Maphack
A maphack is a cheat in real-time strategy games that enables the player to see more of the map than the game intends them to see. A common feature in multiplayer real-time strategy games is the inability for the player to see outside the visibility range of the individual units and buildings that the player controls. This concept is called the fog of war or the Blue Fog of Death. Maphacking enables a cheating player to bypass the fog of war, giving them an advantage over a player who is playing legitimately. This advantage is quite large for most of the real-time strategy games that rely on the rock-paper-scissors dynamic to balance out the units' varying strengths and weaknesses.
Maphacking has also been used to cheat in other games where map visibility provides an advantage, most notably in Blizzard Entertainment's RPG Diablo II.
The maphack is functionally equivalent to a form of the wallhack for first-person shooter games which allows players to see through walls.
ShadowFrench
In Warcraft III the most popular version of the Maphack is created by ShadowFrench. ShadowFrench's maphack allows users to see the entire map, detect invisible units, detect clones, change the camera angle, display Hit point bars and enables resource trading in custom maps with resource trade locks. This maphack is detectable by Blizzard's Warden anti-cheat program.
ZoiD
ZoiD's maphack(zMap) had several features ShadowFrench's maphack did not. It allowed the user to see hero movement lines, and had a feature that made the player's workers go to the gold mine when the game started. This maphack was not detectable by Blizzard's Warden anti-cheat program. This maphack does not work in the latest patch, and is no longer in production.
In recent years people using maphacks on Battle.net have been caught, maphacking is a violation of Blizzard Entertainment terms of use, which condemns the use of any third party software. Thousands have had their accounts banned and in extreme cases, those caught cheating have had their CD key banned.
