The Theory of Recent Ban-Inducing Cheating Plugins in PVZ

Currently, I believe the recent ban and cheating plugins in PVZ: BFN work like this. Please note, this is my understanding, so it may not be entirely accurate.

If you are reading this, either you have also been affected by a hacker intrusion causing abnormal data, such as changing your game character's level to -9999999 or even higher, or you are interested in recent incidents where PVZ: BFN players have been inexplicably banned.

As the title suggests, I believe these ban plugins do not simply modify your game character's level to an extremely high number to trigger EA Anti-Cheat (EAAC) and prevent you from playing. If you are banned, typically you receive an email notification, and the game informs you of your ban.

However, if you find yourself in the game lobby with sudden music stoppage followed by a restart and the game becomes unresponsive—even after closing the game, it persists in the background and requires direct closure via Task Manager—then it suggests you've been pranked by a hacker!

So, what's the principle here? I think it involves hackers infiltrating and tampering with your game data, possibly repeatedly adding useless data. Note that the addition of useless data is my speculation, which I'll explain later. After tampering, this illicit data is uploaded to the cloud server. Since the server cannot handle such data volume, the next attempt to retrieve this data fails.

Games typically access and retrieve user data from servers during loading. If the server fails to provide this data, the program becomes unresponsive. If you experience music stopping in the lobby followed by a restart, it indicates a failure in data retrieval, accompanied by a flood of error logs in the background, which players cannot see.

Moreover, in considering the principle of hackers repeatedly adding useless data, I've wondered if game servers might not load due solely to abnormal character levels. It's possible that alongside modifying levels, they also add other useless data. As for what this useless data might be, I have no idea. This is speculation; if EA's game servers are of good quality, simply modifying character data shouldn't prevent server loading—unless the server's quality is poor.

Additionally, such ban plugins can be used for DDoS attacks. Each time hackers intrude into player accounts, modify them, and implant illegal data, these actions often overload the server. The more players affected, the higher the likelihood of future server crashes.

Following these incidents, many players fear their game accounts being hacked, rendering them unable to play. Increasing numbers of victims confirm this isn't an exaggeration. I hope EA officials take this issue seriously rather than ignoring it, as these events severely impact players' game property and data security. Ignoring this could potentially lead hackers to develop viruses specifically targeting players' computers, further plunging the game into chaos.