clean servers. Second, there will be an increase in awareness of the issue due to an increased amount of players. More complaints about a given server, the more that will be taken down. Because of how these servers function, you have to take them down as they are detected; a fell-swoop won't do much.
The community has to be as proactive as the developers.
Valve can and will see this; closed issues don't go away.
On an aside, There are dozens of walkthroughs on how to easily hijack a CS1.6 server. CS:S and CS:GO are both safer until a patch can be made.
We can only hope Valve fixes this, as with Linux support I can bet there will be more angry customers. Valve should make some kind of a authentication system for the master server as well, as I can see there are many unauthorized servers there (everyone has VALVE_ID_LAN).
I can only hope for the best.
Like I said, part of it is finding servers you know are good. Most communities that hosted CS1.6 servers dropped them for CSS. Those that remained (many being home-based servers) got hacked and hijacked because of a very big security gap.
13 years ago, game 'sploits were everywhere.
The only way that these servers will become less of an issue is people actively moderating their own servers... which requires more people playing. There will be the same amount (potentially a few more), but the percentage of them in the server list will drop.
The problem is that the server admins are doing this themselves, they want more players on their servers. In my opinion doing this is wrong.
I still know many communities which play 1.6, it's a very popular game in my country as well.
It shouldn't be too hard for Valve to filter out these servers. The redirect ones, I mean. It's not fair against other server owners. Pirates also have their own, redirect filtered masterserver, why can't we have one?
I respect Valve as a company, but it just seems kinda random to me to not filter them. I hope you get my point. :)
That's just it though; the server admins largely -aren't- doing it themselves; the person who hijacked the server set up the hijacked system to forward it to one of theirs which modifies the client into adware..
True, a master server would help. Here's hoping they take suitable action.
That's wrong. A lot of these servers are put especially by some server admins, mostly from eastern europe if you check the IPs. Some IPs have hundred of fake servers, they just have different ports. It's quite easy to do, there are tools available that let you do it.
Checking the server list, it looks like 95% of servers are fake ones for me. There are more thousands of fake servers coming from 2-3 different IPs. I get a few real servers, which seem to be mostly empty.
And I have noticed a few times that the servers were able to replace the client files with different ones, I had my game menu modified as well, and other menus too. That's not limited to fake servers. Some real servers do it as well.
This was discussed all over the place. http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-1667666.html has a great article from two years ago which gives a few work-arounds.
This is a nice early one: http://www.shoot-em.com/forum/how-i-removing-the-ads-t590.html which offers a way to prevent the config re-write.
Utilizing both is a good way to keep yourself safe until a fix comes.
I do plan to address the issue of fake servers, perhaps not with the initial release but certainly shortly there after.
Just a comment about this screen: https://f.cloud.github.com/assets/3123539/106262/c207014a-69ed-11e2-849e-34156af9e610.jpg
What you showed can be done using a non-steam client (protocol 47), if you use Steam CS Client (protocol 48) nobody can do that to your game client
@Neeeeeeeeeel: This has happened me to with Protocol 48 client on Steam, too, so I doubt that.
@Neeeeeeeeeel: That is still possible to do on latest public version. However, Alfred said that he fixed that in beta version, I didn't test that yet, so I can't confirm.
Mmm I remember I tested (some time ago) and I can't But he fixed it so i won't care about xd
If anyone's still having issues (and didn't bother reading the articles I mentioned), the best way is to chmod your config file so it's readable, but not writable. 544 or something of the sort should suffice as a stop-gap.
The update today has changed the serverbrowser to not include bots in the player count for a server, so this should help filter out these fake servers. Just tick "has users playing" in the filter options.
The filter helps with fake servers, though there are still quite a lot of No Steam/Cracked servers which are full of people that are using non-steam cracked versions of the game. It can be seen with their SteamIDs which are invalid. Most of these servers are full of cheaters. Unfortunately, there is no way to find out if a server is cracked before joining it. Any chance these servers can be delisted?
@AnAkIn1 under filters set Anti-Cheat to secure, is that what you're looking for?
No. These servers are all showing as secured, while they are not. I guess they are either faking the status, or it's just that their crack allow clients that are not running VAC to connect anyway.
Alfred, Too much fake game server displayed in the list of masterserver.
The following fake servers IP's:
88.255.155.2:27015 88.255.155.5:27015 88.255.155.20:27015 88.255.155.110:27015 88.255.155.3:27015 88.255.155.51:27015 88.255.155.80:27015 88.255.155.54:27015 88.255.155.59:27015 88.255.155.73:27015 88.255.155.60:27015 88.255.155.29:27015 88.255.155.9:27015 88.255.155.6:27015 88.255.155.31:27015 88.255.155.101:27015 88.255.155.75:27015 88.255.155.99:27015 88.255.155.50:27015 88.255.155.4:27015 88.255.155.49:27015 88.255.155.83:27015 88.255.155.202:27015 88.255.155.8:27015 88.255.155.57:27015 88.255.155.56:27015 88.255.155.61:27015 88.255.155.84:27015 88.255.155.41:27015 88.255.155.47:27015 88.255.155.77:27015 88.255.155.43:27015 88.255.155.33:27015 88.255.155.58:27015 88.255.155.32:27015 88.255.155.13:27015 88.255.155.95:27015 88.255.155.91:27015 88.255.155.7:27015 88.255.155.78:27015 88.255.155.115:27015 88.255.155.11:27015 88.255.155.17:27015 88.255.155.39:27015 88.255.155.85:27015 88.255.155.81:27015 88.255.155.18:27015 88.255.155.200:27015 88.255.155.22:27015 88.255.155.40:27015 88.255.155.30:27015 88.255.155.34:27015 88.255.155.107:27015 88.255.155.86:27015 88.255.155.114:27015 88.255.155.48:27015 88.255.155.16:27015 88.255.155.113:27015 88.255.155.76:27015 88.255.155.106:27015 88.255.155.94:27015 88.255.155.90:27015 88.255.155.42:27015 88.255.155.19:27015 88.255.155.112:27015 88.255.155.53:27015 88.255.155.92:27015 88.255.155.71:27015 88.255.155.82:27015 88.255.155.102:27015 88.255.155.111:27015 88.255.155.89:27015 88.255.155.62:27015 88.255.155.96:27015 88.255.155.201:27015 88.255.155.88:27015 88.255.155.23:27015 88.255.155.74:27015 88.255.155.97:27015 88.255.155.37:27015 88.255.155.38:27015 88.255.155.44:27015 88.255.155.103:27015 88.255.155.28:27015 88.255.155.98:27015 88.255.155.87:27015 88.255.155.79:27015 88.255.155.109:27015 88.255.155.105:27015 88.255.155.45:27015 88.255.155.55:27015 88.255.155.14:27015 88.255.155.100:27015
These servers should definitely be blacklisted. There's far too many of them.
Lähettäjä: M3ndamailto:[email protected] Lähetetty: 4.7.2015 18:53 Vastaanottaja: ValveSoftware/steam-for-linuxmailto:[email protected] Kopio: nullcollisionmailto:[email protected] Aihe: Re: [steam-for-linux] Fake servers in Counter-Strike (#1014)
You should publish that fake list to some "hack me if you can list" :D
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/1014#issuecomment-118525485
What i learn on my life, is... if the weird things are NOT SOLVED, you must guess that the owner of service is benefiting from this. You MUST CLAIM for remove that ASAP.
We still have a big problems with official monitoring. Players can't find normal server in thousands of fake servers which only want to redirect client to another server. Server owners can't get online because normal server disappear in thousands of fake servers. Any info about fixing this problems?
I add to favorits some fake serves by game title and ping. total servers 1300+, 700+ fake servers. 50% of crap.
how should we play in such a swamp? how server owners can get online?
700 garbage servers for 10k players.
