Catching Minecraft Cheaters (ft. Prometheus and AlertManager)

Because I host a cracked minecraft server, there tend to be a higher percentage of players that cheat, compared to that in regular servers. This is how I solved it.

Problem Statement

It can be hard to detect cheaters, as minecraft does not keep a detailed record of players' actions. Tools like Ledger have a performance cost, and querying for behavioral anomalies can take a very long time due to the organization of the data structures.

Most cheaters can be broken down into the following categories:

• X-Rayers, those that use cheats in order to determine
• Duplicators, those that force the game world to perform glitches

X-Rayers aren't necessarily doing anything "not allowed" by the game client, which makes catching them especially difficult unless they are caught in the act. Duplicators are easy to catch after-the-fact, once the consequences of their duplication become evident, but it can be hard to tell when a duplication glitch is actively occurring without the spoils being propagated throughout the server.

Approach

part 1: setting up minecraft to emit part 2: the calc method part 3: alertmanager (with diagram)