Methods of bans

Nyope. No actual GMs in the game except in towns and during events. It's not like in MapleStory where there's the MWLB and GMs patrolling hotspots. Because every dungeon is an instance, it would be way too much of a hassle to enter each host client and check.

I'm fairly sure they can run simple algorithms based on the avatar images taken before boats start, but there's a way to bypass that, not to mention Nexon is too wary (or maybe just incompetent) to do so. The hi-scores can also be a source, but again, Nexon is working towards that at a snail's pace.

There are the occasional ban-waves, but those were always after major exploits. The first one occurred after Tieve's Box, the second after the Item exploit, albeit this time it was much smaller, the third one occurred after the labyrinth exploit was patched, and the fourth one occurred pretty much randomly, and it was very scattered, the way it was conducted, banning as many legitimate players as well as hackers... ._.

I am somewhat doubtful of nexon's ability to modify the database intentionally outside of maintenances. It seems that every time they have an event that says items will be added to your inventory while you are logged in, they later change it to be added during a maintenance. Avatars are easy enough to update/block, and since they aren't public, aren't likely to be reported.

As I was still playing during the open beta, I recall they had only banned the toons instead of accounts that were dealing with the tieve box

Nah, they banned the accounts. Minor abusers got a 2-week ban while the major exploiters (people that made and remade thousands of characters) got permanently banned. I know. I was one of them. :P

It was very easy to ticket your account back though. My closest friend irl exploited the shit out of it, and she got her account back a week later.

That was one of the luckier cases, my tickets were never responded to.

The feature is implemented, Valve's source engine has the ban command for admins, so it's not surprising.

But just because it can happen doesn't mean it will happen. ^^ Especially not when it comes to Nexon America.

my stupid friend was using Hack for high profile I.E. didn't bypass score board and get banned lately

Their company's so called community manager CAN'T even take the advise to make a sub forum for market section, and their IT department can't predict 90% of how long the maintenance going to last. What can you expect?