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Anti-cheat kernel driver

na.leagueoflegends.com

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Re: Anti-cheat kernel driver

#61

Post by matheusmoreira »

nitrogen wrote: post #59
matheusmoreira wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It betrays a fundamental lack of respect for the user of the computer. They don't think of themselves as guests who have the privilege of being installed on people's computers. They actually think they own our machines. In their opinion, the mere existence of cheats is an affront to their divine authority over our domains. To them, we are merely an adversary who must be attacked and defeated preemptively before…

Have you ever played a multiplayer game when someone else is cheating?

Yes. I don't see how that is relevant though.

It doesn't matter how bad the cheating gets. Sacrificing our computing freedom and privacy is simply not okay. These principles are far more important than having an online gaming experience that's free of cheaters. It is better to crack and remove the game's invasive modules than to let it run freely on our machines.

The truth is online multiplayer gaming is fundamentally broken. We're playing with strangers we don't know much less trust. We must play only with people we know personally and trust.

Re: Anti-cheat kernel driver

#62

Post by floatingatoll »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #57
bob1029 wrote: post #42

Ah yes. A kernel-level security feature provided by a software company wholly-owned by a Chinese conglomerate. I do not think I will continue running their software on my machines. Also, many other posters here have commented that kernel-level mitigations are futile in the face of hypervisor or hardware attacks. What's to stop me from altering system memory arbitrarily using a PCIe device I control externally? How wo…

Problem with those systems are the forums full of completely innocent people being banned

Many will read “completely innocent” as sarcasm. Do you intend it as such?

Re: Anti-cheat kernel driver

#63

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

floatingatoll wrote: post #62
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem with those systems are the forums full of completely innocent people being banned

Many will read “completely innocent” as sarcasm. Do you intend it as such?

To be fair, I meant actually innocent people, but the unintended sarcasm is funny

Re: Anti-cheat kernel driver

#64

Post by blotter_paper »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #58
JohnFen wrote: post #2

I understand why anticheat software exists, and why it's getting increasingly intrusive (and therefore risky). I'm not arguing that there's anything wrong with it. That said, the existence of cheaters is one of the big reasons why I don't play such games -- and that games include anticheating software is another one of the big reasons, equal to the existence of cheating in terms of how objectionable I find it. From m…

The fact is online multiplayer games are fundamentally broken. It depends on trust and that's rare because almost no one knows each other. Everyone's a stranger. It's just random people playing together. People find ways to cheat even on trusted platforms like game consoles. People should be playing online with others they personally know and trust.

That's pretty much true for real-time games. There are turn-based games that can be played on a company-provided server, and some extreme cases where games are actually decentralised (like blockchain chess). The open source RTS 0ad used to have every client compute every game state, but I believe that's no longer the case. Without smart contracts you fundamentally can still have decentralised computation of game state, and even preserve some asymmetrical knowledge by having players encrypt orders and share keys after all players have submitted orders. A decentralised game of Diplomacy could be implemented this way. Have each player submit a seed and use the combined seed as the basis for a pseudorandom number, and you could implement something like Civilization in a trustworthy manner without a central server of any sort.

Re: Anti-cheat kernel driver

#65

Post by DSingularity »

bob1029 wrote: post #42

Ah yes. A kernel-level security feature provided by a software company wholly-owned by a Chinese conglomerate. I do not think I will continue running their software on my machines. Also, many other posters here have commented that kernel-level mitigations are futile in the face of hypervisor or hardware attacks. What's to stop me from altering system memory arbitrarily using a PCIe device I control externally? How wo…

It can be done. Main way to detect is to detect the footprint of the VMExits.

Re: Anti-cheat kernel driver

#66

Post by craftinator »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #61
nitrogen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever played a multiplayer game when someone else is cheating?

Yes. I don't see how that is relevant though. It doesn't matter how bad the cheating gets. Sacrificing our computing freedom and privacy is simply not okay. These principles are far more important than having an online gaming experience that's free of cheaters. It is better to crack and remove the game's invasive modules than to let it run freely on our machines. The truth is online multiplayer gaming is fundamentall…

Yeah! We don't negotiate with terrorists! I want to install this game, except for the parts I don't like, even though they do what I want them to! It's wrong of them to include stuff I don't like in their thing I want to use!

Seriously man, it's a game. If you don't like their methods of anticheat implementation, feel free not to play! It's easy. You won't be missed by those millions of internet strangers. I like that Riot was so upfront about this. They did a great job of describing what they were doing, why they were doing it, how it was being done, and did it in a way that wasn't dry as a chalk ball in the Sahara... So don't "sacrifice your computer freedom". Freedom to choose what's running on your OS is the same freedom they have choosing to use kernel level anticheat. Your attack of that freedom is pretty distasteful.

Re: Anti-cheat kernel driver

#67

Post by craftinator »

guug wrote: post #39
jitl wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decided to downvote you for both a gate-keeping attitude (how dare a non-SWE else understand a bit of this stuff?) and for name calling, etc. Please consider learning some empathy.

I decided to up-vote him because I think technical writing that is aimed at an advanced audience has its place, and that he is well within his rights to express his frustrations in a crass and comedic manner. Please don't over-project your sensibilities.

So did the article not meet the standards of technical writing?

Re: Anti-cheat kernel driver

#68

Post by craftinator »

tomc1985 wrote: post #25

These horrible analogies make me want to stab the writer with a pen How about he just writes technically and lets reddit comments translate? I'm so sick of writers' concerns for illiterate proles (along with, in this case, a seeming need to maintain the energy and punch of a memetastic for-12-year-olds YouTuber) ruining perfectly good technical writing

How about you are not the target audience?

Re: Anti-cheat kernel driver

#69

Post by dang »

Franciscouzo wrote: post #35

Permalink: https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-null-anti-... If you don't live in north america, you'll get redirected to a local subdomain and get a 404

OK, we've changed to that from https://leagueoflegends.com/news/dev/dev-null-anti-cheat-ker.... Thanks!

Re: Anti-cheat kernel driver

#70

Post by matheusmoreira »

craftinator wrote: post #66
matheusmoreira wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I don't see how that is relevant though. It doesn't matter how bad the cheating gets. Sacrificing our computing freedom and privacy is simply not okay. These principles are far more important than having an online gaming experience that's free of cheaters. It is better to crack and remove the game's invasive modules than to let it run freely on our machines. The truth is online multiplayer gaming is fundamentall…

Yeah! We don't negotiate with terrorists! I want to install this game, except for the parts I don't like, even though they do what I want them to! It's wrong of them to include stuff I don't like in their thing I want to use! Seriously man, it's a game. If you don't like their methods of anticheat implementation, feel free not to play! It's easy. You won't be missed by those millions of internet strangers. I like tha…

> We don't negotiate with terrorists!

It's not like they're open to negotiation either. They only offer the game on their non-negotiable terms.

Fighting back without compromising is actually the only way to deal with these one-sided take-it-or-leave-it deals. It worked for obnoxious pop-up ads on the internet, it's likely to work for invasive ads and tracking and there's no reason to believe it wouldn't also work in this case.

> I want to install this game, except for the parts I don't like, even though they do what I want them to! It's wrong of them to include stuff I don't like in their thing I want to use!

Nothing wrong with any of this. If I don't like something, I should be able to get rid of it. It's software.

Anti-cheating software actually used to be optional. I used to have the option to host or search for servers with anti-cheating disabled. During installation, many games offered me the option to install the anti-cheating module. Battlefield 2 comes to mind.

Once installed and in use, it was still pretty invasive. However, it wasn't straight up forced on players like it is now.

> Freedom to choose what's running on your OS is the same freedom they have choosing to use kernel level anticheat.

People also have the freedom to get rid of the anti-cheating software and make it look like nothing's been tampered with. Banning someone who did this and proceeded to play without cheating would be a false positive. People are already getting banned for the crime of running an online game on Linux.

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