Anti-Xray on Fabric and NeoForge: Block X-Ray Without Paper

Every Minecraft server administrator has faced the exact same nightmare: a player joins the world, digs straight down to the negative layers, and mines three stacks of diamonds and ten ancient debris in under an hour. On a Paper or Purpur server, server owners have relied on built-in native Anti-Xray engines for years. But what can you do when running a modded server on Fabric or NeoForge, such as for Cobblemon, Create, or an adventure modpack?

For a long time, the common community advice was blunt: « If you want real Anti-Xray, switch to Paper. » The problem is that modern modded servers simply cannot run on Paper. Hybrid servers are notorious for desyncs and game-breaking crashes with modern mods, and standard anticheats cannot prevent a hacked client from seeing ores hidden underground.

Fortunately, the modded server ecosystem has evolved. Today, you can protect your Fabric or NeoForge server against X-ray without giving up your mods. In practice, the path comes down to three choices:

1. On Paper or Purpur, for Java players only, enable native Anti-Xray in mode 2.
2. On Fabric or NeoForge, install Meow Anti-Xray on the server and add your modded ores to hidden-blocks.
3. As a complement, MinerTrack watches for unnatural mining paths: it does not replace obfuscation.

Here is how the protection works, what it actually stops, and how to set these tools up.

How X-Ray Cheats Actually Work (And What Can Be Blocked)

To pick the right protection, you first need to understand how Minecraft sends the world to players. When a player moves, the server sends nearby blocks as network packets (chunk packets). By default, the server sends every block in the chunk, including ores buried under stone or deepslate.

A cheater then uses a transparent texture pack or a hacked client to hide the stone. Their game already knows the exact location of every vein, because the server sent that information.

Administrators often mix up four different threats:

• Block X-ray: highlighting hidden ore blocks inside the stone. This is the main target of Anti-Xray systems.
• Chest ESP / Container ESP: locating chests, barrels, and monster spawners. These are block entities with inventories, so they follow different sync rules.
• Player ESP and radars: seeing players through walls. That depends on entity tracking range (tracking-range), not on the block layout.
• Combat and movement cheats: flight, speed hacks, or killaura. Those belong to a movement anticheat such as GrimAC, not to Anti-Xray.

No system can hide information the server must send for the client to render the scene. For buried ores, though, the server can refuse to reveal their real type until they are actually uncovered.

How the Reference Works: Paper’s Native Anti-Xray

In the Bukkit ecosystem, Paper pioneered server-side packet obfuscation. Instead of sending the actual underground layout, the server modifies hidden blocks on the fly before sending chunk packets across the network.

In its configuration (paper-world-defaults.yml), Paper offers three modes:

• Engine Mode 1 (simple masking): All ores not exposed to air or transparent blocks are replaced with stone, deepslate, or netherrack in packets sent to the player. As soon as a player mines an adjacent block, the server sends an update and the ore appears normally. Resource usage is minimal, but cheaters near caves can occasionally spot exposed outlines.
• Engine Mode 2 (fake ore injection): The usual deterrent against X-ray packs. Genuine ores are hidden, and the server also injects random fake diamond, gold, and ancient debris throughout solid stone. When a cheater enables X-ray, their screen becomes an unreadable mess of thousands of fake ores that vanish the moment they dig toward them.
• Engine Mode 3 (per-layer injection): same logic as Mode 2, but one random fake block for a whole chunk layer. The protection stays the same type, with a lower network load when players join.

This is the reference design: protection runs on the server, it does not create visual false positives, and honest players install nothing. If Bedrock clients join through GeyserMC, test the mode in-game. Mode 2 has already been linked to frozen Bedrock worlds; Mode 3 has been reported as a workaround. That is not official compatibility.

The Solution for Fabric and NeoForge: Meow Anti-Xray

On a Fabric or NeoForge modded server, Paper’s engine is unavailable. Meow Anti-Xray was created specifically to solve this problem.

This mod installs strictly on the server in your mods/ directory. Meow is not installed on the client. On Cobblemon or Create, players keep the pack client; Meow does not add anything extra.

Meow Anti-Xray brings Paper-style packet obfuscation directly to modern Fabric and NeoForge:

• It intercepts chunk packets before they are transmitted over the network using dedicated worker threads.
• It hides underground ores and injects fake blocks based on your chosen engine mode in config/meowantixray.yml.
• It supports dimension-specific configuration (Overworld, Nether, End, and custom modded dimensions) with custom hidden blocks (hidden-blocks) and replacement blocks (replacement-blocks).
• It includes atomic configuration validation: /antixray validate checks the file on disk without applying it, while /antixray reload applies changes safely and falls back to the previous configuration if syntax errors are detected, preventing accidental ore exposure.
• In-game diagnostic commands like /antixray inspect <world> <x> <y> <z> and /antixray status allow administrators to check a block and the engine load in real time.

The Modded Ore Trap: Don’t Forget Custom Blocks!

Here is a critical detail for modded servers: by default, Meow Anti-Xray only targets vanilla ores. If your server runs mods that introduce new underground resources (such as Zinc from Create, evolution stones from Cobblemon, or Osmium from Mekanism), you must manually add their exact block IDs (such as create:zinc_ore and create:deepslate_zinc_ore) to the hidden-blocks list in config/meowantixray.yml. Otherwise, modded ores will remain completely visible to X-ray users.

The Behavioral Alternative: Detection With MinerTrack

Packet obfuscation is ideal for blocking direct vision, but it does use some CPU power when generating and sending chunk packets. Furthermore, it cannot stop a player who relies on automated mining bots (like Baritone) or someone who extracted your world seed to locate structures.

This is where a behavioral detection tool like MinerTrack comes into play.

Instead of altering chunk packets sent to the client, MinerTrack monitors how players mine in real time and assigns them a suspicion score called a Violation Level (VL):

• Ratio Analysis: It calculates the statistical ratio between regular stone blocks mined and rare ores gathered over a given timeframe.
• Trajectory Analysis: It identifies suspicious sharp turns through solid stone that lead straight to veins without any prior branch mining or exploration.
• Real-Time Alerts & Discord Webhooks: Staff members can view live alert streams in-game using /mtrack verbose (permission minertrack.notify), or relay them directly to a private staff channel via Discord Webhooks for complete incident logs without spamming the in-game chat.
• Automated Sanctions: When a player exceeds configurable VL thresholds, MinerTrack can automatically trigger warnings, freezes, or temporary bans.

MinerTrack ships as a plugin for Paper, Purpur, and Folia, and as a mod for Fabric, NeoForge, and Forge. It does not run on Spigot. The BoxToPlay page above, and one-click panel install, are the plugin in plugins/. On Fabric, NeoForge, or Forge, you need the dedicated mod JAR in mods/: those builds have no BoxToPlay one-click listing.

Tuning and Endgame False Positives

On late-game survival or modded servers, consider adjusting MinerTrack’s sensitivity:

• Players using Haste II beacons and Efficiency V pickaxes naturally excavate stone at breakneck speeds and collect ores much faster.
• Modpacks featuring vein-mining tools (like FTB Ultimine or Ore Excavation) break entire clusters in a single tick, causing sudden violation spikes if your thresholds do not account for mass mining.

Comparison: Which Protection Fits Your Server?

To decide on the right security stack, here is how the three approaches compare:

Recommended Security Strategy for Your Server

Your optimal configuration depends on your server architecture:

1. For Vanilla or Plugin Servers (Survival, SMP, SkyBlock): Stick with Paper or Purpur and enable native Anti-Xray Engine Mode 2 in paper-world-defaults.yml if your players are on Java. You get solid protection without third-party mods. With GeyserMC in the mix, validate the mode in-game: Mode 3 is the more reasonable network choice.
2. For Modded Servers (Fabric or NeoForge): Install Meow Anti-Xray first and declare your modded ores in config/meowantixray.yml. It is the reliable way to get Paper-style peace of mind while keeping your modded gameplay intact.
3. The Full Defense for Public Servers: Pair packet obfuscation (Paper native or Meow Anti-Xray) with MinerTrack for behavioral monitoring. That stops most casual X-ray packs. It does not hide an ore already open to air, a known seed, or a player who mines like everyone else, and MinerTrack will not catch that either.

On a BoxToPlay Minecraft Server, you can install Meow from the mods catalogue and MinerTrack from the plugins catalogue, then fine-tune your configuration in seconds to safeguard your server economy.