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We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

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Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#181

Post by miki123211 »

kbolino wrote: post #126
ryandrake wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, in this case it's 4chan so who cares, but I hope we are not very slowly moving towards a troubling world with lower classes of IPs and upper class IPs. IPs should be IPs should be IPs, it shouldn't matter whether it comes from an ISP, a mobile network, a VPN, or anything else, and we shouldn't attach some kind of IP caste to providers or countries. I think we really need Internet-wide IP randomization, where…

We are already there and have been for a long time. Geoblocking is very common for low-effort DRM and abuse mitigation, common VPN providers are easy to detect by IP but generally frustrate and/or ignore abuse reporting (until serious illegal activity is committed), college and other institutional networks are often no better than VPNs in this regard, etc. The Internet hasn't been able to operate as a network of peer…

> until serious illegal activity is committed

What do they do in such cases?

Assuming they get the report after the fact and assuming their "no logging" promises are true, can they even do anything? They're not even supposed to know which customer did it, after all.

If their promises are false, wouldn't they reveal their hand if they handed logs over willy nilly?

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#182

Post by Unit327 »

J_Shelby_J wrote: post #127
Night_Thastus wrote: post #13

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…

> don't understand that a game's lifespan is contingent on anti-cheat

Or you could spend a huge effort on cheatproofing only to find that no-one plays your game in the first place, e.g. Concord. I imagine getting cheaters in your game often falls into the "nice problem to have" category and it is easy to kick the can down the road.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#184

Post by J_Shelby_J »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #176
J_Shelby_J wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Many games have gone so far as to obfuscate the presence of hackers so that players are less likely to notice them (CoD)! How does CoD accomplish this, or other games that use similar strategies. I can't wrap my mind around how you could do this effectively while also not identifying hackers for the purpose of banning. Banning = Cheater buying another license to the game, I thought they like banning people for that…

One example I remember from CoD warzone is they've increased the number of in game 'wallhacks' available to players like UAVs and heartbeat sensors. So if you get killed by someone with wallhacks, it easy to tell yourself they were using the plethora of legitimate ways to be detected. It could just be a coincidence that these new features obscure a hackers visibility, but given the behavioral psychologist they have on team, I won't write off any coincidence as chance.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#185

Post by ec109685 »

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.

Want does mobile data tethering make it harder to ban an IP address?

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#186

Post by hnick »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #175
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…

Who is gaming in a competitive game behind a VPN.. I suppose if its your only option, but I don't think this would be a great playing experience.

Can help routing induced latency as the other comment says (or force a new route if having downstream issues with your ISP peering), and some games in the past could leak IPs especially if using a p2p model and a VPN can mitigate that (especially one that only routes traffic for the game).

IIRC you also need one when playing from some countries, whether due to legal reasons or server restrictions.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#187

Post by [deleted] »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #176
J_Shelby_J wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Many games have gone so far as to obfuscate the presence of hackers so that players are less likely to notice them (CoD)! How does CoD accomplish this, or other games that use similar strategies. I can't wrap my mind around how you could do this effectively while also not identifying hackers for the purpose of banning. Banning = Cheater buying another license to the game, I thought they like banning people for that…

[deleted]

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#188

Post by doctorpangloss »

J_Shelby_J wrote: post #127
Night_Thastus wrote: post #13

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…

> Other games have an ID verified 3rd party system for competitive play (CSGO).

Ha ha, you mean paying for the game and holding your Steam account as collateral?

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#189

Post by koito17 »

ryandrake wrote: post #114
mouse_ wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I mean, in this case it's 4chan so who cares, but I hope we are not very slowly moving towards a troubling world with lower classes of IPs and upper class IPs. IPs should be IPs should be IPs, it shouldn't matter whether it comes from an ISP, a mobile network, a VPN, or anything else, and we shouldn't attach some kind of IP caste to providers or countries. I think we really need Internet-wide IP randomization, where…

Reputation matters.

On some Japanese BBSes, spammers tend to use non-Japanese IPs or data center IPs. A good chunk of the spam goes away by blocking non-Japan IPs (easy to do with BGP data) and disallowing data center IPs (these often host VPNs, scrapers, etc.) from posting.

Posting from overseas thus costs money or is not possible. The trade-off is 1-100 extra users or significantly reduced spam for little effort. It's not surprising that most website operators choose the latter.

I also know of a file uploader that recently had to block overseas IPs due to such IPs repeatedly uploading illegal content. This is an example of a few bad actors ruining things for everyone.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#190

Post by kmeisthax »

ec109685 wrote: post #185
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.

Want does mobile data tethering make it harder to ban an IP address?

Mobile networks are all IPv6. IPv4 traffic is behind CGNAT. As a result, you can't ban individual cheaters, you have to ban the whole network.
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