Shields Up! Security and Authentication Upgrades on Zone
Hello, #ZoneArmy!
We are pleased to announce that the Zone platform is getting multiple security upgrades! These upgrades include additional security and authentication layers to strengthen the integrity of all games played on the Zone platform.
An increasingly prevalent trend of malicious actors can be seen in any popular game or gaming platform. These malicious actors degrade the gaming experience for legitimate users and developers across hypercasual and AAA games have to constantly deal with cheaters and bots.
“Cheating so thoroughly plagues gaming that it’s long been common to type out “VAC” on Twitch in reference to Valve’s cheat sniffer in jest or seriousness when a player scores a beautiful headshot in a game like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. It made Tom Clancy’s The Division near unplayable after launch. Aimbotters overran Star Wars Battlefront.” — PC Gamer
The Zone security systems and team are on a constant lookout for any players trying to “game the system”. However, as games develop their anti-cheat systems, cheaters develop their methods. Maintaining a fair and fun gaming environment is a team effort between the game, platform developers, and the community. We have been paying due attention to our vigilant community members who report suspicious activity on the platform and help us keep it free from malicious actors. We are glad to have such a passionate gamer community #InTheZone!
Now, we are taking another step forward in ensuring that everyone who uses Zone can enjoy a fair gaming experience. We are deploying additional security enhancements to help prevent and restrict malicious activity on the platform.
- 2-layers of user authentication
All players on the Zone platform will need to use two layers of authentication. The previous authentication method, which involved signing a 0 ALGO transaction from users to authenticate their wallets, will continue to be used as the first authentication layer. This is required to validate that gamers are really the owners of the linked wallet.
The second layer of authentication will be email-based. To play on the Zone platform, users will have to link their wallets with a legitimate email address.
Note — Only public email addresses that have a good domain authority are allowed on the platform. Email providers like Gmail, ProtonMail, Outlook, etc. are allowed. Temporary email providers and emails by private institutions are not allowed.
This is designed to be a one-time process with a simple interface. After connecting and verifying your wallet with a 0 ALGO transaction, you will be asked to input your email address. Once you do so, you will receive an OTP on your email. Input the OTP on the platform and your wallet will be verified.
You can now continue playing safely!
Similar to a 2FA authentication method(Microsoft: Multi-Factor Authentication Is 99 Percent Effective… ), the objective is that this will greatly improve security and restrict bad actors, improving the gamer experience for everyone!
- reCaptcha protection from Google
The Zone platform is now protected by Google’s reCaptcha! reCAPTCHA has been at the forefront of bot mitigation for over a decade and actively protects data for over five million websites. reCAPTCHA uses an advanced risk analysis engine and adaptive challenges to keep malicious software from engaging in abusive activities on websites. Meanwhile, legitimate users will be able to continue using Zone without any issues.
reCAPTCHA’s risk-based bot algorithms apply continuous machine learning that factors in every gamer interaction to overcome the binary heuristic logic of traditional challenge-based bot detection technologies.
The bottom line is, if you are a malicious actor, your life has just become very hard!
Zone is committed to improving fair play as the platform evolves. There is no place for cheaters, bots and bad actors on the Zone platform. We will keep improving our security infrastructure and implement stricter anti-cheat solutions in the future, keeping in mind that legitimate users are not affected.
It is important that security services are adaptive and while Zone devs keep working to improve the overall security, community members will always remain an integral part of the process. We ask that the #ZoneArmy be on the lookout for any malicious activity and report the same on https://help.zone.game!
Let’s play fair #ZoneArmy!
For more information on how we are keeping our users safe, follow us on all our social channels!
