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We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

mobeigi.com

161–170 of 372 posts

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only problem is, a lot of companies do NOT want to pay for it. It's 'treadmill work'. No matter how many people and how much money you throw at the problem, it still ends up just coming back. It's a losing battle because there are many, many more players than there are developers.

> Only problem is, a lot of companies do NOT want to pay for it. Because they're 10 years behind the curve and don't understand that a game's lifespan is contingent on anti-cheat. Once it becomes clear to the casual player that a hacker is going to effect every gaming session, the game dies quickly. Many games have gone so far as to obfuscate the presence of hackers so that players are less likely to notice them (CoD…

even though im not a cheater in games, i wouldnt play a game that threatened to take me to court if they deemed me to be one. interesting thought though.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#162
post #80
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is it ? I'm not in the US and I've always had a fixed IP.

Which seems to have been best practice for IPv4 and is still best practice with IPv6 :

https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-690/#5--end-user...

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#163
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about just a whitelist? I can't imagine there are a ton of legit ut2k4 players left?

Yes, we have a whitelist ability also, but it is definitely a last resort. The game is mostly dead and difficult to discover for new players. We don't want that roadblock if we can avoid it.

Do you happen to have a link for a good manual on "how does one get into the modern UT2k4 multiplayer"? I.e. must-have modlist, servers, etc.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#164
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we have a whitelist ability also, but it is definitely a last resort. The game is mostly dead and difficult to discover for new players. We don't want that roadblock if we can avoid it.

TIL people still play UT2004. I was going to mention how much I loved that game, until I realized I played UT99. Time sure does fly...

Is this game online/multiplayer only? I mean, people still play Galaga and PacMan and other older classic games so why would you think someone wouldn't still play this one too?

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#165
post #107
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a slippery slope which we can view in real-time looking at the speedrunning community. Many current real person runs are using strategies once thought to be computer-only. A Mario run from 2024 would be viewed as totally impossible in 2004.

No one does multiplpayer speedruns.

Counter example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g_7Hx42P1Y

There's also the multi-world randomiser community, where people network a bunch of emulators together, and finding an item in one game can actually unlock something else in another player's game.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#166

In general, hardware/GPU/MAC signature hash checks are the only consistent way to bind player account histories, and even then cheats will change their identity with new hardware on fake postal addresses. Best to add a few weeks delay with "reviewing" ban status to prevent them returning hardware to retailers. Each day randomly permute which hardware signature trips the auto-re-ban after a random number of minutes. C…

Unless I misunderstood, I do not see how this would actually work in practice considering the client can be modified and I can send whatever I want to the server, i.e. spoofing.

Even the Webgl signature check is resilient, and is the new tracking cookie on many sites like YT etc. It is a robust unique property of a specific system, and GPU. Not just the serial number...

Indeed, duplicate salted-hash signatures on multiple active users mean shills, and immediate bans issued for both accounts tainted by the black list.

The trick is to randomize a mix of easy and difficult signature checks daily.

i.e. the exploit writers will have to spend time cleaning up bugs, redistributing the patches, and dealing with angry people that have a GPU that is on the blacklist for a game. The more hardware details collected, the more difficult it is to prevent tripping the admin alert.

This is already done by some studios... "Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes" as they say... =3

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I'd live to see the time of true cyborgs who will exceed ordinary human capabilities in some regard.

How attached and how technical does it have to be to be "cyborg". Me with a pen and paper exceeds many human capabilites. Likewise with wearables like a smartwatch. Does it have to be direct neural integration to be a cyborg? Definitely people with profound brain injuries have been enhanced to the ability to interact again.

Good question! IMHO, it's a spectrum, of course, not a binary concept.

But if we have to define a criteria... I guess, integrated just enough so it can't be trivially removed, making it more of a "body part" rather than a "tool".

Point is, it'll certainly spark a discussion and re-evaluation of what's "fair", potentially shifting the consensus from somewhere around the current "glasses are fair game, but a programmable mouse is not" to somewhere more accepting of differently-abed individuals.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#168
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about just a whitelist? I can't imagine there are a ton of legit ut2k4 players left?

Yes, we have a whitelist ability also, but it is definitely a last resort. The game is mostly dead and difficult to discover for new players. We don't want that roadblock if we can avoid it.

Suggestion: Anybody can play against bot(s). Whitelist can interact with real players.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#169

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.

Banning by TPM also makes ban evasion pretty expensive. At which point the cheater has to either buy a new mobo or solder a new TPM chip onto their mobo (not always possible). Though I guess at some point a sloppy vendor will leak TPM keys and it'll be spoof-able.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#170
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…

Wait, can you help maintain UT2004? Because I love that game.

I don't play online anymore because I get destroyed but it's still fun to pop in for a quick match against AI when I have 30 minutes to kill.

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