How to spot a hacker

Hey Kongregatians! Have you ever been playing your favorite flash game and wonder why it was that the number 2 person on the high score board had a score of 23,049 while the number one slot had a score of 333,547,558? Well, in several cases that just means that the number 1 guy was much better, but more often than not he/she hacked.

However, it is a very stupid mistake to see someone do much better than you in a game and automatically accuse them of hacking, especially if you decide to make your observation public or you decide to report them to Kong, so this thread is dedicated to telling you guys several ways that you can determine if someone you suspect of hacking really IS hacking. NOTE if possible, try to use several of these methods for one user to be sure that they are really hacking because these methods aren’t error-proof so the more evidence you have, the better.

Part of this guide will be a big “DUHHH” to many users, but still, it should be useful to most people seeing it. Screenshots and all are included!

Method One
Add the person you suspect of cheating as a friend (this is so that you can easily find them on score boards in multiple games if they aren’t already easily accessible). Don’t worry, they don’t have to be your friend as well and you don’t have to stay their friend, just until you’ve obtained, or failed to obtain, information regarding if they hack or not.

After you are done with that, go to a game that you suspect they hacked. Then go to view the highscores (for badged games this is directly under the achievements tab) and then go to connections. Here you can see the scores of all of your friends in several areas. For example in the game “Generic Defense Game” to get the hard badge you need a score of 100,000 in Ultimate Survival mode so go check the highscores for your friends under that tab like so

So, a score of 105,049. That’s a reasonable score, just a bit higher than the hard badge requirements. However, now if you look at the same person under the “total kills” tab it looks like this:

The same character has only 10 kills. It is impossible to get a score of 100,000 with only 10 kills because the score is based off of how many levels you get, plus difficulty, plus points from kills. You need more than 10 kills to get past level one in order to get 100,000 kills. So that person may have tried once, got bored and then decided to just hack it to get the score of 105,049. While keeping the total kill count of 10.

Method two
Once again, have the person you suspect of cheating added as a friend and go to a game that they played and beat such as Dream World in this example. In order to beat the game you need to go through every town. The hard badge is to beat the game and the medium badge is to complete the second city. So once again go to the highscore tab. In Dream World’s case if you beat the game it will show that you did in the tab called “Dream World” but in other games it may say something like “Game Beat” and have a highscore of 1 which means that you beat it.

So looks like the suspected hacker beat the game. And look, he also completed Emerald City.

However now it gets fishy. If you go to another town’s completion tab, he isn’t there, or in any of the other town tabs. So check his overall level (BTW, in the case of Dream World, it is impossible to beat the game honestly without gaining levels. Nobody with a level of one could possibly beat the game without hacking.)

as you can see, the average level is 51 of those who beat the game and stopped (that level 83 guy played long after he beat the game, and probably still does) however the suspected hacker is level 1. One more thing, the first hard badge is to beat 2000 monsters.

Isn’t it strange that he beat exactly 2000 monsters but is only level 1? And he has no PVP kills. That is enough to prove without a doubt that he cheated in that game.

Method three
This is the least reliable method, with method two being the most reliable. This requires you to go to the suspected person’s profile and see when they joined Kongregate, then compare that to how many badges they have and divide. See how many badges they would have to earn on average every day constantly since they started by taking the number of badges obtained and dividing it by how many days they’ve been on kong. If your answer is something like 10, then that means they acquired 10 badges a day since starting Kongregate. You can get more detailed by going into their points and seeing how they earned the points that they have. Generally, the longer you’ve been a member of Kong the higher chance you have of being a high level, but that’s not always the case.

So You’ve Found a Hacker

Congrats, you have conclusive evidence that there is a hacker and want to take action. Go to their profile, go to the icon of a gear next to the private message button and then click report abuse and then go to other and type your reasoning to report them as detailed as you can. Please be sure that you ONLY do this if you KNOW they are cheating! You can also PM moderators or Admins or if you want you can whine on the forums but be prepared to be harassed by other users, especially if you are wrong. The best action is probably to anonymously report it. And remember, even if no action is taken it doesn’t mean that you were wrong. Kongregate’s staff is just so busy that they can’t afford to check every single user for evidence to ban or block them so all you can try to do is do all the hard work for them, write everything down for the mods to see and hope for the best.

If any of you have other tips on how to find hackers than feel free to post them!

This is really well done and very informative. An extremely good job Ericzander.

if(DreamWorld == Haxxed)
{
FucksGiven=0;
}

Originally posted by Mysterymason:

This is really well done and very informative. An extremely good job Ericzander.

Thank you! It took a bit of time and effort, but I wanted it to be perfect.

Originally posted by Captain_Catface:

if(DreamWorld == Haxxed)
{
FucksGiven=0;
}

Well as you know, it was only an example but it still applies. If someone can’t earn a badge without hacking, then they don’t deserve the badge.

Thank you! It took a bit of time and effort, but I wanted it to be perfect.

It is. This should be a section on Kong guidelines.

Originally posted by Mysterymason:

Thank you! It took a bit of time and effort, but I wanted it to be perfect.

It is. This should be a section on Kong guidelines.

Well if they want to that’d be awesome lol!

{Insert rant about badges and levels as artificial values used to divide the proletariat in order to preserve the oligarchy.}

pretty good research but you have to be careful, starting to see a lot of Kong users who are not admins/mods. attack each other on or about hacking thus could get you all/us normal users in a lot of trouble. Tread carefully please!

Originally posted by Thorock:

pretty good research but you have to be careful, starting to see a lot of Kong users who are not admins/mods. attack each other on or about hacking thus could get you all/us normal users in a lot of trouble. Tread carefully please!

Yeah I know, that’s why I tried very hard to explain that you need to be careful about who you call a hacker. I don’t want to come across as a crying baby who just thinks everyone worse than me is a noob and everyone better is a hacker. Thanks for your concern though, believe me I’ve considered it.

I just want to say that sometimes, these aren’t necessarily true. Don’t assume that just cause you see it, you should report them. Sometimes, games have bugs, which can mess up the game, submitting odd scores. Also, sometimes games have exploits letting you level up extremely fast or earn the badge right away *cough* Sonny 2 imp badge*cough*. I know I’ve used a few exploits like this, and while it may be dishonest, it is not hacking.

Also, connectivity issues. If someone does part of the game and it submits that to the high scores, then finishes the game disconnected from chat and/or has API issues, they won’t submit to the high scores. If they then submit a missing badge report, then both Methods One and Two might say that they’re hacking when they’re not.

All of these methods have exceptions, so don’t think that just because you see it, it means that someone is hacking. Games have exploits that cause you to be able to have unbelievable scores on the leaderboard and leaderboards can be misleading. For example, there is one game in which the timer loops around after an hour. While it’s certainly not possible to do in 6 seconds (Destroyer of Worlds, I think. ), you can complete it in an hour and 6 seconds. This causes a score of 6 to be submitted.

I think that method three is the most reliable, but even that still isn’t always true.

I’m not entirely sure what Method 3 is supposed to prove, and if you want any chance of this thread staying here you should probably blur the user in questions’ name out.

Originally posted by MaistlinRajere:

I just want to say that sometimes, these aren’t necessarily true. Don’t assume that just cause you see it, you should report them. Sometimes, games have bugs, which can mess up the game, submitting odd scores. Also, sometimes games have exploits letting you level up extremely fast or earn the badge right away *cough* Sonny 2 imp badge*cough*. I know I’ve used a few exploits like this, and while it may be dishonest, it is not hacking.

Also, connectivity issues. If someone does part of the game and it submits that to the high scores, then finishes the game disconnected from chat and/or has API issues, they won’t submit to the high scores. If they then submit a missing badge report, then both Methods One and Two might say that they’re hacking when they’re not.

All of these methods have exceptions, so don’t think that just because you see it, it means that someone is hacking. Games have exploits that cause you to be able to have unbelievable scores on the leaderboard and leaderboards can be misleading. For example, there is one game in which the timer loops around after an hour. While it’s certainly not possible to do in 6 seconds (Destroyer of Worlds, I think. ), you can complete it in an hour and 6 seconds. This causes a score of 6 to be submitted.

I think that method three is the most reliable, but even that still isn’t always true.

Thank you for your insight MaistlinRajere! You are correct, as I said none of the methods are fool proof and it varies from game to game. In my example for method number 2 I found several reasons to blame the user for hacking with it, not just one and like stated, one should try several of these methods for a single user to see if it wasn’t just a fluke. And in no way should somebody be banned for exploiting a glitch. This is meant for those who hack several games by editing the files within the game or whatever it is that is done to get the badge. Thank you for clarifying.

Originally posted by Pokerhappy:

I’m not entirely sure what Method 3 is supposed to prove, and if you want any chance of this thread staying here you should probably blur the user in questions’ name out.

Done! I’ve blurred out his name just like I’ve blurred out the names of everyone else. I meant to do it in the first place I don’t really remember why I didn’t. And method 3 is for that specific kind of hacking involving those who go and hack to get many badges at once. Like how only 439 badges were recorded on Badge Master while he was shown as having more than possible. The other methods are more general to find hackers, method three is to find a specific type.

very informative and clever. the use of images also helps to clearly dictate how to sensibly find someone who is hacking a game. nice job!

Originally posted by TanMan134:

very informative and clever. the use of images also helps to clearly dictate how to sensibly find someone who is hacking a game. nice job!

Thank you! Glad you noticed. I personally am a visual learner so I find it easier to understand with pictures.

Vandalism/cheating is not hacking. Beside that I think that Kong should/could get rid of a lot those people by simple automated means which implement strategies as you mentioned. Don’t think that will happen too soon,if at all, though. :(

Like how only 439 badges were recorded on Badge Master while he was shown as having more than possible.

Well in that case I’m fairly positive you looked up the wrong user with Badge Master. Replacing a letter with a number makes a large difference.

Originally posted by fgfgfg:

Vandalism/cheating is not hacking. Beside that I think that Kong should/could get rid of a lot those people by simple automated means which implement strategies as you mentioned. Don’t think that will happen too soon,if at all, though. :(

I’m supposing the reason that they can’t is because when you join Kong you are already making an agreement not to do that according to the terms of usage (as far as I know) and if they mess up that automated thing many innocent users could be banned. This is essentially to tell Kong users how to filter them out themselves. What they do after that is completely up to them.

Originally posted by Pokerhappy:

Like how only 439 badges were recorded on Badge Master while he was shown as having more than possible.

Well in that case I’m fairly positive you looked up the wrong user with Badge Master. Replacing a letter with a number makes a large difference.

Eeek. Wow, you’re right, thanks for catching that. I fixed it in the guide. I owe you one!

Presumably rendering Method Three completely moot, I don’t believe you accounted for mobile badges in the 2034 (he has 32), but correct me if I’m wrong.

Originally posted by Pokerhappy:

Presumably rendering Method Three completely moot, I don’t believe you accounted for mobile badges in the 2034 (he has 32), but correct me if I’m wrong.

Method 3=Gone. Method 4 is now method three. Thanks for noticing my error.

Very impressive, Eric. It looks like you put a lot of time & effort into making this. :)

Originally posted by videogames518:

Very impressive, Eric. It looks like you put a lot of time & effort into making this. :)

Yes I did, thank you for noticing. Honestly though, it was kind of a spur of the moment.

Once you suspect a hacker, it’s always good to check their badge history. It usually provides further proof that they are a hacker, and more grounds to report them. Hackers need to be punished more severely, with their points dropped to 0 and all of their badges taken away if they are ever caught.

I’d just like to add that you can go into their badges, for example their Impossible badges, and sort them by the date they were earned. If they’ve earned a dozen impossible badges in a day, guess what, you’ve found yourself a hacker! Same goes with earning dozens of hard and medium badges in a single day. While this is possible, it’s not very likely if you already suspect this person of hacking. Make sure you report them and insist that they be punished for trivializing the entire points/badge system.

Originally posted by Moshdef:

Once you suspect a hacker, it’s always good to check their badge history. It usually provides further proof that they are a hacker, and more grounds to report them. Hackers need to be punished more severely, with their points dropped to 0 and all of their badges taken away if they are ever caught.

Removing all the obviously hacked badges/points is fine, maybe removing an additional 10% of the point total as well, but anything after that seems like it might be a bit too much.

I completely disagree. They should know the consequences when they attempt to hack, and the consequences should be losing all of their progress on this site and having a notice on their profile that identifies them as a hacker.

I actually don’t care about things like this, other than ruining the spirit of the game; but I know other people do.
Since you took the time to write it, I’d like to take the time to tell you, good job for informing the people that do care.
It’s informative, well-written and easy to understand/take part in.
It’s the people who do care, who make Kongregate much more fun for everybody.