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We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

mobeigi.com

201–210 of 372 posts

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#201
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.

This isn’t really a relevant concern for online games since speed running is mostly rehearsed play with predictable game mechanics, not inhuman response to novel stimulus.

> rehearsed play with predictable game mechanics, not inhuman response to novel stimulus

You just described most competitive games (even vaguely so), and 100% of esports.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It is not online only as we would now understand. But it is certainly only multiplayer game. Well you can play against bots, but even then it is multiplayer.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#204
post #91

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…

Cheating is also big business. Players can pay big bucks to rent (!) a cheat. IIRC there is an episode on darkness diaries podcast about this.

What a bunch of absolute losers. If it's taught me anything though, it's that you can't underestimate the pathologies of people you encounter 'in the real world'.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#205
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.

Yes they do. Eg https://youtu.be/WU-00UdoXdQ?si=gQAh50XsK6xcxEWF

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#206
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…

I understand how you feel but IP blacklisting is really the only tool we have. I'd much rather deal with that than some kind of forced state level verification/ID system where even pseudonymous browsing becomes impossible.

Blocking IP ranges by country or ISP is pretty much always going to have to exist as long as certain countries and ISPs turn a blind eye to abuse.

Even with as poor a solution as IP blocks are, it's the best we have and alternatives seem worse.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#208
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…

Just curious if IP bans work with IPv6 or if they are fundamentally incompatible?

Sort of. Doesn't make sense to ban a single v6, you'd start by banning at the /64 level and move on to banning shorter prefixes from there.

You quickly run into the same kinds of problems you do in v4 though; most users have access to a shared pool of addresses, and you may need to ban the whole pool to ban an abuser, but then you also ban everyone else in that pool, and the abuser is more likely to have ability and motivation to use other pools.

It's better if you have multiple factors... if you don't like the IP, don't ban it, but be stricter on other measures, etc. So a well behaved client from a 'bad ip' can still play, but enough suspicious things and you can't play anymore.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#209
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.

Small number of players works in favor of a whitelist. People shouldn't be playing with randoms, they should be playing with friends.

Game companies invade our privacy and destroy our computer freedom with ineffective malware tier rootkit solutions only to fail to solve the problem in the end. Their business model depends on enabling people to play with any random from anywhere in the world. They are forced to trust untrustworthy clients. The truth is people should not allow their computers to talk to strangers.

Re: We outsmarted CSGO cheaters with IdentityLogger

#210
post #172
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be able to limit analysis for this type of detection to only the input leading up to a kill/hit and ignoring everything else. The majority of the time players are not shooting could be used to do the analysis with plenty of time to boot midway in a round let alone a full game. Also simple analysis of only the input streams as you stated really doesn't have to do with the phys rate of the game server and sh…

Cheats nowadays can and do a) run on 2nd pc passively capturing the screen and commands to a fake mouse device plugged into both machines, b) "humanise" the aim with ai models trained on professional players c) add random variances within the limits of human reaction times So it doesn't solve things, really it'd still be playing catchup.

And I'm not refuting that. I was just pointing out a solution to a problem the GP proposed as intractable when trying to analyze player input data streams for cheating. The points you made are valid as far as the evolution of this cat and mouse game is progressing (probably still closer to the end end of can then do for now).

That being said, the vast majority of cheats are not that sophisticated. "Simple" analysis of player input should still be used to make low effort cheats less or ineffective. Especially if used to compare consistency of mechanical play by a player. I doubt most cheaters want to just turn on a full bot that plays by itself for the whole game. You can build a model of play customized for an individual player to look for changes in mechanical skill during critical plays. Then even if that was incorporated into the cheat client so that its 'actions' can't be definitevly detected against the players baseline, it would at least be limited to cheating as that player always playing like it's their best day. Either that or the cheater would have to go fully hands off for that account which I imagine is not as appealing for most cheaters.

Input analysis, even much simpleler approaches, can still be a valuable tool to make cheating more difficult and less opportunistic. The goal would be to raise the barrier of entry to cheating without immediately getting banned beyond downloading and running a client. If people who consider cheating in a game have to: order, wait for, and setup additional hardware then aquire models trained for the latest version of the game that are also trained on pro play in a way that lets the cheating be humanly plausible to remain undetected; it will reduce the total number of people who cheat in that title. Will needing to aquire additional hardware stop all cheating? No, I had a friend as a kid that owned a GameShark that I used and ended up corrupting the save on one of my Pokemon games. But if all of that is what is required to be able to successfully and consistently cheat, it will raise both the cost of development of cheats as well as their price to cheaters.

For top level professional play, in person tournaments on managed setups will remain the gold standard for the forseeable future (and besides they are attractive as events for their own sake). And for the rest of us, we will continue to be trapped in the labyrinth with both the cat and the mice.

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