PluginGuard

[1.4.0] - 2026-09-27

Added

- Minecraft 26.3 support. A third download, -mc263.jar, for 26.3. -mc26.jar now covers 26.1 and 26.2. - Plugin channels are hidden. The list of channels players' games get on join named your plugins. See hide-plugin-channels. - The query port no longer lists your plugins. Its software name shows your fake brand too. - Discord warnings. Paste a webhook into discord-webhook. - Automatic actions. alert-commands runs console commands, like a kick, when someone probes. - `messages.yml`. Every message PluginGuard sends can now be changed. - probes.log stays small. Past log-max-size-mb it moves to probes.old.log. - A full guide in docs/.

Fixed

- Hidden commands now get the exact "Unknown command" reply of a made-up command. The old text gave PluginGuard away on Paper. - "permission-denied" mode uses your server's real no-permission message. - TAB after a hidden command no longer lists plugin names (for example /version ). - Spigot works again. The first blocked command or warning used to throw an error. - An update installed without a restart no longer leaves the old copy running. - Aggressive mode no longer hides `/pluginguard` from staff. - A mistyped `hide-mode` no longer makes `/pl` answer nothing. It warns and uses unknown-command.

[1.4.0] - 2026-09-27

Added

- Minecraft 26.3 support. A third download, -mc263.jar, for 26.3. -mc26.jar now covers 26.1 and 26.2. - Plugin channels are hidden. The list of channels players' games get on join named your plugins. See hide-plugin-channels. - The query port no longer lists your plugins. Its software name shows your fake brand too. - Discord warnings. Paste a webhook into discord-webhook. - Automatic actions. alert-commands runs console commands, like a kick, when someone probes. - `messages.yml`. Every message PluginGuard sends can now be changed. - probes.log stays small. Past log-max-size-mb it moves to probes.old.log. - A full guide in docs/.

Fixed

- Hidden commands now get the exact "Unknown command" reply of a made-up command. The old text gave PluginGuard away on Paper. - "permission-denied" mode uses your server's real no-permission message. - TAB after a hidden command no longer lists plugin names (for example /version ). - Spigot works again. The first blocked command or warning used to throw an error. - An update installed without a restart no longer leaves the old copy running. - Aggressive mode no longer hides `/pluginguard` from staff. - A mistyped `hide-mode` no longer makes `/pl` answer nothing. It warns and uses unknown-command.

[1.3.0] - 2026-07-07

- New: built-in update checking. PluginGuard now checks Modrinth (with GitHub Releases as a fallback) for new versions and announces them to admins. /pluginguard update gives check, download (fetches the verified jar, confirms its checksum, and stages it in the server's update folder to install on the next restart), restore (roll back to the previous jar), ignore <version>, unignore <version>, and status. Controlled by the new update section in config.yml (mode: off / check-only / notify / download / auto-stage; default notify — nothing is ever downloaded without opting in). Minecraft 26.x servers automatically follow the -mc26 build line. Degrades to plain-text notices on Spigot where Adventure is absent.

[1.3.0] - 2026-07-07

- New: built-in update checking. PluginGuard now checks Modrinth (with GitHub Releases as a fallback) for new versions and announces them to admins. /pluginguard update gives check, download (fetches the verified jar, confirms its checksum, and stages it in the server's update folder to install on the next restart), restore (roll back to the previous jar), ignore <version>, unignore <version>, and status. Controlled by the new update section in config.yml (mode: off / check-only / notify / download / auto-stage; default notify — nothing is ever downloaded without opting in). Minecraft 26.x servers automatically follow the -mc26 build line. Degrades to plain-text notices on Spigot where Adventure is absent.

[1.2.0] - 2026-07-02

- Real Minecraft 26.x support: one codebase now builds two jars, selected with -Pmc=<line> (mirrors AntiDupePro's release model). - ./gradlew shadowJar -Pmc=21 -> PluginGuard-1.2.0.jar (compiled against Paper API 1.21.11, Java 21 bytecode - for 1.21.x servers). - ./gradlew shadowJar -Pmc=26 -> PluginGuard-1.2.0-mc26.jar (compiled against Paper API 26.1.2, Java 25 bytecode - for 26.x servers). - New: in-game server-brand spoofing. PaperServerListPingEvent only covered the server-list ping; the brand shown in the F3 debug screen (and read by "server brand" client mods) travels separately in the minecraft:brand plugin-message channel, sent during the configuration phase before a player fully joins. PluginGuard now injects a Netty pipeline handler at the server-channel level (TinyProtocol-style, before login) and rewrites that payload to fake-server-brand. Reuses the existing hide-server-brand toggle. Reflection on plain paper-api, no ProtocolLib/paperweight; fails open (Spigot's remapped internals degrade to ping-only spoofing, as before). - Hardened the command-preprocess parser: it now skips any whitespace between the slash and the command token before matching (/ plugins, /<tab>plugins), so a padded command can't slip past the guard on a dispatcher that tolerates it. - New: block-namespaced-commands (default: on). Blocks every namespaced command (/essentials:home, /luckperms:lp, ...) and strips namespaced entries from tab completion - the namespace before the colon is the plugin's name, so a single namespaced command confirmed a plugin's presence even with its bare alias hidden. Namespaced probes are recorded at high weight (3) by the detector. - Fixed: block-bukkit-commands documented that it blocks minecraft:-prefixed commands but only ever blocked bukkit:. It now blocks both, as documented. - Fixed: block-unknown-commands was read from the config but never enforced. It now works: when a player runs a plugin command they lack permission for, PluginGuard cancels it and answers with the vanilla unknown-command line before the plugin can leak its existence through a "You don't have permission" reply. (Applies to commands that declare a permission; not tracked by the detector, since legitimate players hit permission walls routinely.) - Fixed: probe-detector alert details (recent labels, window age) are now snapshotted inside the tracker lock, closing a small race where a concurrent probe from the same player could skew the alert message. - /pluginguard now tab-completes its subcommands (reload, status). - /version spoof no longer wraps the fake brand in literal escaped quotes. - Build: Kotlin 2.3.20; plain (non-shaded) jar task disabled - only the shaded jar is ever released.

[1.2.0] - 2026-07-02

- Real Minecraft 26.x support: one codebase now builds two jars, selected with -Pmc=<line> (mirrors AntiDupePro's release model). - ./gradlew shadowJar -Pmc=21 -> PluginGuard-1.2.0.jar (compiled against Paper API 1.21.11, Java 21 bytecode - for 1.21.x servers). - ./gradlew shadowJar -Pmc=26 -> PluginGuard-1.2.0-mc26.jar (compiled against Paper API 26.1.2, Java 25 bytecode - for 26.x servers). - New: in-game server-brand spoofing. PaperServerListPingEvent only covered the server-list ping; the brand shown in the F3 debug screen (and read by "server brand" client mods) travels separately in the minecraft:brand plugin-message channel, sent during the configuration phase before a player fully joins. PluginGuard now injects a Netty pipeline handler at the server-channel level (TinyProtocol-style, before login) and rewrites that payload to fake-server-brand. Reuses the existing hide-server-brand toggle. Reflection on plain paper-api, no ProtocolLib/paperweight; fails open (Spigot's remapped internals degrade to ping-only spoofing, as before). - Hardened the command-preprocess parser: it now skips any whitespace between the slash and the command token before matching (/ plugins, /<tab>plugins), so a padded command can't slip past the guard on a dispatcher that tolerates it. - New: block-namespaced-commands (default: on). Blocks every namespaced command (/essentials:home, /luckperms:lp, ...) and strips namespaced entries from tab completion - the namespace before the colon is the plugin's name, so a single namespaced command confirmed a plugin's presence even with its bare alias hidden. Namespaced probes are recorded at high weight (3) by the detector. - Fixed: block-bukkit-commands documented that it blocks minecraft:-prefixed commands but only ever blocked bukkit:. It now blocks both, as documented. - Fixed: block-unknown-commands was read from the config but never enforced. It now works: when a player runs a plugin command they lack permission for, PluginGuard cancels it and answers with the vanilla unknown-command line before the plugin can leak its existence through a "You don't have permission" reply. (Applies to commands that declare a permission; not tracked by the detector, since legitimate players hit permission walls routinely.) - Fixed: probe-detector alert details (recent labels, window age) are now snapshotted inside the tracker lock, closing a small race where a concurrent probe from the same player could skew the alert message. - /pluginguard now tab-completes its subcommands (reload, status). - /version spoof no longer wraps the fake brand in literal escaped quotes. - Build: Kotlin 2.3.20; plain (non-shaded) jar task disabled - only the shaded jar is ever released.

[1.1.0] - 2026-06-01

- Probe logging and pattern detection. PluginGuard now records when players try to enumerate the plugin list and can alert online admins when a player crosses a configurable weighted-score threshold within a sliding window. - Weighted categories: high (3) for bukkit:/minecraft: prefixes and /icanhasbukkit; medium (2) for /pl, /plugins, /ver, /version, /about; low (1) for common-plugin enumeration (/lp, /we, /co, ...). - /help and /? are deliberately never tracked. - Optional append-only plugins/PluginGuard/probes.log audit trail. - In-game alerts gated by new pluginguard.alerts permission (default: op). - All I/O dispatched via Paper/Folia's async and global-region schedulers, so the event hot path stays cheap and Folia-safe. - Per-player state lives in a ConcurrentHashMap and is cleared on quit. - Honeypot commands. Admins can list fake commands in honeypot-commands: that no legitimate user would ever type — a single honeypot hit weighs 5, so by default it triggers an alert immediately. - /pluginguard status now reports detection state, honeypot count, and file-log state.

[1.0.0] - 2026-06-01

- Target Paper API 1.21.4; supports Minecraft 1.21.x (Java 21+) and 26.x.x (Java 25+). - Folia support declared via folia-supported: true. - Graceful degradation on Spigot/Bukkit: the Paper-only PaperServerListPingEvent listener is now registered conditionally via class-presence check, so the plugin loads on non-Paper servers (server-brand spoofing simply becomes a no-op). - All player-facing messages now use the Adventure Component API instead of the deprecated legacy color-code strings. - /version spoof now reflects the running server's Minecraft version dynamically instead of a hard-coded 1.21.1. - Build: Kotlin 2.1.20, Shadow 8.3.6, jar version is now wired through plugin.yml via ${version}. - Thread-safe, lock-free reload: all config-derived state is held in an immutable Settings snapshot behind a @Volatile reference, so /pluginguard reload swaps the whole snapshot atomically and concurrent event handlers on different Folia region threads always observe a consistent set of values without taking any lock. - Hot-path allocation reduced: PlayerCommandPreprocessEvent no longer lowercases the entire message or splits on spaces — only the base command token is sliced out and lowercased. Saves work on every command a player types, proportional to message length. - README rewritten as proper UTF-8 (was UTF-16 with BOM).

Release.