How to protect a Minecraft server from cheaters

An anticheat catches client cheats, but it won't save you from mistakes in the server's own setup. Start with three simple rules:

• Give permissions with a permissions plugin (LuckPerms, for example), not OP: a moderator should have no command that can break the server.
• If the server lets players in without a premium account (online-mode=false), install an authentication plugin — otherwise anyone can join under someone else's name, an admin's included.
• Back up the world on a schedule: if a cheater or griefer does get through, you roll back instead of starting over.

Cheats don't only hit combat. Nuker, FastBreak and AutoClicker inflate resources and leaderboards; Fly and Speed give an unfair edge on the map and in events. An anticheat that only checks combat misses all of that.

Check what your anticheat covers. We checked 47 kinds of cheats against the source code and docs of GrimAC, Vulcan, Polar, Intave and Matrix — only a full check counts, "partly" doesn't.

Lag, high ping and allowed mods sometimes produce odd packets. Ban on a single flag and you get false bans, complaints and players who leave.

It's safer to collect evidence and ban when there's plenty of it, from separate episodes. In DGuard every flag is a piece of evidence with a weight: VL × the rule's weight, halving every day. A ban comes only when a player has 400 points across three separate episodes. Allowed mods and keybinds are written into the code and produce no evidence.

Setbacks and cancelled hits tell a cheater which feature got caught: they tweak the cheat's settings until they find a bypass.

DGuard works silently: no cancelled hits, no setbacks. The cheater doesn't know they're caught while DGuard is already collecting evidence — and the ban comes once there's enough of it.

Anarchy, survival and a PvP arena tolerate different things. Decide in advance which cheats mean a ban on your server, and which a kick or just a flag for moderators.

In DGuard you set a ban or a kick for every cheat feature, and evidence weights and thresholds in the config: from a soft mode to zero tolerance. Ready config.yml files for anarchy, survival and PvP from other owners are in the config store.

An "I was banned for nothing" complaint should be settled by evidence, not by a moderator's memory. That takes a punishment log with the reason for every ban.

In DGuard every ban comes with a report that breaks down the evidence. In the Team section, invite moderators by email: they see the log with reports and the server status and export the log to CSV — without your password. Billing and the balance stay with you.

On a PvP server, combat is the main front. Shard is the strongest AI anticheat for PvP: its cloud neural network takes apart every fight and catches KillAura, aim assist and triggerbots. It complements DGuard perfectly: DGuard was built from the start to work alongside it and covers every other front.

Cheats change all the time, and an anticheat that stands still falls behind. New DGuard versions install themselves when the server restarts, and we close a new bypass within days.

DGuard runs on top of PacketEvents and needs its latest release — when a new one comes out, the panel shows it and lets you know. Keep the server software on a supported version: the main one is 1.21.11.

Don't switch anticheats blind: install DGuard for free next to your current one — that's how we tested it on the beta servers — and compare the logs after a week. Up to 30 players online, DGuard is free with no time limit.