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We do behavioural analysis on top of various fingerprinting for bot detection - some people are trying really hard to ruin the internet!
I suspect a sufficiently advanced server side behaviour analysis could do a pretty good job discovering cheaters.
I hope they asked permissions for storing those cookies. Otherwise they're violating various EU laws.
I am surprised VGUI browser shares cookies across Steam accounts. When I log out of my Steam account, switch to another one, launch the same game, I would have expected an entirely different datastore to be used for the VGUI browser.
This violates GDPR, no?
Edit: It sounds like this took place before GDPR was being enforced.
Excellent write up and solution. Cheating in video games makes for a wretched experience for those who don't cheat. It's crazy how rampant cheating in multiplayer games, especially competitive ones has gotten. Ten years ago, I thought it was at an extreme, but it's only gone up since then. Part of the problem is that for some software developers, writing cheats brings in a massive amount of money. So instead of some…
I think a better question here is: why is game code so exploitable? A: laziness and cost. It just doesn’t matter the same way that baking code matters, I guess. So they toss on some cheap anti cheat instead of architecting it safely (expensively.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They addressed this in the section entitled "Problematic cases of IP address fingerprinting"
No, not specifically. That section is still written under the misconception that IPs are bound to households, or static networks like university networks. Instead they can swap at the very least country wide (or rather, however the provider manages the IP addresses it controls). Their mental model is just not how the internet works. By using IP as the ban id they created a system that constantly and regularly banned…
So if the same connection(plug in wall) can end up with IPs from different blocks, well, trying to do anything sensible with this is too complicated.
Excellent write up and solution. Cheating in video games makes for a wretched experience for those who don't cheat. It's crazy how rampant cheating in multiplayer games, especially competitive ones has gotten. Ten years ago, I thought it was at an extreme, but it's only gone up since then. Part of the problem is that for some software developers, writing cheats brings in a massive amount of money. So instead of some…
I think a better question here is: why is game code so exploitable? A: laziness and cost. It just doesn’t matter the same way that baking code matters, I guess. So they toss on some cheap anti cheat instead of architecting it safely (expensively.)
The nature of FPS games means only environment integrity can stop cheating. It's not exploitable per se. Just the game skill can be done by a computer perfectly.
Conversely who knows how long it will take for AIs to play Hearthstone with never-before-seen-cards well.
Excellent write up and solution. Cheating in video games makes for a wretched experience for those who don't cheat. It's crazy how rampant cheating in multiplayer games, especially competitive ones has gotten. Ten years ago, I thought it was at an extreme, but it's only gone up since then. Part of the problem is that for some software developers, writing cheats brings in a massive amount of money. So instead of some…
I think a better question here is: why is game code so exploitable? A: laziness and cost. It just doesn’t matter the same way that baking code matters, I guess. So they toss on some cheap anti cheat instead of architecting it safely (expensively.)
I am surprised VGUI browser shares cookies across Steam accounts. When I log out of my Steam account, switch to another one, launch the same game, I would have expected an entirely different datastore to be used for the VGUI browser.
Valve worked on it for a little while patching bugs as they popped up (notoriously slowly I might add). Then in August 2017, an exploit in which server operators could execute JavaScript on players that joined their servers started to spread and was maliciously abused by bad actors. For example, some server operators using their player bases residential IP addresses to sign up to gambling websites so they got kickbacks. Others simply tried to hijack Steam accounts or sell rare Steam virtual items on the Steam marketplace to themselves.
After Valve patched the above exploit, some smaller bugs popped up in the following weeks and 2 months later in October, Valve completely binned the VGUI browser in CSGO. They had enough! This broke a lot of plugins like IdentityLogger and music players that would play music in the background as you played the game. But at least the attack vector was removed.
Excellent write up and solution. Cheating in video games makes for a wretched experience for those who don't cheat. It's crazy how rampant cheating in multiplayer games, especially competitive ones has gotten. Ten years ago, I thought it was at an extreme, but it's only gone up since then. Part of the problem is that for some software developers, writing cheats brings in a massive amount of money. So instead of some…
I think a better question here is: why is game code so exploitable? A: laziness and cost. It just doesn’t matter the same way that baking code matters, I guess. So they toss on some cheap anti cheat instead of architecting it safely (expensively.)
- Almost all games are going to use a licensed or shared game engine. That means the softwsre architecture is already known to skilled cheat developers with reverse engineering skills.
- Obfuscating the game will only go so far, as demonstrated by the mixed success of Denuvo DRM.
- The game will not be the most privileged process on the machine, while cheaters are glad to allow root/kernel access to cheats. More advanced cheaters can use PCIe devices to read game memory, defeating that mitigation.
- TPMs cannot be trusted to secure games, as they are exploitable.
- Implementing any of these mitigations will break the game on certain devices, leading to user frustration, reputation damage, and lost revenue base.
- And most damning, AI enabled cheats no longer need any internal access at all. They can simply monitor display output and automate user input to automate certain actions like perfect aim and perfect movement.