Cause of the error "Unauthorized program detected"

MartinDante

Hello! I'm sure that some, or most of you, had one of these errors while playing (Or in case you had both, the first error appears, then the second one):

"Unauthorized program detected - You will be removed from the game"
"Connection with the game server disconnected due to a network error"


I found why do these errors happen, although I can only confirm it from my side. Believe it or not, Black Cipher isn't what is causing these errors to appear, but the game itself. Yes, the game.


After getting several "Unauthorized program detected" errors, I closed every single program that isn't related to Vindictus or Windows (Discord and Firefox), but the "Unauthorized program detected" error was happening anyway. Then, I disabled my firewall (The one from Windows, not the one from my router), closed any non-prioritary windows programs and services, reduced the game settings to the minimum, but nothing. The same error appeared. (The events described in this paragraph ocurred during last week, and didn't happen one after other immediately.)


Then, I decided (Today) to check what's going on, by checking the Task Manager while playing. No weird .exe files appeared/were there, but something happened. BlackCipher.aes suddenly closed itself. 1 minute later, the game itself threw the error "Unauthorized program detected" and then it kicked me out of the game, to the main menu. I tried to play after being sent to the main menu, but I had the disconnect error and was kicked afterwards. I assume it was because BlackCipher.aes wasn't running, so I rebooted the game so BC could appear.


What I conclude from this is that the game believes that because BC was closed, the player had something to do with it, so it throws the "unauthorized" error, when there's the obvious possibility that BC could have just crashed by itself.


A workaround for this issue is that, whenever the game detects that BC is closed, instead of kicking players out of the game, it reboots BC so players can continue playing normally.


Additionally, this line appears in the logs whenever I get the "unauthorized" error:

OnConnectionClosed(CoreConnectionClosed::ConnectionFailed)


And as a "bonus", while I was writing this post, I got a "You have been disconnected" error in this very forum, if you don't believe me, check this picture:

jeddyhi

Never heard of BC closing itself. I have purposely killed it and gotten the errors you describe.

MartinDante

Since you also have the same errors when Black Cipher is closed, then that means that the "unauthorized program" error some people have can indeed be caused when BC is closed while they're playing. The worst part is that the affected players (And, perhaps, the devs) have zero idea on how the error message was triggered in the first place. I only hope that the staffers and specially devs check BC's stability and patch it if there are issues, because if this isn't solved, this may even be the cause of undeserved bans on affected people.

TheMoof

MartinDante wrote: »

The worst part is that the affected players (And, perhaps, the devs) have zero idea on how the error message was triggered in the first place.

They know at least one of the causes. The festival update introduced a borked detection method to BlackCipher where the game thinks it's running in a VM (which isn't allowed) if you have a HDD mounted as an NTFS directory instead of a drive letter. The workaround was to mount the drive as a drive letter (along with its normal mount point) and use direct launch to start the game from the drive letter. That obviously won't work anymore.

MartinDante

TheMoof wrote: »

MartinDante wrote: »

The worst part is that the affected players (And, perhaps, the devs) have zero idea on how the error message was triggered in the first place.

They know at least one of the causes. The festival update introduced a borked detection method to BlackCipher where the game thinks it's running in a VM (which isn't allowed) if you have a HDD mounted as an NTFS directory instead of a drive letter. The workaround was to mount the drive as a drive letter (along with its normal mount point) and use direct launch to start the game from the drive letter. That obviously won't work anymore.

Was the detail of what you're posting posted in another thread?
Either way, could you please post the details about the bug here as well, and other bugs you know? The more we know about Black Cipher bugs, the better for all players. Since Direct Launch doesn't work anymore, players affected by the bug you mention won't be able to play anymore.

Also, it'd be good if this thread would have more info about other bugs cause by BC so hopefully, staffers carry the info to the devs and solve the issues as soon as possible.

TheMoof

That's pretty much all the details. I gave support a detailed description of the problem with instructions how to recreate it and the cause, so the dev team has had the info for a while (since that patch). Basically, if Vindi is running off a mounted volume in NTFS, it will throw the "Unauthorized Software" error and kick you from the game. There's nothing we can do about it (now) until they fix it in BlackCipher.

MartinDante

TheMoof wrote: »

Basically, if Vindi is running off a mounted volume in NTFS, it will throw the "Unauthorized Software" error and kick you from the game.

Check Task Manager while playing, and see if Black Cipher closes before you get the "unauthorized" error.