Why you shouldn’t use cracked
Everyone is familiar with the cracked option (or rather offline-mode) offered on server hosts as well as the cracked launchers who need this. However, most people are not aware of the consequences, risks and issues behind using cracked. Additionally, people seem to have no awareness of the original reason behind this option. This is what i plan to discuss in this blog post today.
The risks
Enabling the cracked option comes with a lot of risks. One major issue that i see often is, that cracked servers or accounts get “hacked”. This is however not the correct term, as the account itself is not compromised, rather the account gets hijacked, and the servers get exploited. With cracked enabled, accounts are not authenticated through Mojang’s authentication servers; meaning anyone can just grab any name and join a cracked server with it. This also includes operators. If a person uses the username of a player with OP permissions, they can use those permissions as well. It’s important that when you do have to use cracked, to make sure it’s secure by installing log-in plugins such as FastLogin. FastLogin does require another authentication plugin such as LoginSecurity.
Additionally, cracked servers are often victims of bot raids, which are essentially just a lot of bot accounts joining a cracked server to overload it. This cannot easily be prevented unless you have a proper functioning anti-bot plugin. The reason that this is possible, is because these bot accounts don’t need to be paid for.
My main suggestion would simply be to not use cracked, and to buy the game.
The consequences
Will your local authorities arrest you for using tlauncher? No, but it’s still illegal and against Mojang’s EULA. Another issue with cracked launchers such as tlauncher is that they often contain malware, making them dangerous to use. In general using launchers that allow accounts without authentication is shady, and highly recommended against.
So what is online-mode really for?
Server checks connecting players against Minecraft account database. Set this to false only if the player’s server is not connected to the Internet. Hackers with fake accounts can connect if this is set to false! If minecraft.net is down or inaccessible, no players can connect if this is set to true. Setting this variable to off purposely is called “cracking” a server, and servers that are present with online mode off are called “cracked” servers, allowing players with unlicensed copies of Minecraft to join.