Never trust the client
Every exploit ultimately comes down to a client asserting something the server accepted without checking. The client runs on hardware the attacker controls, and anything it reports can be forged. Sentinel-7 is built on the assumption that the client is hostile and that the server must be able to derive the truth independently.
That principle shapes the whole architecture. Rather than asking whether a player is cheating, the system asks whether what the client claims is physically possible given the state the server already knows about.
Detection as validation
Flight, speed manipulation, teleportation and no-clip are all the same class of problem: a position update inconsistent with the previous state, the elapsed time and the geometry. Validating movement against a model of what is achievable catches all of them, including variants nobody has written a specific check for.
Aim-based exploits are handled statistically rather than instantaneously. A single implausible shot means little; a consistent pattern of impossible accuracy or superhuman target acquisition across a session is a much stronger signal, and one that is far harder to hide by tuning an exploit down.
Attribution across accounts
Banning an account is a speed bump if making another is free. Hardware fingerprinting and device identification let Sentinel-7 correlate accounts belonging to the same actor, so enforcement lands on the person rather than on the disposable identity.
This is handled carefully. Correlation supports enforcement decisions rather than making them automatically, because shared devices are common and a false correlation punishes someone who did nothing. IP intelligence is treated as weak evidence for the same reason.
Evidence and cost
Every detection produces an evidence record: what was observed, what made it implausible, and the surrounding state. That record is what makes an enforcement action defensible on appeal and what makes it possible to tell a genuine bug from genuine cheating.
The detection work is designed to be nearly free for legitimate players. Validation runs against state the server already maintains, so honest sessions carry effectively no additional cost. An anti-cheat that degrades the experience for everyone in order to inconvenience a few has failed regardless of what it catches.