Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse • Hacker News Board

Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse

#101

Post by teddyh » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 1:01 PM UTC

jon-wood wrote: post #92

userbinator wrote: post #35

This 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.

At a LAN party a few years ago one of the games being played was Modern Warfare 2, a game where your gun is almost always going to hit in exactly the centre of the screen, but that’s made more difficult by requiring you to look down the sights to get an aim point, which slows you down. One of the people near me worked around that by taking a few shots down the sights and then sticking a blob of blue tack on his monit…

That’s an old trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLHBGigq4zk

Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse

#102

Post by Passthepeas » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 1:09 PM UTC

rcarmo wrote: post #77

ajxs wrote: post #27

I 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…

Many years ago I used to run a games service [1] (spanning q1 to q3, plus Unreal and various mods for all engines) and often had people message me occasionally about player X or Y cheating in various ways (these were the days before PunkBuster, but it happened more or less continuously). Since we had extremely low ping when at the office (comparatively to dialup), we had a bit of fun jumping on servers to do a bit of…

QC doesn't have /votekick though

Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse

#103

Post by skinnymuch » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 1:11 PM UTC

jacobmischka wrote: post #53

void_mint wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheating in video games is nothing like steroids. The people using steroids are equally as skilled as their opponents. Steroids aren't magic and don't miraculously give the user abilities they didn't have prior. Both Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis were on steroids, fwiw. "True winner" is a joke.

> The people using steroids are equally as skilled as their opponents. Sure, because they were also doping. Seriously though, I wouldn't say steroids make you _more skilled_, but they absolutely give a physical advantage over natural athletes. Which is why there aren't any top level natural athletes anymore except in very dedicated natural-only circles.

If my genetics aren’t as good as another athlete. I’m at a disadvantage. Why is this considered not just acceptable but even good? The genetically gifted person didn’t do anything to receive praise society gives out for said genetics.

Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse

#104

Post by hnick » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 1:25 PM UTC

allendoerfer wrote: post #57

void_mint wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what point you're making. My point is that steroids don't turn average people into elite athletes, which is much closer to what auto aim or wall hacking tools in FPS games do. Average people appear elite because their tools make them perform that way. This is not what steroids do. You're agreeing with me, I think, but in the form of an argument.

A better comparison to cheating wouuld be, if one of the runners would have taken a car instead of running.

Or a motor hidden in a bike frame: https://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/sports/a19219/pro...

Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse

#105

Post by hnick » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC

smolder wrote: post #10

_l4lu wrote: post #3

One 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…

There's also trolling. myg0t cheated brazenly simply to piss people off and get a reaction. I never saw the point but clearly some people enjoy this.

Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse

#106

Post by mrslave » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

ajxs wrote: post #27

I 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…

What you said about progression matches my personal experience. I jumped in the deep end of Q3 just before Quake Live came out with about 2-3 months of playing every evening for hours (vacation/between contracts -- I can't recall). I started saying, "Woah, this guy is so good he has to be a bot!" to the best player one evening early in my journey, after he fragged me for the 10th time in a row with nary a scratch from my pathetic efforts. By the end I was about as good as that, and other players routinely called me a cheat.

My favorite "cheat" (I prefer hack) was to counter another pathetic cheat in Q1: players using an all-black skin. They would hide in the shadows and get you with a rocket when your back was turned. So I edited my local copy of the skin to be bright pink and made a point of chasing them down at every encounter (lingering in the shadows or not).

Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse

#107

Post by hnick » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

f311a wrote: post #65

There are cheats that read the RAM via DMA device, so there is no need to use video signal. They also modify mouse movements via RPI kit that injects between the mouse and PC.

Depending on the game, cheats can be a packet sniffing proxy. It won't even be on the gaming device.

Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse

#108

Post by ActorNightly » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

aurelian15 wrote: post #37

This 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 "se…

The solution is really simple - make all competitive gaming events LANs with standardized hardware that is not touched by players before the event starts.

For regular online gaming, you can train a neural net to detect cheats like this, biased by the players score. If the cheat is introducing enough error for the player to be killable, its not ruining the experience for the rest of the players.

Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse

#109

Post by marcinzm » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

aurelian15 wrote: post #37

This 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 "se…

>By that I mean encrypted communication on all computer buses (including USB, HDMI)

That only delays things since in the end you still need a human being to be able to play. So you can have a camera looking at the screen and a mouse/keyboard with some wires soldered to the key points.

Re: Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse

#110

Post by etempleton » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 1:44 PM UTC

I was competitive (not professional, but I played with, against, and around pros) in FPS in the early days of competitive console shooters. Cheating was so rampant that people over a certain ranking were automatically considered cheaters. I would say the top 5 percent of ranked players were cheaters in some games and it was not subtle. You knew immediately who was cheating, but there usually wasn’t much you could do because there wasn’t usually any kind of reporting function or if it exsisted it was limited and not very effective.