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Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

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Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#291

Post by gruez »

Levitating wrote: post #229
kulahan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't wait to find out what China hid in Riot's Vanguard rootkit for all their games. It's 100% a conspiracy theory, but nobody can convince me it's perfectly clean, or if it is, that there isn't an easy way to add some power to it quietly.

The vanguard drivers are signed by Microsoft, the procedure for which includes a safety audit by Microsoft. The driver is just what the developers say it is (as with all other anti-cheat). It provides an untempered interface for the userland anti-cheat to use to get info from the kernel. Because modern cheats tend to alter the output of kernel syscalls by running in the kernel themselves. I really don't see why anyon…

>The vanguard drivers are signed by Microsoft, the procedure for which includes a safety audit by Microsoft.

Did the crowdstrike driver get the same audit?

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#292

Post by lmz »

j-bos wrote: post #287
tw04 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, this is why we have consoles. We can have rootkits, or we can have cheating. Nobody has solved cheat prevention without rootkits. If you can, you’d make millions, if not billions. It’s not like the game creators want to have software on your system that has the potential to brick your system.

By this logic wouldn't chess and go need to be played after cavity searches? Cheating is enabled by tech but based on what people decide to do.

Chess and go aren't anonymous at levels people care about, and they don't have game publishers and creators expecting a return on investment.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#293

Post by Nathanba »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #184
orbital-decay wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The genshin impact anticheat was used in a malware campaign. Rockstar was very misleading trying to imply their kernel driver not being compatible with the steam deck was valves fault. I mean, nothing of this is new. ESEA, one of the most influential esports leagues, was caught using its anticheat to mine Bitcoin in 2013. [1] This is long out of control, probably since the days BattlEye switched to ring0 in 2012 du…

People really need to find a better word than 'rootkit' to describe software that users willingly and intentionally give root access.

I agree, we need something that emphasizes that it executes undesired functions. "Trojan horse" would fit better but it's associated with computer virii now. I think I would call it something like "Traitor software".. it generally does the functions you installed it for and pretends to be normal software but then when you aren't looking it betrays you later.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#295

Post by froggit »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #184
orbital-decay wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The genshin impact anticheat was used in a malware campaign. Rockstar was very misleading trying to imply their kernel driver not being compatible with the steam deck was valves fault. I mean, nothing of this is new. ESEA, one of the most influential esports leagues, was caught using its anticheat to mine Bitcoin in 2013. [1] This is long out of control, probably since the days BattlEye switched to ring0 in 2012 du…

People really need to find a better word than 'rootkit' to describe software that users willingly and intentionally give root access.

It's quite literally kit running as root...

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#296

Post by jm4 »

tw04 wrote: post #277
OtomotO wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what I tell my friends. I can't play certain games, because they don't run on Linux and even if they did, I am not gonna install a rootkit to run them.

Ultimately, this is why we have consoles. We can have rootkits, or we can have cheating. Nobody has solved cheat prevention without rootkits. If you can, you’d make millions, if not billions. It’s not like the game creators want to have software on your system that has the potential to brick your system.

Running games in a VM appliance or an immutable container type of environment could be neat. Or some kind of hardware device. Like a console on an expansion card that could enable a secure environment while still letting you use your hardware.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#297

Post by davrosthedalek »

lomase wrote: post #132
tapoxi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they're not rootkits. Rootkits are either to gain root access (thus the name) or to hide something from a user. Anticheats don't do either of these. They expose a kernel API to allow games to verify the state of the system, and they're knowingly installed by the user.

The thing is the Kernel does not have that API. The real solution, and not the hack Riot uses, is for Kernel to provide an API for anticheats, like it does for everything useland.

That's not really possible as long as the kernel allows the loading of arbitrary user-provided modules. Because the cheater will certainly run the cheat that requires kernel mode. If it's run in kernel mode, the API call can be intercepted.

How does the anticheat then work? Corewars. It's a cat and mouse game between the cheat provider and the game developer.

One would need a secure base layer, where also the MS anti-cheat lives, and all drivers can only run in a layer between this base layer and userland. I think that's already done for most of the graphics stack.

On the other hand, I am not convinced I want a system where I cannot load arbitrary kernel mode code if I choose to do so.

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#298

Post by m463 »

sunshowers wrote: post #245
supportengineer wrote: post #147

Not a gamer - Is Steam basically a package manager like 'yum' or 'brew', but for games?

Like 10% of Steam is yum/brew. The other 90% is: * GUI * managing installations, including things like Proton to run Win32 games on Linux, and Fossilize to precompile shaders * bandwidth-saving stuff like being able to transfer games locally * being able to play remotely in a variety of configurations: LAN, WAN, or having a friend connect to your local session ("Remote Play Together") * pretty good support for mappin…

and telemetry

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#299

Post by dbrueck »

cmxch wrote: post #252
dbrueck wrote: post #176

The anti-cheat problem is long-running and complicated. If you choose not to run anti-cheat because you understand that these are opaque rootkits, good for you! That's a totally, 100% valid choice. But please keep in mind: - you are a tiny minority and not the target customer - online multiplayer games are an absurdly big business (i.e. there are huge incentives here) - no, you can't completely solve this server side…

Rejoinder: Blizzard’s Warden. No bootkit, no invasive system configuration required, even plays nice with “niche/enthusiast” platforms like Linux, doesn’t even care if your keyboard isn’t a bit niche too. Thought: If they expect a console level of lockdown, why do they bother writing for the PC? If I wanted a $game_console, I’d buy the console.

Hmm... isn't Blizzard's main FPS title Overwatch though? Cheating seems pretty common in that game (and there are tons of forum threads where people are complaining about it).

Re: Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

#300

Post by m463 »

lomase wrote: post #163
bitwize wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

As Gabe Newell said "piracy is a service problem" I could pirate every game I have on my Steam account. I don't do it because the added value that Steam gives me.

A better example would be GOG.
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