Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 153 posts

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

#141

Post by mrslave »

tharkun__ wrote: post #115
mrslave wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fro…

With you on progression. First time you see someone being super fast you call them a cheater. Then you learn about Strafe jumping and that it's just how q3 physics work (even if unintentional from the programmers perhaps) and you learn it suddenly you're called a cheater by n00bs. Same with jumping onto things of a certain height. If your graphics hardware could not do a certain framerate constantly it was impossible…

> Using a black skin that's part of the game is not cheating if you ask me. Editing a skin to have a bright pink that didn't exist in the game however is cheating.

The entirely black skin was 3rd-party content, not an artifact from the official game. But yeah, no big deal either way.

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

#142

Post by voidnullnil »

ALittleLight wrote: post #19

I wonder if the anti-cheat system could insert ghost enemies for a few frames, or about 20-30ms, fast enough that humans wouldn't really notice. If players are shooting too often at ghosts, that may be a good reason to ban.

You will see it after it's gone due to persistence of vision, even at <10ms (no idea what the actual number is). Mind 20FPS is longer than a frame on even a 60Hz monitor.

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

#143

Post by voidnullnil »

ehnto wrote: post #32

Cheating 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…

Aimbots were already using "smoothing" methods in the original CS. Snapping to headshot is more to piss people off.

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

#144

Post by voidnullnil »

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…

>will inevitably lead to trampling the user's freedoms

People keep saying this but it happened 20 years ago. This reminds me of shit like the postal service requiring photo ID to receive a package and people complaining about NSA hundreds of years later. Now you need a phone to play a game and some of the most popular need literal photo ID checks. Imagine, sending your photo ID which if stolen people can steal your money, to a bunch of newgrads running a game studio. This is what people (kids and manchildren) accept to address the overstated problem of game cheating. I played thousands of hours of games for 20 years and the number of cheaters I ran into is around 10 or 20. Most players of games (including the ones who complain about "cheaters") do not even have a clue what a game cheat is. They think some guy has some cheat that only works in this weird scenario that happens 1/100 games. Yeah, can you guys stop making me need photo ID for to play some stupid game? This is no different than every obnoxious statist concern that gets addressed by some charlatan who purports to be saving the world by ruining everyone's day (almost any time I install or configure a game my day is ruined, imagine a typical dependency hell but 10x worse). And no, I haven't ran into little cheaters because of "sophisticated anticheat" (stuff like punkbuster is extremely incompetent), it's because public hacks simply get blacklisted once they become big enough to matter.

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

#145

Post by RHSeeger »

frobozz wrote: post #60
RHSeeger wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> money or prestige Or accomplishment. Some people cheat just to accomplish something.

Not really, because if they cheated, they didn't actually accomplish it. They cheat to gain the prestige of having accomplished it.

This is incorrect. It is entirely possible to cheat and feel a sense of accomplishment.

- You can cheat to finish a game and still enjoy the fact that you finished the parts that you didn't need to cheat by.

- You can figure out how to cheat the game (ie, hex editing) yourself, and get a sense of accomplishment from that.

It is entirely possible to both cheat at a game and have a sense of accomplishment related to that game. Just because it isn't something _you_ would do, doesn't mean it isn't true for others.

Personally, I spent days mapping out the save file for Bard's Tale back in the day and manipulating it to my heart's content. It was fun, and I enjoyed it.

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

#146

Post by runnerup »

marcinzm wrote: post #109
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.

Indeed. Or a robot arm moving the mouse. The analog hole will always exist. However, it may prove hard to make a computer move the mouse like a human, and type like a human. Heuristics will likely be able to separate human from bot input for quite awhile still.

The game makers probably enjoy a large advantage in size-of-dataset vs cheat makers.

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

#147

Post by cdirkx »

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…

One problem is that the uncertainty around hackers can lead to a toxic accusatory culture. I have seen multiple games where the high level (but below pro) gets bogged down in accusations of hacking; is someone genuinly more skilled or using aimbot (one is more comforting than the other). People giving up on a match because of some percieved inconsistency in the movement of someone on the other team etc. Or cases where someone is genuinly hacking but others not believing it "you're just mad" because of all the false positives.

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

#148

Post by Linkd »

This is so interesting. I'm an avid CSGO player for decades, and watching the cat and mouse battle between cheat creators and Valve has been fascinating. In the last few years, Valve has been pushing for ML-centric approach of cheat detection (vs more intrusive client-side solutions that competitors like Valorant have). And the community feels negatively about that because it hasn't been so effective in the short term. But now after reading this, I understand why. The only way to combat ML-cheats, is with ML detection..

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

#149

Post by shaftway »

ALittleLight wrote: post #19

I wonder if the anti-cheat system could insert ghost enemies for a few frames, or about 20-30ms, fast enough that humans wouldn't really notice. If players are shooting too often at ghosts, that may be a good reason to ban.

There was a similar technique used to prevent botting on MMOs. The game would drop extra loot in a way that humans couldn't see or interact with, but bots would pick it up. Once picked up it couldn't be dropped and wouldn't stack in inventory, eventually making the toon worthless.

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

#150

Post by skinnymuch »

rapind wrote: post #114
skinnymuch wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s just life. There are many genetic advantages and disadvantages people have beyond just athletic ability, not to mention non genetic advantages like opportunities due to wealth, gender, race, birth place, influential peers, etc. If you follow your logic and some how eliminate all outside advantage, then you may come to the conclusion that athletic competition is meaningless.

Why are you and downvotes/others possibly able to extend my logic into a wild conclusion. Yet, I assume you would find me taking your logic down a wild path as preposterous.

Following your logic of that’slife and genetics are part of natural life while steroids are so wrong, we should heavily focus on making sure advantages from consumption are curbed. No supplements, no high protein low calorie food. Limit medications and so on.

As genetics are a part of life, something I never disagreed with, and we all agree they are not equal in fairness, why are steroids of almost any kind frowned upon so strongly? But other life advantages or disadvantages are hand waved away?

Post reply on HN