The cheater's version of the halting problem.
Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse
31–40 of 153 posts
Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse
#32Cheating in the game "Warzone" has been a really interesting thing to watch unfold. It makes the game really frustrating to play and I have stopped playing it, but outside of that it's interesting to watch players, even high-visibility streamers, attempt to play without getting caught and succeeding at that.
In Warzone the map is huge, and 150 players are split up in to competing squads of 1-4 players. So it becomes very much an information heavy game. Knowing where people are, even when they're hundreds of meters away, is extremely valuable, and that's one of the hacks people have. They see nametags, hitboxes and information for players overlaid on their screen. They also change colour based on if they're in line-of-sight, so you can say "I see that squad, but they can't shoot at me, so I am safe" and that's extremely valuable.
Second to that, they can use aim-assist but the highest-end aimbots are really quite nuanced, and they allow you to smooth out the assisted movements and only auto-aim in specific scenarios, and that makes it really hard to tell they're using an aimbot. It just looks like a really good player. Gone are the "snap to head" aimbots of Counter Strike that were so obvious.
You can report someone all-day-long and they may never get banned because the hack software is competent, and it's hard to demark the difference between "Knowledge you shouldn't be able to have" and "Intuition of a good player".
Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse
#33I played competitive level Quake 3/Quake Live for a number of years, during the height of its popularity. I also have friends who play more modern competitive FPS games, such as CS:GO. Even though QL was only a small online scene, the use aimbots, triggerbots, wallhacks, and similar tools was always very common at the competitive level. Quake Live had very limited anti-cheat functionality, so it was never relied upon…
Can confirm. I was playing Quake Live extremely well one day (for whatever reason??) and a couple of the guys specced me and announced that I, indeed, was not cheating. That led me to wonder how they knew and some searching turned up a few threads about various tools and tricks of the trade WRT that game specifically.
Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse
#34I did something like this with Dota2 where I'd have it monitor the opposing team to save their locations when they appeared on the minimap in a shaded color on a 2nd monitor on that 2nd computer. I used an HDMI splitter and HDMI capture card to send the input to the second computer. I did the CV stuff with opencv library. Taking it a step further as shown in the article could be done to do stuff like auto creep killi…
The meta game of “cheating” sounds way more fun to me than playing any of these games.
Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse
#35This is basically the classic "analog hole."
I remember over a decade ago doing something far less sophisticated to "cheat" in a turn-based projectile physics game --- I used a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomogram printed on transparency and just put it on the monitor to quickly calculate parameters between turns.
Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse
#36The cheater's version of the halting problem.
I would say it's closer to a Turing test.
Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse
#37This is just one example of the "analogue hole" [1] problem shared by all anti-cheat/DRM systems.
At least in theory, there is no technology that can prevent exploits like this short of dystopian levels of surveillance and locking down computing devices even further.
By that I mean encrypted communication on all computer buses (including USB, HDMI), and only allowing access to those busses via physically hardened "secure" enclaves, up to (in the end game) big-brother-like surveillance (think electronic proctoring solutions).
I think that this is exactly the problem with such DRM schemes---the ensuing cat-and-mouse game will inevitably lead to trampling the user's freedoms, because locking down computing devices and environments to ridiculous levels is the only way in which DRM can be made to work.
Of course, for now, cheats like the one featured in the article should be fairly easy to detect (at least from what I've seen in the linked video). The motion of the bot is extremely jerky; a simple rule-based system, or, if you want to be fancy, a neural network based anomaly detection system should be able to detect this.
On the side of the cheat authors, this could be easily circumvented if they include a "calibration phase", where user input trains a simple neural network to stochastically emulate the dynamics of the user's sensor-action loop. The cheat could then act slightly faster than the user, giving them an edge while still using their unique dynamics profile.
I wonder where this will lead eventually, and I genuinely feel sorry for all the people who pour their heart and soul into competitive gaming; I don't think that this kind of cheating is something that can and should (see above) be prevented in the long-run. The best possible outcome I can imagine is that online gaming becomes more cooperative or once more converges back to small groups of people who know and trust each other.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole
Edit: Spelling, grammar, and clarity
Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse
#38One may wonder what exactly is the point in a human watching this auto-playing game system, and whether they'd be better off watching a movie... But another way to look at it is as a preview of the future. Just picture this: a world of machines battling it out for supremacy, and somewhere off to the side there is an almost forgotten human brain. It seems to serve no discernible purpose, and yet it is actually the rea…
Cheats are about two things: money or prestige. People want to get back at the players who so rudely beat them normally, and get high competitive rankings that make them look better than other players in that games community. Or, they use the cheats to create high ranking game accounts to sell to players who want to look good, or they simply cheat to win prize money. It should go without saying that this kind of acti…
The analog to steroids and high-level competition is really interesting, something I've chatted with my friends about a bit.
In some of the highest tier bodybuilding competitions, some people will be using steroids, and because that went unchecked and unspoken, now everyone has to or else they have no chance of competing. If you want to compete and you aren't using steroids, you will lose, so you have to start using them too.
In the game Warzone right now, at least some of the high-tier players are using hacks in competition or at least to get their "High kill game" viral videos on YouTube. So if you want to compete in that space, say make an even more impressive "high kill" game and take that crown, you have to start using hacks too.
The money on the line is bonkers too, as well as the ad-revenue from popular YouTube videos, you've got real competitions dropping 300k on online comps where it's incredibly easy to get away with cheating, so of course people will do it. Because some people do it, others will have to as well, and it goes unspoken because of all the money and prestige involved.
Because it's advantageous for the competitions holders themselves to be hosting the highest level of competition for the sport, if Warzone comps or these bodybuilding competitions had to admit that all their most popular and highest performing participants were frauds, it would be incredibly embarrassing (and unprofitable) for everyone, and so it stays unspoken.
Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse
#39I played competitive level Quake 3/Quake Live for a number of years, during the height of its popularity. I also have friends who play more modern competitive FPS games, such as CS:GO. Even though QL was only a small online scene, the use aimbots, triggerbots, wallhacks, and similar tools was always very common at the competitive level. Quake Live had very limited anti-cheat functionality, so it was never relied upon…
I side with you.
Also being a pro-gamer in RTS years ago, I can relate. There are many small steps between n00b level and mastery and a lot has to come together to be at expert level in gaming. Usually experts can play in variable settings, cheaters only in one particular. Experts can adapt, while cheaters usually not. Usually real talk about how you handled and interpreted a certain situation will show the difference. Cheaters usually are not the most talkative.
However sometimes there is a make or break in a certain game. While cheaters are usually spotted in the long run, it spoils almost every time the fun in the short run.
Missed opportunities to tourney advancement, frustration etc. can make or break players. Are we talking about the true winner, Carl Lewis, in the 100m finals in Seoul in 1988 or Ben Johnson?
I saw some guys with really good potential leaving out of frustration and that is really sad.
Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cheats are about two things: money or prestige. People want to get back at the players who so rudely beat them normally, and get high competitive rankings that make them look better than other players in that games community. Or, they use the cheats to create high ranking game accounts to sell to players who want to look good, or they simply cheat to win prize money. It should go without saying that this kind of acti…
The analog to steroids and high-level competition is really interesting, something I've chatted with my friends about a bit. In some of the highest tier bodybuilding competitions, some people will be using steroids, and because that went unchecked and unspoken, now everyone has to or else they have no chance of competing. If you want to compete and you aren't using steroids, you will lose, so you have to start using…
A key difference is that steroids are a sacrifice. You mess with your actual body. Cheating in a game? Yeah you injected a DLL into dynamic memory…