How can I prevent false scores to leadersboard table with PHP?

Question

I´m using PHP (I´m a total newbie with this) to get/set the scores of my games and everything is working perfectly, but it´s pretty easy to hack as I´m making my games with Javascript and the user can check the code and see the jQuery part where I send this info to the server like this

$.post( "http://theurl/addScore.php", { game: 1, name: myPlayer, score: Number(myScore) });

I guess there´s no a perfect solution, but at least I want to know how can I turn that "hack" more difficult to the cheater.

Any way to prevent such an easy insert in the database?

You could edit all the filenames and the var-names and instead of passing all vars manually you could create a array with a random name or something like 'getPlayerData' — ThermalCube, May 19 '15 at 11:13
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7616461/generate-a-hash-from-string-in-javascript-jquery — Radonirina Maminiaina, May 19 '15 at 11:13
There is really no way of protecting it. You can pass up all the moves to the server and do validation there to see if it score adds up. — epascarello, May 19 '15 at 12:09

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 19 '15 at 11:33

0

Minify your javascript.
On the serverside check for abnormal scores which can't be possible, if so block IP/User.
Encode clientside data, decode on the serverside.

edited May 19 '15 at 11:33

TZHX

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answered May 19 '15 at 11:13

Daan

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Well, when I finish the game I always minify the js code, that´s normal. About blocking users... I don´t like that too much, it could be a bug and it would be unfair to block that user, not a good option for me. About encoding in the clientside, is this really an option? Maybe I´m saying something stupid, but if the user sees how the encoding is done, he can hack it anyway (I don´t know if this makes sense...). – Pizzaboy May 19 '15 at 11:38
You could also give users a temporary ban. For the encoding, true but it would sure get harder. – Daan May 19 '15 at 11:51

How can I prevent false scores to leadersboard table with PHP?

1 Answers1