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Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

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

#291

Post by saagarjha »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #223
Arnavion wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't really have to put so much effort into dissecting their verbiage. It's guaranteed that any kernel anti-cheat is going to be invasive and inspect everything on the system while looking for cheats.

No, it's absolutely not guaranteed. Especially in competitive shooters, performance is paramount. They have a strong motivation to only look where they need to. And anti-cheat isn't a money-maker, so they're not going to be spending lots of money storing user data they don't have to. Cheat software has to do things like nose around in the game's memory space that no legitimate program is going to do. It also contains…

I’ve heard of people being flagged for having things like a debugger open, or files with names that happen to match cheating tools. I don’t think it’s correct to present anticheat as just sitting around screenshotting the computer to find cheat UI.

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

#292

Post by saagarjha »

Underphil wrote: post #265
tibbydudeza wrote: post #257

Brilliant - game devs doing kernel drivers.

I don't think you realise that many of these companies have large and experienced security engineers and experts who develop these things.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they give you kernel r/w ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#294

Post by npteljes »

everdrive wrote: post #84

If this happens enough, then a Windows gaming PC becomes a very expensive console. If all I do on my PC is game, then it doesn't really matter if it's got a rootkit (or kernel-level anti-cheat driver) or not. But, that's an expensive console. $600 - $2,000, depending on how nicely you want to game. A lot of the big popular online game culture really isn't fun anyway, so I'm not sure it's much of a loss.

I already use my Windows system like this. Between the anti-cheats and Microsoft's push for telemetry in Windows, I just don't feel comfortable using my Windows as my own private system. So I don't.

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

#295

Post by krageon »

smiths1999 wrote: post #268
cortesoft wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this guy only wants to play with friends, so he doesn’t care if everyone else in the lobby are cheaters. He isn’t playing with anyone besides his friends. And why do you care if a lobby exists that you are never going to go to? Why does it bother you if cheaters want to use cheats against each other? As long as you don’t interact with them, I don’t understand why you would care.

In my experience, people that cheat in games like this typically do it to get an edge over everyone else in the lobby. It's not the cheating itself they enjoy but the winning. If everyone in the lobby has the same advantage I doubt they would be content just enjoying the game like the rest of us.

There exist plenty of cheater servers where the point is competitive aimbot writing. The fun can come from many places.

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

#296

Post by account42 »

flohofwoe wrote: post #288
schmorptron wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear with install sizes getting g bigger and bigger with no signs of slowing down, game streaming will become more attractive to more people in the coming years

A middle way would be to stream assets from the internet as needed, but run the game locally (basically the internet becomes the hard disk, and the hard disk just an additional cache level). This may require designing games for this asset loading strategy from the ground up though (on the other hand, this was always the case that games had to designed around the limitations of their storage device, especially in the…

Relevant patent from Valve filed last year:

https://www.freepatentsonline.com/11123634.html

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

#297

Post by stikypad »

vpilcx wrote: post #225
cletus wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For me, it's already ruined the game. There's a type of player that every time they take a bad beat, they'll be like, "Oh, we've got a cheater!" I am not like that. At all. It requires an enormous amount of evidence to accuse someone of cheating. But with Warzone, it was happening so often, I no longer give anyone the benefit of the doubt. I used to run into more than one blatant cheater per day. And now all my bad b…

There are definitely cheaters in (nearly) every match of every game.

I should know, because I decided years ago to take the path of "if you can't beat 'em..."

Once I did, it became painfully obvious how many people cheat. With x-ray, "wallhacks," or 3D "radar," with bounding boxes around all players, it became readily apparent who's aiming at and/or chasing players who shouldn't be visible, always choosing the route the opposing team is taking, without fail. And who on the other team always takes the route you take, chasing you through any maze with no problem, even turning around when (and only when) you try to flank them. Also anyone who out-scores you while cheating (particularly if you're "rampaging") is definitely cheating as well, because you're already doing better than is humanly possible. And believe me, you'll get out-scored plenty.

I would be glad to have functional anti-cheats, but it's just not possible in my experience. Cheats are available on day one of any game launch, or day 2 at worst. It's big business (clearly). Even kernel drivers like this have patched kernels to get around them.

For now, cheating makes games fun to play again. Aimbots aren't perfect anyway, and even if they were, nobody can look or shoot everywhere at once. You still have to manage ammo, you still have to reload, and you can still get the drop on people (cheaters) when their attention is focused elsewhere, and you still get killed while cheating. Sure, it sucks for the people who don't have cheats, but I'm not going to be one of those people as long as a large percent of other people are cheating too. Unless and until anti-cheating actually works, it's just evening the playing field as far as I'm concerned.

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

#298

Post by thaumasiotes »

flohofwoe wrote: post #287
thaumasiotes wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AFAIK cloud gaming hasn't shown any signs of "taking off" so far, despite many desperate attempts. I think we're safe for a while. Are you kidding? What's the most recent game you have that will let you set up a non-hotseat multiplayer game involving only computers you control?

I guess we're talking about different things then. I understand "cloud gaming" as Stadia, (or the older attempt Onlive), where the game is running on machines in datacenters and sends a video stream to the user.

That's pretty much what happens if you're running multiplayer through a third-party server, except that instead of sending video data, it's sending you game input and having you render the video locally.

But that's just the difference between downloading a starcraft replay file and watching it in starcraft, versus downloading a video of a starcraft game and watching it in a video player. One is a compressed video, and the other is also a compressed video, but with a different compression scheme.

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

#299

Post by voldacar »

Spivak wrote: post #141
voldacar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thanks. If I can't cheat without a program knowing, I'm not really in control of my computer.

That’s kinda the point? Anti-cheat systems, DRM, and consoles are a way for software publishers to extend their trust boundary to your computer. You’re effectively lending out your hardware as edge computing to run the publisher’s software (i.e. the game or video player) in a way they can be reasonably sure it’s running unmodified. I actually find this to be pretty darn reasonable.

I have to disagree. Anytime my computer does something I disagree with, or tries to prevent me from being completely in command of it, that's a bug at best and malware at worst.

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

#300

Post by yung_steezy »

stikypad wrote: post #297
vpilcx wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it's already ruined the game. There's a type of player that every time they take a bad beat, they'll be like, "Oh, we've got a cheater!" I am not like that. At all. It requires an enormous amount of evidence to accuse someone of cheating. But with Warzone, it was happening so often, I no longer give anyone the benefit of the doubt. I used to run into more than one blatant cheater per day. And now all my bad b…

There are definitely cheaters in (nearly) every match of every game. I should know, because I decided years ago to take the path of "if you can't beat 'em..." Once I did, it became painfully obvious how many people cheat. With x-ray, "wallhacks," or 3D "radar," with bounding boxes around all players, it became readily apparent who's aiming at and/or chasing players who shouldn't be visible, always choosing the route…

This sounds like the opposite of having fun to me.
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