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How anti-cheats catch cheaters using memory heuristics

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Re: How anti-cheats catch cheaters using memory heuristics

#101

Post by smolder »

izzydata wrote: post #78
ARandomerDude wrote: post #2

Serious question for you gamers out there: Why would a person go to such great lengths to cheat at a video game? Is there a monetary incentive? Otherwise, it seems like a lot of effort just to increase one's standing on a leader board.

With the rise of esports there is a lot of money to be made with no real consequences. It isn't illegal to essentially steal prize money by cheating at a video game. Also game streaming is big now and being "good" attracts more viewers so there is also a lot of money to be made by cheating. I have completely stopped taking video games seriously in any capacity as I am pretty confident the entire culture of competitiv…

I've run into people with this attitude before - they are quick to accuse good players of cheating who seem (to them,) to have inhuman accuracy.

I've been accused of cheating many many times, despite never cheating. I was blacklisted from a community counterstrike server back in 2002 or so for "cheating" after a lucky couple games where I got a LOT of headshots with guns that aren't very good accuracy wise. I was playing with very good players, and even some of them thought I was running cheats.

My experience says people vastly underestimate how far a good lucky streak and adequate reaction time + aim can take someone. Plenty of friends have similar experiences of being accused of cheating when they play well.

It probably doesn't help that the asynchronous client-server model of fast paced FPS games introduces weird effects with respect to latency. (I.e. rewriting history to show some high-latency player killed you after you've already observed visual/audio effects for their own death.)

Re: How anti-cheats catch cheaters using memory heuristics

#102

Post by SilasX »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #2

Serious question for you gamers out there: Why would a person go to such great lengths to cheat at a video game? Is there a monetary incentive? Otherwise, it seems like a lot of effort just to increase one's standing on a leader board.

I cheated on the original Halo (PC, online capture-the-flag) because I really sucked at it compared to everyone else, which made it unbalanced and therefore not fun to plan (not saying it was right, just filling in the understanding you were asking for).

I didn't look into aiming bots, but I did figure out how to edit the resource files to make the walls transparent so I could camp the flag and see players coming for it long before I was supposed to.

Re: How anti-cheats catch cheaters using memory heuristics

#103

Post by [deleted] »

withinboredom wrote: post #68
kstenerud wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are different kinds of cheaters. Some like the rush of doing something "naughty". Some want quick results. Some want prestige. Some want to explore and exploit the system itself rather than the game. Some want to gold farm. Some want to be like gods. Some want to automate the tedious parts. Some want to take down big mobs that can't be taken down any other way. I once wrote about 400k of Blech code for Macroque…

Some just want to enjoy the story-telling and skip the bs.

[deleted]

Re: How anti-cheats catch cheaters using memory heuristics

#104

Post by TeMPOraL »

Shivetya wrote: post #97

well this sent me down a rabbit hole that is utterly fascinating. with regards to cheating, I understand the need to present a fair playing experience to all customers but as with anything else, people are the one variable we have the least control over and with the numbers games as with any service have to deal with you are guaranteed to get bad actors. the simple avoidance to those who see this is spyware/etc is no…

> the simple avoidance to those who see this is spyware/etc is not you play. I do not see this choice as a bad one. for some it is abhorrent but for others playing where cheaters have free reign is just as abhorrent.

Problem is, it's all-or-nothing. I'd be better if games could be sandboxed, so that its cheat-prevention spyware doesn't leak to the rest of the system. But I suppose the practical answer to that would be, "buy a console".

Re: How anti-cheats catch cheaters using memory heuristics

#105

Post by crazygringo »

m4rtink wrote: post #72

Heavy duty sandboxing of game software can't come quickly enough. Game software reading arbitrary memory outside of its own on a machine is half step from outright malware and must stop.

Sandboxing prevents code from getting out of a sandbox.

It doesn't prevent outside code (i.e. your cheat software) getting in.

As long as you control the computer running the sandbox, you can have it do whatever you want.

Re: How anti-cheats catch cheaters using memory heuristics

#106

Post by jerf »

yutuytuyt wrote: post #80
jerf wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People make cheats for money, for online infamy , and for the challenge of it" In all seriousness, I think there's a non-trivial aspect to it where human psychology is misfiring in the modern era. Certain people, mostly younger, have a drive to show off to potential mates, some more so than others, and superficially, spending lots of time creating cheats like this looks like it's leading to social approval and stand…

>reality, you're getting nothing. It doesn't work Some people do it just to challenge themselves or to learn Free software wouldnt exist if everybody used your approach. You sounds as if you tried to say that putting effort into something without $$ as result is bad?

The fact that I think people are doing something for a given reason does not imply that reason is the only reason that thing is done, that other reasons to do that thing are invalid, or that other things done for the same reason are invalid.

Dollars didn't even come up in my post. I think you read what you were expecting to read rather than what I wrote.

Re: How anti-cheats catch cheaters using memory heuristics

#107

Post by Wowfunhappy »

ggggtez wrote: post #94
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be a distinction between single player and multiplayer games. I've absolutely used cheat-engine in single player games. If it was up to me, entering the Konami code would unlock everything in every single player game. Everyone has the right to access content they've purchased in the way and order they see fit. But when you're playing with other people there's really no excuse.

I think this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of multiplayer games, to be honest. Consider games like WoW. Ask anyone what the game is like, and you'll find that the game "doesn't really begin" until you are already max level. That is, the "real" content of the game is all of the Guild-related activities. Everything up to that point is more or less an extended tutorial that lasts for dozens of hours. Cheating bec…

Sigh, you're right, I was thinking of FPS games and the like. Which still have stupid leveling systems, but they're less meaningful.

What I do in fact fundamentally not understand is why games are designed this way†. Good on WoW for apparently letting players skip it nowadays. I admit, I'd have trouble faulting someone who wanted to cheat their way through.

† Outside of games that explicitly want to sell micro-transactions. I understand that all to well.

Re: How anti-cheats catch cheaters using memory heuristics

#108

Post by saagarjha »

jerf wrote: post #67
papreclip wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People make cheats for money, for online infamy, and for the challenge of it People use cheats because it makes the game more enjoyable. In FPS, someone can shoot you before you have time to react. In RTS, someone can step out of the darkness with an army that traps yours at just the right moment. Cheats replace those unpleasant experiences with pleasant ones where you ambush the enemy and fight them with an advantag…

"People make cheats for money, for online infamy , and for the challenge of it" In all seriousness, I think there's a non-trivial aspect to it where human psychology is misfiring in the modern era. Certain people, mostly younger, have a drive to show off to potential mates, some more so than others, and superficially, spending lots of time creating cheats like this looks like it's leading to social approval and stand…

> Certain people, mostly younger, have a drive to show off to potential mates, some more so than others, and superficially, spending lots of time creating cheats like this looks like it's leading to social approval and standing.

I feel like sitting inside at your computer working on cheats isn't the best way to "show off to potential mates".

Re: How anti-cheats catch cheaters using memory heuristics

#109

Post by smileybarry »

mike_hock wrote: post #42
cortesoft wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You bought a game from them... you are already letting them run arbitrary code on your machine.

The original game code, as well as automatically installed updates can be vetted and compared to other installations. Any malware injected into either of them risks being exposed over time. This allows the server to execute arbitrary, ephemeral code fragments on any client at any time, with no trace. If the server is ever compromised, so are all clients, instantly. This is absolutely insane from a security POV. Just…

Some games -- recently Overwatch -- send hotfixes as live hotpatches. Those couldn't be scrutinized by anyone except the developer until they're included in the next formal patch.

Re: How anti-cheats catch cheaters using memory heuristics

#110

Post by mnowicki »

lmilcin wrote: post #100
ARandomerDude wrote: post #2

Serious question for you gamers out there: Why would a person go to such great lengths to cheat at a video game? Is there a monetary incentive? Otherwise, it seems like a lot of effort just to increase one's standing on a leader board.

You are making mistake by trying to explain somebody elses motives for cheating by using your value system. First, these are not great lengths when all you need to do is download and install an application. Second, some people don't get as much kick from playing a game as from dominating other players. They want to win the game in any way possible, but don't consider winning fairly to be any more satisfying than winn…

I think that's only one subset of cheaters, many people use cheats in non-pvp games or use cheats in a specific server where everyone has the same cheats. It's often just a way to get more replayability out of a game someone really enjoys.

In monster hunter, the speedrunning community is migrating to PC because the ability to use cheats to negate the huge amount of RNG present in the game. Cheating is usually looked down on by speedrunners for obvious reasons but because of the difficulty of speedrunning a game with so much RNG(not rng that effects your gameplay, but that effects your ability to play at all), modders are basically making a new game with the rng removed and people are speedrunning that, and it's widely accepted as necessary by the community.

So cheating is often just a means of either getting something new out of a game or 'fixing' aspects of a game that the community takes issue with.

I agree that players like you describe, who's main goal is griefing other players, also make up a large portion of cheaters, just wanted to further elaborate on your response that not all cheaters are doing it to 'move up the leaderboard'

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