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We have made an online game very similar to Pacman. The idea is to award top scorers with various incentives and prizes. But at the end of the day, we need to keep hackers at bay so that our game app is secured and let the genuine top scorers to enjoy playing it for prizes and incentives.

What we want to prevent from happening is not to allow hackers to find out or detect how to win this maze-based game (similar to Pacman) for incentives and prizes. By securing I meant is to secure the Algorithm of the game, making it tougher enough for the hacker to prevent from finding out ways to win it every time.

So how can we keep the malicious hackers away?

Looking for credible, tried and tested information. Thanks

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    \$\begingroup\$ Your question is very broad. There are lots of ways to secure an online application, though not any that are guaranteed to prevent malicious activity. See related questions: gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/1520/… \$\endgroup\$
    – House
    Commented Sep 8, 2013 at 19:21
  • \$\begingroup\$ I agree that there is no guaranteed way to prevent malicious activity. What I am looking for is some means via which we can secure our app to a reasonable level. Are there any good 3rd party software available? Or are there any other ways for protecting the app from cheaters like Anti Cheating Software? \$\endgroup\$
    – Muhammad Maqsoodur Rehman
    Commented Sep 8, 2013 at 19:47
  • \$\begingroup\$ Which technology to use questions are off topic for the site. Can you be more specific with the problem you're facing? \$\endgroup\$
    – House
    Commented Sep 8, 2013 at 20:21

1 Answer 1

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As a first step to securing the game you can't allow any user to run the actual game logic on their computer. If they can do that then they can also reverse engineer it and hack it easily.

What you need to do is have a secure server under your control which runs all the game logic. The client program on the users computer simply sends moves to the server and retrieves results. Note that the server needs to verify that any command from the client is a valid command, and reject it if it's not.

That still leaves some possibilities for cheating, but without that it definitely won't be secure.

Unless you have experience in writing online games which give out prizes, you might want to get someone who is to do it for you. For example online casinos require the same kinds of security to prevent people cheating.

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