Hacks

Hacks are software that operate illegal operations in Brood War's process. Technically, hacks are neutral and don't necessarily describe a negative manipulation. Examples of "good" hacks are Observer Mode, Antihack, APMAlert, and W-Mode.

The more common usage of the term refers to hacks that give an unfair advantage for the user. The usage of these hacks are strictly prohibited in all tournaments, leagues, and events.

Classification

Map Hack

Map Hack enables the user to see the entire map without the fog of war. It is the most severe form of hack because information is one of the most critical component to winning a game. In most cases, hackers are only caught when they do obvious mistakes such as countering almost every strategic move/build. In the past a number of countermeasures or at least hints in replays have been discovered which led to hack authors implementing a number of features to reduce or eliminate detection. Nowadays, map hack is undetectable and extremely difficult to prove.

Multi Command

Multi-Command allows the user to select and order more than twelve units or more than one building at a time.

Auto Gather

Auto-Mine sends the starting and newly built workers to mine the nearest minerals.

Minor Hacks

Other hacks have obvious features that a player recognizes while playing.

• Examples:
  • Mineral Hack: The user receives resources by performing certain actions that exploit a bug in the game engine.
  • Nuke Anywhere: The user can select a Nuclear Missile in the air and order it to land anywhere on the map.
  • Disconnect Hack (DC Hack): The user can disconnect any player in the game, often used to win the game.

Other Cheats

Rigged Maps

Rigged maps are modified maps that give a player in a certain position an advantage such as stacked minerals or modifications to his/her base's terrain. If the map is hosted using the Use Map Settings Game Type, the player can be given an advantage by using triggers. This form of cheating is not obvious until the modifications of the map are revealed and the only way to prevent this is by ensuring that you all the common maps downloaded and leaving any game that causes you to download a new map.

Bugs

Many bugs have been abused in the past and some of them are forbidden in most leagues and tournaments. The most common bugs are SCV Stack, Observer over Turret, and minor things like Plague on Interceptors.

Counters

Multi Command

Multi Command is easy to spot in a replay file. The APM of the hack user usually spikes from his average APM and sky rockets to 500-1000 APM. Note that there is a good chance that there will be a false-positive from hack detectors because of lag which causes all of the commands to queue up until the lag is over, causing all of the commands to execute on the same frame.

Bugs, Discs & Minor Hacks

The minor hacks are easy to spot as they are recorded in the replay. Unlike Multi Command/Selection they are obvious while watching the replays. Disconnect hacks can be spotted in ladders like ICCup if the match list of a player features a lot of disconnects whenever he loses.

Map Hack

Most times only a thorough analysis of replays has to be used to catch a map hacker red handed. The outdated methods are listed below, those are usually ineffective and only work whenever the hack user is unexperienced or does not care to get caught.

Mutual Vision

Before Patch 1.08 no replays were available and thus map hacks were a very strong tool. In that time players sometimes gave their opponent vision. If that player did not react or did not wonder why he suddenly saw the whole map he usually had the map hack activated.

Anti Hacks

Over time a lot of Anti Hacks or Hack Detectors have been published. When both players had those running the tool, it usually checked if an external application has tried to interfere with Brood War's process. Whenever they spotted such a manipulation the Anti Hacks gave out a warning. Many Anti Hacks were outdated or have been countered by bypass scripts of the hacks. Nowadays wDetector and iCCup's Anti Hack provide solid protection.

Autogather

Autogather usually comes along in a package that features map hack and other options. Whenever the game starts the first workers are split perfectly on the minerals. In 2006 many leagues, such as BWCL, discovered that feature. Ten actions are needed to split your workers (Select worker * 4 + Send to mineral block *4 + Select Main Building + Build Worker). The tool made this ten actions in 1,5 time stamps (~1 second), which is impossible to perform for a human. Additionally a "gather" command is given and not a "move" command. Whenever a replay featured these ten highly unusual actions a player was found guilty of map hack.

Suspicious Actions

• Method I: Shortly after replays were introduced to Brood War the replay analytic tools like BWChart were released. Those read out the replay log, which contains every click of a player. If a player selected a building/units/neutral element (critters/ressources) BWChart gave out a warning. Soon those actions were suppressed by the map hacks.
• Method II: In late --- some unknown counter-hacker thought more about Method I; there are selections that are in theory not illegal: whenever a unit is selected and disappears in the fog of war, a suspicious action is written down in BWChart. Map hacks however suppress these clicks and therefore no warning are given out. This means whenever a player with decent skill does never generate suspicious actions in all his games, he is very likely to hack.

Bypass Tool

In late 2008 WGTour, GG.net and TL.net discovered a protocol running with the most popular hack package that enabled the hack to run hidden in the background on ICCup's server The Abyss. A minor update in the Anti Hack was published that recorded the hack users activity and user names for a week. After that the list was published.

Scandals

Usually hackers are caught one by one; however with the introduction of Autogather, Suppressed-Suspicious actions and the By-Pass-List three major busts lead to a lot of scandal and flames.