[Bmon] Alysiah - Banned for walking down the stairs

[Alysiah]

BYOND account: Alysiah

Ban/note type (Check what applies):
(X) - Server Ban
() - Note
() - Forum Ban
() - Discord Ban

Ban/note length: Permanent
Ban/note reason: Caught using a cheat client when tested.
Time ban was placed: 2024-08-24 16:16:23
Server you were playing on when banned: TG Terry
Round ID in which ban was placed: 235539

Why are you making this appeal?(Check what applies):
(X) - The ban/note is factually incorrect
(X) - The ban/note is not against the rules
(X) - The ban/note needs modification
(X) - The ban was unjustifiably harsh
() - I was permabanned and I want another chance

Why should this appeal be accepted?:
Before I start explaining why my appeal should be accepted I'll begin with sharing the full conversation log (This is copy pasted from the chat log so apologies for any errors):

Code: Select all

Admin PM from-Bmon: And now we have a bit of a talk
PM to-Admins: hi? :D
Admin PM from-Bmon: So, you're running a cheat client, that much of obvious to me after what just happened.
PM to-Admins: What do you mean?
Admin PM from-Bmon: You just did something no one else could do and the only way that could of happened is if you are trying to modify the games client
PM to-Admins: What exactly did I do?
Admin PM from-Bmon: I am not going to tell you exactly what I did but I feel confident now that you are indeed cheating by modifying your games client
PM to-Admins: Well what can you tell me then? I have completely no idea what you've seen and how I could possibly even cheat
Admin PM from-Bmon: You just dusted yourself on me, me a ghost. Normally no one can do that.
Admin PM from-Bmon: Anyways I am issuing a perma ban. Obviously cheating is one of those things there is zero tolerance for it. Take care.
PM to-Admins: Wait..
PM to-Admins: Let's test it out together and prove you're wrong here
Admin PM from-Bmon: There's nothing more I need to test on you.
Admin PM from-Bmon: Very odd that I'd only happen to you, eh? I don't really want to waste any more of my time on this.
PM to-Admins: Did anyone else walk down these stairs while you were standing at that spot?
The ban was applied after this message.

So what we're seeing there is that Bmon was a ghost and has applied the supermatter crystal component to themselves and has dusted me while I was walking down the stairs.
This is obviously a bug and can easily be reproduced. (I can make a bug report as well if needed)
I don't know what kind of a cheat check it is but I think it's pretty unacceptable to ban a player with 2k hours on the server and don't even give them time to explain the situation.

I don't think there's much else to say about this case. I found a bug and got accused as a cheater. (Even offered to help reproduce the bug to prove myself innocent)
I'll be willing to provide additional information if required.

[ABearInTheWoods]

The bug you are talking about is real.

Unfortunately for you the sting was just a way to hide how we really knew. would have been amazing if it worked out and i didn't have to expose why we know, but it did not, so i am faced with either allowing you back in, or exposing how I knew. (the 3rd option of keeping you banned but not telling you how we knew doesn't fully sit well with me)

Since you are the largest trigger-er of the new detection code, by far, i do not want to allow you back into the game servers, so i will just do the big reveal.

For the past month, the game servers have been logging every time somebody mouses over a ghost, along with meta details (like the person's invisibility overrides, sight flags, and if either the person or the ghost had ever been vv'ed by an admin that round).

if the person has no invisibility override images of the ghost, and their sight settings say they should not be able to see the ghost. It also logs a line indicating it has detected a confirmed bad touch. Lag can cause some false positives around ghosts going invisible again or people spawning while hovering over a ghost, so even good touches are logged so i can see if thats the case.

The number of triggers you've had on terry is in the 5 digits.

There have been 22k bad touch events on terry between the 3rd and the 20th and your ckey shows up in 20k of them.

Care to shed any light on this?

[Alysiah]

I don't really have any idea how I could possibly trigger so many detections.

I've looked over the detection code you're talking about which can be found at https://tgstation13.org/parsed-logs/ter ... cations.dm

I ran it on a local server and was easily able to replicate causing detections by just spawning myself in while my mouse was placed on any ghost. (Small movements of my mouse caused
It didn't cause just a single detection, but multiple (I actually sometimes noticed short lag while spawning in and that caused me to get even more detections there)

Here's a few things I think could have happened here (These are just my assumptions):
- My old mouse that was having some issues could have caused me to trigger many detections while being spawned in as a ghost (That is actually what I think the most likely since it was randomly moving at times, and while trying to drag it'd randomly act like the button is not pressed anymore)
- Something on my computer was causing more mouse events to be sent
- An admin or a player has done something that caused detections to be spammed infinitely (That is pretty unlikely if it was happening in many rounds during that time, but I don't know that)
- Lag, either by my computer slowing down or high ping (This could be a cause on it's own or potentially increase the amount of false detections)

I don't really like how the entire ticket was handled by Bmon, they approached me in a very hostile manner.
As someone who admins and codes for a TG downstream I'd consider it pretty unacceptable to respond with things like "I don't want to waste any more time on this" and not taking the time to listen and just try to get rid of a player as fast as possible.
I'd understand that could have been the case if I was actively griefing the server, spamming the chat, or even being hostile to the admin PMing me (or all of them at the same time).
If this is better fit for a admin complaint this can be removed, but I feel like it's important for the players to know how the admin team treats players in private messages.

I can send a video showing this happening but I can't attach it on the forums for some reason (I haven't recorded my whole testing, but this can very easily be tried by anyone) I was moving the mouse around my ghost but even without that it still causes a detection.
It's hard to tell how I could even possibly cause that amount of detections, considering how easy it seems to trigger accidentally by anyone.

[ABearInTheWoods]

i know about all of those false positives, thats what the other 2k triggers are. (admins trigger them often when spawning in on centcom/tdom to fuck around.)

anywho, lets get more into the weeds.

Logs for just your events (good and bad) across all of terry: https://tgstation13.org/parsed-logs/for ... e-logs.txt


To validate a trigger as real, i check the recent lines around it to make sure ghosts weren't recently made visible.

I would also expect to see it repeated across many seconds to suggest its not lag from when you could see ghosts but can no longer see ghosts,

I should be able to see it have been happening often enough to the same person in the round to suggest they aren''t just spawning in recently from when they were a ghost.

Multiple triggers from multiple ghosts as they move around multiple tiles across multiple seconds

Here is the complete unedited ghost mouse logs for an entire round. https://tgstation13.org/parsed-logs/for ... e-logs.txt

There are 1805 lines in this file for 610 mouse events of a non-ghost mousing over a ghost with 37 of them being validated as allowed and 573 being mouse events on ghosts the player shouldn't be able to see.

573 of the sus events are from you.

at round line 420 (heh) you can see the most unambiguous case. you triggering mouse events on multiple ghosts as they move around multiple tiles across multiple seconds and even multiple minutes.

They can't all be lag.

(This is just one round.)

[Alysiah]

I have no idea how that could happen.

Is there a chance you could break down the code so I can better understand it?

I'm attaching two screenshots (one of which was taken during the round you included complete logs for)
Hope this can help for this appeal to be resolved

[Bmon]

Sup, I am the admin who banned you.

MSO explained the circumstances of your ban and even went above and beyond what is expected of him by telling you exactly how you were caught.
While I did make an error by attributing a bug to you actively hacking it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things-- the detection logs captured by MSO had already sealed your fate.

It is because of those detection logs I acted with such conviction towards you.
I don't think two poorly cropped screenshots prove much of anything but I'll leave the technical aspects of this appeal to MSO(That is if he has anything else to say)

As you have designated in your appeal you believe the ban reason needs modification and I agree with you. Here's the new ban reason:

"Trigged over 20000+ "bad touch" ghost visibility detection logs over the span of roughly a month. This could only have been done with the use of a cheat client."

This ban will not be lifted by me.

[Timberpoes]

If there was any intent to overturn this from MSO, it would have been done by now.

And if I'm wrong, he's got the infinite cosmic power to, ya know. Unlock the thread and post here.