Last Saturday after the Stromgarde tournament we froze and screenshared one of the winners, SleepyMario, to ensure he was playing legit. This decision was made after a history of reports about him, including multiple during the tournament, and also the belief that if ever there was a time someone would be hacking, it'd be during a tournament. During that screenshare I used a tool called Paladin which scans a user's PC for hack clients. In Mario's scan Paladin detected a ghost client called "Dip" in the running Minecraft instance. He was subsequently banned from Loka and disqualified from the tournament as a direct result of this detection.
Although we were confident in the Paladin results I had never heard of a client called Dip before so I tried to find more information on it both for educational reasons and to see what advantages Mario would have had during the tournament. During this search I only found references to a 1.7.10/1.8.9 Forge mod client. Knowing that Mario was obviously not on either of those versions and also not running Forge I asked Paladin's developers for clarification on how that client could have been detected. Because Paladin keeps logs of scan results more detailed than what normal users have access to staff were able to investigate Mario's scan and determined that the check he flagged was a new check recently added and is currently bugged/flawed, resulting in multiple false positives with Mario's scan being one of them. I've been assured by Paladin staff that it was a complete false positive and that there is nothing in the scan results that suggest Mario was cheating. Since Mario was banned for flagging this Paladin check which has since been invalidated he will be unbanned. I apologize to both Mario and the tournament organizers over at Stromgarde for the mistake and the delay in this response. That being said, I do recognize that passing a screenshare on Loka isn't a guarantee of innocence so all players are still encouraged to report any suspicious behavior they see, especially if it's also recorded.
The other subject that needs addressing is specifically my actions during this situation. I was pretty satisfied with our admin team after we seemingly caught Mario red-handed. After his ban Mario was adamant about his innocence and expressed concern about losing friends over this. Although I assured him that that probably wouldn't happen I still felt little sympathy towards him, believing "you reap what you sow" and that any consequences for his actions would be deserved. When I discovered the next morning that our reason for banning him was illegitimate I felt pretty guilty about the situation, specifically due to the emotional roller coaster I had put him on and the lack of sympathy I had towards his fear of losing friends. Along with a message to Crypt and Mag explaining what I had found out I posted a message to a private channel with Mario, his friends, and close peers explaining the situation and also saying that Mario will be unbanned. I knew Mario was worried about losing his friends and my goal with my message was to exonerate him among his friends. Regardless of my intentions I recognize that this was jumping the gun and that I should have waited until I had posted the official public statement. Not doing so gives the impression of bias that all admins try to avoid, myself included. In the future I will strive to be more mindful of how my actions will be perceived by others.
For transparency these are the messages from Paladin staff explaining the false positive scan:
Although we were confident in the Paladin results I had never heard of a client called Dip before so I tried to find more information on it both for educational reasons and to see what advantages Mario would have had during the tournament. During this search I only found references to a 1.7.10/1.8.9 Forge mod client. Knowing that Mario was obviously not on either of those versions and also not running Forge I asked Paladin's developers for clarification on how that client could have been detected. Because Paladin keeps logs of scan results more detailed than what normal users have access to staff were able to investigate Mario's scan and determined that the check he flagged was a new check recently added and is currently bugged/flawed, resulting in multiple false positives with Mario's scan being one of them. I've been assured by Paladin staff that it was a complete false positive and that there is nothing in the scan results that suggest Mario was cheating. Since Mario was banned for flagging this Paladin check which has since been invalidated he will be unbanned. I apologize to both Mario and the tournament organizers over at Stromgarde for the mistake and the delay in this response. That being said, I do recognize that passing a screenshare on Loka isn't a guarantee of innocence so all players are still encouraged to report any suspicious behavior they see, especially if it's also recorded.
The other subject that needs addressing is specifically my actions during this situation. I was pretty satisfied with our admin team after we seemingly caught Mario red-handed. After his ban Mario was adamant about his innocence and expressed concern about losing friends over this. Although I assured him that that probably wouldn't happen I still felt little sympathy towards him, believing "you reap what you sow" and that any consequences for his actions would be deserved. When I discovered the next morning that our reason for banning him was illegitimate I felt pretty guilty about the situation, specifically due to the emotional roller coaster I had put him on and the lack of sympathy I had towards his fear of losing friends. Along with a message to Crypt and Mag explaining what I had found out I posted a message to a private channel with Mario, his friends, and close peers explaining the situation and also saying that Mario will be unbanned. I knew Mario was worried about losing his friends and my goal with my message was to exonerate him among his friends. Regardless of my intentions I recognize that this was jumping the gun and that I should have waited until I had posted the official public statement. Not doing so gives the impression of bias that all admins try to avoid, myself included. In the future I will strive to be more mindful of how my actions will be perceived by others.
For transparency these are the messages from Paladin staff explaining the false positive scan: