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Has PUBG Mobile India Been Pinging China Servers - Unearth

On Monday, June 21, a user sniffed the data packets from PUBG Mobile India, aka Battlegrounds India, and discovered that the app was reportedly sending signals to China servers located in Beijing. According to IGN, a gaming news platform, the data sent and received by the Battlegrounds Mobile India APK are from China Mobile Communication servers in Beijing

 The app is also transmitting signals to Tencent’s anti-cheat and cloud computing services, though it’s unclear whether these are also based in China.

What is the veracity of the claim?

Here’s what IGN claimed in its report:

  • 152.4.34 is the IP address of a server in China.
  • http://astat.bugly.qcloud.com connection
  • http://down.anticheatexpert.com is connected.
  • gsdk.proximabeta.com connection

A verification for the same was done and these were the results :

  • There was no packet exchange with 36.152.4.34 (a Chinese server), and a reverse IP lookup revealed that all of the IPs recorded by the packet sniffer pointed to Indian servers.
  • The connection request with http://astat.bugly.qcloud.com was captured by the packet sniffer. Tencent owns Qcloud, and BGMI was intended to cut off all ties with Tencent. When we ran a whois search for the IP, however, we discovered that the server is in Singapore.
  • The connection request with http://down.anticheatexpert.com was captured by the packet sniffer. This is to ensure that no one is abusing the game by employing hacks or cheats.
  • We were unable to connect to http://cloud.gsdk.proximabeta.com, a Chinese server.

However, this does not rule out the possibility that IGN’s statements are false. According to multiple media sources, Krafton developers corrected pinging China servers late Monday night.

The Purpose of Connecting to China Servers

Because the service is still in testing stage and allows users to transmit data from a server in China to an Indian server, cyber security expert Sourajeet Majumder told The Quint that it’s conceivable IGN gained the Chinese server IPs.

Is PUBG going to be prohibited?

In her address on Twitter, Meenakashi Lekhi, chairman of the Joint Committee on Human Data Protection in 2019, said that she would contact the Department of Electronics and Information Technology — which reported last September that PUBG Mobile was banned — to discuss the matter.

The makers of the game have made many modifications to the new PUBG to avert a re-ban. The adjustments include rebranding ‘PUBG Mobile’ and hosting all Indian user information via Microsoft Azure in the Battlegrounds Mobile India. So why would the game developers in China ping a server not be clear after all?