Hackers Ban Innocent Battlefield 3 Users with PunkBuster Exploit

A group of hackers have claimed to be behind an effort to ban innocent Battlefield 3 users in an attempt to demonstrate flaws in the PunkBuster anti-cheat service used by the PC version of the game.

anonpbspoofer, a member of the forums on cheat-sharing network ArtificialAiming bragged that his group had already effectively banned more than 150 innocent accounts.

"In 2011 we hit them with a mass ban wave and now were [sic] are banning real players from battlelog while ggc-stream is totally unaware," he wrote. "We have framed 150+ bf3 players alone."

The hackers say they're targeting servers connected to the GGC-Stream anti-cheat service, a third-party tool that streams PunkBuster ban logs from all member servers to build an exhaustive list of cheaters that are permanently banned form the entire network.

It's an important distinction, as the PunkBuster client will not issue a global ban for any cheat that does not interfere with PunkBuster itself. The vast majority of hacks are simply marked as "detected," and the player is barred from connecting to servers until the client is restarted without cheats.

On servers that support GGC, however, their accounts would recieve a permanent flag and find themselves unable to rejoin any participating server. In other words, these hackers are not only exploiting PunkBuster to return a false positive on the accounts of innocent players, they're doing so in a way that will permanently tarnish the reputations of those affected.

Many victims of the attack have arleady come forward on the game's official forums and social media site Reddit.

A representative from DICE told forum-goers that their concerns over the hack have been "noted," while EA has informed Kotaku that they are investigating the matter.