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We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

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Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#71

Post by kelnos »

DJBunnies wrote: post #29
LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #18

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 think GP's last line covers it. It's the same reason why DRM is ultimately ineffective, and why even companies that work hard and spend time and money to secure their infra still sometimes get popped: the game devs have to be perfect 100% of the time, but the cheaters only have to get lucky and find a flaw once.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#72

Post by leetbulb »

kemitche wrote: post #46
leetbulb wrote: post #26

This isn't about stopping cheaters (cheat detection). This is about stopping repeat cheaters trying to ban evade. Detecting cheats, especially nowadays with hardware cheats (DMA, etc), is an entirely different ballgame. IMHO, one of the most effective way to stop ban evaders is to actually charge money for the game.

At the time of the events in the blog, CS:GO was NOT free, and yet there were still cheaters that apparently had access to 80+ accounts.

That's fair. There will always be cheaters like this. However, anecdotally, after CS or any other game I've played that went free-to-play, cheaters became a much much larger problem: from seeing one every now and again, to at least one in nearly every match.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#73

Post by [deleted] »

leetbulb wrote: post #26

This isn't about stopping cheaters (cheat detection). This is about stopping repeat cheaters trying to ban evade. Detecting cheats, especially nowadays with hardware cheats (DMA, etc), is an entirely different ballgame. IMHO, one of the most effective way to stop ban evaders is to actually charge money for the game.

[deleted]

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#74

Post by Sayrus »

kelnos wrote: post #70
ghxst wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This still leaves you wide open to cheaters using mobile data tethering and proxies. Have you considered more advanced network analysis? It's one of the areas I have an interest in (professionally and personally) so if you want any suggestions let me know.

> This still leaves you wide open to cheaters using mobile data tethering and proxies Is latency going to be good enough on mobile data (especially if they're also using proxies) for a FPS, though? Sure, they're using cheating software, but I wouldn't be surprised if the software gets the information it needs to cheat too late often enough for it to be useful.

Assuming obvious cheat, even 100ms or 200ms latency is unbeatable by a human. Especially since the cheat doesn't need time to aim.

Even for non-obvious use-cases, it's hard to beat the advantage provided by knowing the position of players.

On my own hotspot, I have less than 30ms of latency.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#75

Post by drdaeman »

Matheus28 wrote: post #50
DJBunnies wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

It’s not that simple. Some games aren’t able to prevent cheating. The client has the data on where the enemies on their screen are. The cheat only needs to move the mouse and click on the enemies heads. Other games like MMORPGs involve the cheat just playing the game and farming on behalf of the player. It just becomes a cat and mouse game where the anti cheat is trying to detect something hooking into the game proce…

> MMORPGs involve the cheat just playing the game and farming on behalf of the player

From a player perspective that's not cheating, that's running a bot. It's automation of a routine grind - which is typically designed to make players hate it and spend money instead. Automating boring stuff is simply natural.

For pay-to-win games it's effectively a balancing system, a pushback against player-hostile mechanics. Not unlike an adblocker on the web.

That's strictly in context of MMORPG genre, of course.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#76

Post by ultimafan »

Cheating in online games is a scourge and I really don't understand why people do it. It's one person selfishly getting a "win" at the expense of ~60 other people in that match having their time, pleasure, potentially money absolutely wasted.

I think even more infuriating than blatant hacking is this epidemic of "micro cheating" for lack of a better way to put it that I've seen prevalent in some games that just boost some stats or reactions by amounts large enough to help the cheater but low enough where new or inexperienced players have absolutely no way of telling if someone is cheating or genuinely good especially in games with high skill ceilings. At least when it's blatant you can leave without time wasted but when they're doing it subtly you end up getting tilted and spending the whole match with a bad taste in your mouth second guessing if someone is actually playing fair or not. Chivalry 2 is a really bad offender for this, once you notice it you can't unnotice it anymore, almost every match will have at least one guy with his swing/move speed adjusted by ~10% and in a game where swing manipulation is a legitimate mechanic it can be borderline impossible to catch someone out on it unless you're really paying attention.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#77

Post by mouse_ »

ghxst wrote: post #60
snarfy wrote: post #25

For UT2004, you can ban by player GUID (a hash of the CD key) or IP. With the game abandoned by Epic, a number of key generators have cropped up, which makes GUID bans useless. IP bans only go so far with VPNs costing $2 these days. The main solutions we have today are IP ban + VPN blocking using a database of known VPN subnets and adding them all to the firewall, and a similar fingerprinting technique which scans th…

This still leaves you wide open to cheaters using mobile data tethering and proxies. Have you considered more advanced network analysis? It's one of the areas I have an interest in (professionally and personally) so if you want any suggestions let me know.

The tactic 4chan uses:

Regular IPs can post freely

VPN or mobile IPs (blacklisted) must pay for a key ($20/year) that allows posting from blacklisted IPs. Key is good for posting from one blacklisted IP, locked for 30 minutes, so users cannot share keys. That way, you can ban the user by their key, if their IP is public.

It's not a perfect solution but it seems to be the best they've found for such a situation so far.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#78

Post by bob1029 »

kemitche wrote: post #46
leetbulb wrote: post #26

This isn't about stopping cheaters (cheat detection). This is about stopping repeat cheaters trying to ban evade. Detecting cheats, especially nowadays with hardware cheats (DMA, etc), is an entirely different ballgame. IMHO, one of the most effective way to stop ban evaders is to actually charge money for the game.

At the time of the events in the blog, CS:GO was NOT free, and yet there were still cheaters that apparently had access to 80+ accounts.

Charging money and banning at the payment provider level can be quite effective. It isn't a perfect answer but it cuts out gigantic chunks of the problem space.

I'll take a ~99% cheat-free experience over not having any improvement at all.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#80

Post by lagadu »

cwmma wrote: post #9
beeboobaa3 wrote: post #6

> If a player joins with a different Steam ID but with an IP address that is already banned, the system now re-bans them This works great until you realize you're punishing innocent players because of CGNAT and IP addresses getting rotated. Cheaters usually know how to get their router to request a new IP address. That IP address then gets assigned to someone else later.

They addressed this in the section entitled "Problematic cases of IP address fingerprinting"

I always found it funny how ip bans seemed to be so popular despite being apparently completely ineffective until I realized this was mostly a US thing. In my country (2 of them that I've lived in, in fact) ISPs always assign the client a dynamic address from their very large pools every time I reconnect. This was as true back in the 28.8kb dial up days as it is in the 10gbit FTTH days we live in. Having a static IP address here has always been a service you have to pay for.

I remember this being hilarious when idiots would ip ban me back on the IRC days: "oh no, I have to press the reconnect button!"

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