Activision has fixed an exploit that caused players to be falsely banned in Call of Duty when someone wrote 2 words in the chat.
What was the exploit? Activision announced on October 17, 2024, that they have fixed a “workaround for a detection system.”
This workaround led to “a small number of legitimate players” being falsely banned in Call of Duty: Warzone and MW3 (via X.com).
Furthermore, the announcement states that the affected accounts have now been restored. Activision also announced that a “progress report” from the anti-cheat team will follow.
Both Warzone and MW3, as well as the upcoming Black Ops 6, rely on Ricochet for their anti-cheat system.
Banned for just 2 words
What is the story with the 2 words? A user, referred to on X.com as the discoverer of the exploit, claims: For a time, it was possible to get players permanently banned by the anti-cheat system by sending them a message with the 2 words “Trigger Bot.”
He explains that anti-cheat systems scan a computer’s memory for “footprints” of cheats. In Call of Duty, it is now the case that player names and received text messages can also be found in the game’s memory.
Ricochet thus responded to the stored text messages containing “Trigger Bot” and interpreted that as an indication of a cheat.
The user also states in his post that several thousand players were banned through this exploit before CoD streamers like the Americans “Censor” and “Parasite” became targets.
Cheats are a major problem in competitive games like Call of Duty, taking the fun out of their favorite games for many legitimate players every day. Various developers and publishers are combating this not only with anti-cheat systems but also by taking action against cheat manufacturers. Bungie and Destiny 2 are also doing the same: Bungie wins in court against cheat manufacturers – gets as much money as if they sold Destiny 2 79,621 times
