Activision has disabled an exploit that allowed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 players to ban their opponents by simply sending them a message or a friend request, causing many legitimate players to be unable to play the game. While the developers have stated that they have unbanned accounts that fell prey to this exploit, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 fans are quite unhappy about the whole fiasco.Call of Duty: Warzone and Modern Warfare 3 players have been frustrated with cheaters for quite a while now. There was also a huge surge in the number of cheaters after Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 debuted on Xbox Game Pass. Although the developers have made some improvements to the anti-cheat to address the situation, encountering cheaters in every other game is still fairly common. To make things even worse, some legitimate players were accidentally banned in the past few days. Related October 17 Will Be a Sad Day for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone Players October 17 is shaping up to be a sad day for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone players as a fan-favorite feature comes to an end.11 In a new tweet, Activision reveals a crucial fix it is implementing for the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. For the past few days, some players have been using an exploit to ban their opponents in the game. As a result, many legitimate players have been banned from the game. Activision has not detailed the specifics of the exploit, but it has stated that all accounts that were banned due to the issue will be unbanned. Improper Signature Scanning Results in False Modern Warfare 3 Bans However, fans have actually found how the exploit worked. As Twitter user zebleer explains, the ban capitalizes on the signature scanning strategy that is used by RICOCHET Anti-Cheat in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Basically, the anti-cheat looks for signatures in the memory to detect the use of cheating software. One of the signatures it looks for is the word “Trigger Bot”, which is a common cheating tactic used by cheaters to automatically shoot while pointing at an enemy. Due to this, any player could write the word “Trigger Bot” in the chat or set it as their profile name and send a friend request, and this would result in the opponent getting banned altogether. Close Entire lobbies could get banned thanks to exploit fiasco The repercussions of this exploit go way beyond banning single players, as it is stated that there were hotkey scripts that could get entire lobbies banned in Modern Warfare 3. The tweet also notes that Activision reversing the bans could potentially restore the accounts of cheaters who were banned due to signature scanning. Additionally, while Activision stated that a small number of accounts were impacted, many in the community believe that thousands were falsely banned due to the exploit.