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

Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

callofduty.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 332 posts

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#171

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

dbaggerman wrote: post #155
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #153

Okay, so the policy questions are interesting, but I have a technical question: How are they handling kernel compatibility? Even with DKMS API breakage could be brutal, and Valve supports Arch as a first class target so they can't just stick to a stable/old version (it'd be easy with RHEL and doable with Ubuntu, but Arch ?).

I was a little confused about this as well - until I realised they don't actually specify that this is the Linux kernel. I suspect what they're talking about here is the Windows kernel.

Oh. Thanks, I just... I'd heard about folks working on anticheat for Linux, so I just assumed... You're right, though.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#173

Post by vips7L »

DizzyDoo wrote: post #73
tpxl wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there's PUBG (BattlEye) ruined by rampant cheating. Then there's EFT (BattlEye) ruined by rampant cheating. Then there's (was?) Combat Arms (multiple anti cheats over the years) ruined in-part by rampant cheating. I wouldn't mind _that_ much if anti-cheats actually helped, but they don't.

I'm still playing PUBG, though just FPP, and rarely run into what is obviously a cheater - maybe once every two months? But while things have got better, you're right, when things were really, really bad it hurt the game's community terribly. I do think that anti-cheat helps, if the developers are mostly engaged with it, but it's a long fight over a long time. Most of the strategies to do with 'ban waves' - ie, not b…

How is the performance of pubg now a days?

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#174

Post by bastardoperator »

tpxl wrote: post #58
mgsk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there's CS:GO, whose developers refuse to use intrusive practices to counter cheating. And the game is ruined by rampant cheating. (Neither for nor against. Just saying.)

Then there's PUBG (BattlEye) ruined by rampant cheating. Then there's EFT (BattlEye) ruined by rampant cheating. Then there's (was?) Combat Arms (multiple anti cheats over the years) ruined in-part by rampant cheating. I wouldn't mind _that_ much if anti-cheats actually helped, but they don't.

If it's online, it's full of cheaters. One of the major problems (with steam) is the price of games in different regions. While a game might me cost me/you 20 dollars, it might sell in say Russia for 4.99. Add a popular steam sell to the mix and now we're buying licenses for pennies on the dollars, maybe even less than a dollar. We can cheat with these accounts or sell them to other cheaters for double the price we paid. Now cheaters can easily access new/fresh steam accounts and never worry about getting banned on their main account.

It's almost sad to see how badly anti-cheat software works. There are entire economies built around cheating. We used to combat this by being able to manage/run our own game servers with staff dedicated to the experience but very few games still support managing your own server. It will always be cat and mouse.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#175

Post by EastOfTruth »

MR4D wrote: post #19

Can anyone tell me why Fortnite doesn't seem to have as bad of a problem as CoD? My son plays both, but CoD really sucks. It is so obvious when someone is cheating.

> It is so obvious when someone is cheating.

It is not always very obvious, at least on CSGO... there are some experienced/smart cheaters.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#176

Post by cletus »

xerxes901 wrote: post #154

The whole "super intrusive anti-cheat" thing is really annoying to me as a non-competitive player, who just plays games like CoD, CS, etc occasionally with friends. And not just academically annoying, but practically too. I used to run Windows virtualised under Linux with a PCIe passthrough GPU. I remember having to re-install windows directly on my machine at a LAN party once because CS:GO couldn't be run in a VM an…

This isn't a high-level gameplay problem. I'm not sure what you play but in (CoD) Warzone, for example, just based on Twitch streams at least, almost every lobby has one or more cheaters/hackers in it now.

This is a bad enough problem that it actually threatens the integrity of the game and the continued support from more casual gamers such as yourself.

As for your particular case (running a Windows VM with PCI-e GPU passthrough), that's... such a niche corner case that you're you just don't factor in.

We can agree that cheating will never be truly eliminated. It's a question of degree and it requires a multi-level solution ie both client-side and server-side.. The server-side detection has to allow for checking by a human with all that entails. It sounds like this is what they're rolling out with CoD Vanguard (Ricochet). It'll be interesting to see how effective this is.

Probably the biggest problem for the likes of Warzone and Fortnite is that the game is free. It means getting banned and having to create a new account is essentially zero cost. What about paid-for and earned cosmetics I hear you ask. Well, those are hacked too so it doesn't really matter.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#177

Post by floatingatoll »

RattleyCooper wrote: post #86

> In its initial rollout on Call of Duty: Warzone, the kernel-level driver will only operate when you play on PC. The driver is not always-on. The software turns on when you start Call of Duty: Warzone and shuts down when you close the game. Oh that's good. > Plus, the kernel-level driver only monitors and reports activity related to Call of Duty. Oh, so in other words it reports everything since any software that mi…

If you suspect a conspiracy or that you're being lied to, prove otherwise! You'll earn worldwide fame and press if you prove they're lying. Yeah, it's hard work, but it's not impossible, it's just difficult. You can disassemble the kernel driver with a variety of open source tools, inspect exactly what it's looking for, and publish that. It's what the cheat authors are going to do anyways, but they won't publish what they find, because they want to profit from the knowledge.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#178

Post by temporarrry0923 »

yuuu wrote: post #165
temporarrry0923 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VACnet catches the spinbotters and aimbotters! Actually really good at it too; everyone who did that now just cheats less hard. The biggest problem was: It didn't auto ban, just sent to overwatch (players watch a past game and vote for cheater or not, fully anonymized). This resulted in a massive clog when some guys I knew generated around 10k free steam accounts (with $3.5 of proxies), began queueing a few dozen at…

As if it's hard to detect spinbotters. The problem at high level play has always been and always will be wallhacking/ESP. The fact that you can easily write a separate program that overlays this information, which only needs to read from memory, means that this problem is never going away. Playing any FPS outside of a LAN is a waste of time because of this.

>as if it's hard to detect spinbotters

Valve couldn't figure it out for years and years.

Subtle cheats are absolutely a problem, but far less of a problem for the average new non-prime or fresh trust-factor player than a rage botter

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#179

Post by shp0ngle »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #150

While I don't particularly like this sort of anti-cheat, I think we should all be more worried about cloud gaming than anything else. It's been obvious for a while that the big gaming companies have it in mind, and the only reason it isn't as big as it could be, is due to tech limitations FOR NOW. When (not if) cloud gaming truly takes off, and it will, we'll lose any and all control over our games. So long to moddin…

The thing it, users seem to prefer the "own nothing, pay little per month" approach.

In movies, everyone is now making their subscription services, that are really popular; while services for buying movies online existed for years and were not really all that successful.

You can buy movies on iTunes for maybe 15 years now and on Google Play for ... a while too; but it has never been as successful as Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount Whatever, is now.

People just prefer the subscription model.

But maybe gaming is fundamentally different. Apple Arcade is not really successful, but maybe it's because Apple is being Apple, I don't know. Xbox... has a game pass thing? I don't really follow that that much

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#180

Post by number6 »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #150

While I don't particularly like this sort of anti-cheat, I think we should all be more worried about cloud gaming than anything else. It's been obvious for a while that the big gaming companies have it in mind, and the only reason it isn't as big as it could be, is due to tech limitations FOR NOW. When (not if) cloud gaming truly takes off, and it will, we'll lose any and all control over our games. So long to moddin…

The tech is okish most time good. Geforce Now works fine even with FPS. Stadia is OK. You can get a decent PC on Paperspace for an OK price. All said it is not Great and you have to have a solid Internet connection but it works for casual gaming. Like an hour of Battlefield 1 or Red Dead Redemption on Stadia
Post reply on HN