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Game Hacking – Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)

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Re: Game Hacking – Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)

#91

Post by Frotag »

Frotag wrote: post #81
SteveNuts wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never understand what people actually get out of cheating in games. I'll admit I've tried it a few times just for giggles (way back in the Age of Empires II/MSN Gaming Zone days), but the novelty quickly wears off and then it's just not even fun anymore. There must be some very interesting psychology behind this.

I've botted in a few MMORPG games and the appeal is that it's basically a new perspective on the game. Also makes it more of a technical challenge than a test of mechanical skill or free time / patience. It still feels like a game in the sense that there's progression and rewards for progression. For example, learning how to read cooldowns means you can make smarter macros and double your income / cut kill time by ha…

Can't edit my comment anymore but for anyone that's played Factorio, it feels a lot like that. Both in the way you slowly switch out hand-fed systems for automated systems that build on each other and in how you get a unique base (bot) out of it in the end. Plus there's something exciting about beating the game in a way the devs didn't envision and one that other players haven't.

Re: Game Hacking – Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)

#92

Post by fc417fc802 »

zeta0134 wrote: post #65
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generally I favor "cheat detection should be serverside, don't trust the client" from a general security perspective, but... I can totally see a valid case in there, somewhere, for more rigorous clientside checks. Yeah... The simple fact is, it's simply not possible to have completely server-side cheat detection simply because you'll be relying purely on heuristics which could very well be wrong. It's just not goin…

And the counter is fairly straightforward: any client-side cheat detection has been broken. You can't trust the client. It doesn't work, your server just thinks it works because it's lying to you now. Client-side cheat detection can work for tournaments, but it's way simpler there: the tournament provides the hardware, and the players aren't permitted to install anything. This doesn't irritate me quite as much from a…

I think an overlooked approach is the snapchat model. Absolutely littered with client side integrity checks coupled with an automated obfuscation solution so that the checks in each binary end up being wildly different. Then you frequently push an updated binary and refuse to operate with out of date ones.

At least for competitive AAA titles I don't see why there couldn't be a daily update of the core binary. None of the assets would change so it wouldn't be a large update by any means. In effect it would prevent cheating by imposing impossible work and latency requirements on the tool authors.

The cost of doing this is employing at least one person with deep compiler knowledge who is capable of maintaining the automated system. Obviously that's far too much to ask of indie devs and is probably also out of reach for older titles in most cases.

This is of course all aside from the obvious and common sense but more expensive solution of player flagging, human review, and a binning algorithm (such as trust factor). Avoids needing to ban anyone in the first place and has the added benefit of being at least mildly effective against computer vision based botting solutions (for which there is fundamentally no solution).

Or just private servers and let the individual admins sort it out but god forbid players be permitted to run their own communities corporate might lose out on profit if that were a thing (can't risk another DotA after all).

Re: Game Hacking – Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)

#93

Post by miamibre »

SteveNuts wrote: post #30
garrettjoecox wrote: post #9

Years ago for educational purposes I decided to venture down understanding how easy/difficult it was to create a hack for Counterstrike. After just a few hours of watching YouTube tutorials and translating what I could grasp from C/C# into JavaScript (the only language I knew at the time), I had a working Node.js executable that edited memory offsets (using data from hazedumper[1]), letting me see enemies through wal…

I'll never understand what people actually get out of cheating in games. I'll admit I've tried it a few times just for giggles (way back in the Age of Empires II/MSN Gaming Zone days), but the novelty quickly wears off and then it's just not even fun anymore. There must be some very interesting psychology behind this.

It's pretty simple, nowadays the ONLY way to have fun in most multiplayer games is to win by any means. Outside of a few games like minecraft, every other game is designed around winning. 6 of the most played games on steam right now are some combination of competitive FPS / pvp survival or Dota 2. All of these games give you way more rewards for winning over just casually playing so over time the community is incentivized towards maximizing ELO, mastering the meta, and finding any ways to gain an edge on the competition.

I won't say it was better back in the 90s/ early 2000s but games had lobbies and people would just naturally drift around until they found one that satisfied their needs, be it playing more causally or for a more hardcore experience. Nowadays matchmaking is all controlled by the almighty algorithm which is just a glorified ELO/MMR system and dumps people together regardless of whether or not the game is "fun" for them. Worse yet "Quitting" is actively punished so you just have to stay in the game being frustrated and angry at your teammates until you lose. I always use pick up basketball as an example of how lobbies should work with people being given the choice of playing until they are tired/bored and punish trolls by excluding them forcing them to seek out another court or just start their own games.

Now that i have sworn off all competitive multiplayer games because i used to be a real fiend with several thousand hours in Dota 2 i have come to realize that as fun as the game is the fundamental failure of every matchmaking system is that your fun will always be dictated by how often you win because that's the only thing that is rewarded both in the game and by the community. If you look at any forum for these competitive games it's always the same complaints with people bemoaning that the balances is bad (AKA i don't win because if i did why would i complain), the game is too hard for newbies (AKA i don't win because the skill level is too high), and that the community is too toxic (AKA i don't win because i don't take the game too seriously and people get mad at me).

I'm much happier playing singleplayer games or exclusively cooperative games like Helldivers and Deep Rock Galactic and think most people would be too but they need to come to the realization that it's not the games fault per se but the underlying mechanics behind the matchmaking systems.

Re: Game Hacking – Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)

#94

Post by esyir »

eszed wrote: post #36
SteveNuts wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never understand what people actually get out of cheating in games. I'll admit I've tried it a few times just for giggles (way back in the Age of Empires II/MSN Gaming Zone days), but the novelty quickly wears off and then it's just not even fun anymore. There must be some very interesting psychology behind this.

My perception of the psychology is a malformed competitive drive. Competition is fun! But when it gets someone to the place of "Must win at all costs " it can be life-destroying. For the video game cheats, I think it starts out as "Must beat the other players", but then that gets (mostly) boring once they are actually are beating the other players, and it shifts to "Must beat the anti-cheat system."

I think you, and a lot of other people really overestimate the number of people for whom the technical challenge is why they cheat.

Seeing that the cheating industry is relatively large, and functions on a subscription basis; For the vast majority of cheaters the challenge is entering their credit card to get their cheat subscription.

These are people who want to win at all costs, other users be damned.

Re: Game Hacking – Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)

#95

Post by esyir »

tines wrote: post #72
Workaccount2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a lot of them, they aren't cheating, they are compensating for bad teammates, bad servers, other cheaters, bad hit reg, bad sound effects, bad whatever they can dream up. Cheating is "this is my actual skill level if there wasn't so much bullshit happening to me" Of course this is all a lie, but it's what they tell themselves.

This is only true for the people who use the cheats, not the people who make them. For the people who make them it's an intellectual exercise, like solving a puzzle, it's an end in itself. That and the social credit it gives you among your technical friends.

For the people that make them, they're largely making them for money.

Re: Game Hacking – Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)

#96

Post by compton93 »

tines wrote: post #73
garrettjoecox wrote: post #9

Years ago for educational purposes I decided to venture down understanding how easy/difficult it was to create a hack for Counterstrike. After just a few hours of watching YouTube tutorials and translating what I could grasp from C/C# into JavaScript (the only language I knew at the time), I had a working Node.js executable that edited memory offsets (using data from hazedumper[1]), letting me see enemies through wal…

How did editing memory offsets auto-fire based on enemies entering your crosshairs? To my knowledge this would require some code hooking at least. (Or are you using "editing memory offsets" to mean "writing new instructions into the process' memory"?)

Win32 API mouse input and trigger a mouse click in Windows when crosshair on enemy head (more likely when crosshair is within enemy head position).

Re: Game Hacking – Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)

#97

Post by duskwuff »

aeonik wrote: post #79
invokestatic wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, VAC handles Cheat Engine and the like very well. You won’t get banned for simply having them open, only for having them attached to the game, which I think is reasonable.

I used to use CheatEngine on single player games that I ran through Steam, and I don't recall Steam having a problem with that at the time. Not sure if it's changed, but it was pretty reasonable. Never used it on Multiplayer games though.

VAC is only used in multiplayer games. (And even then, only in a limited number of games - https://steamdb.info/charts/?category=8)

Re: Game Hacking – Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)

#98

Post by tines »

compton93 wrote: post #96
tines wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did editing memory offsets auto-fire based on enemies entering your crosshairs? To my knowledge this would require some code hooking at least. (Or are you using "editing memory offsets" to mean "writing new instructions into the process' memory"?)

Win32 API mouse input and trigger a mouse click in Windows when crosshair on enemy head (more likely when crosshair is within enemy head position).

That would require a lot more than editing memory offsets though.

Re: Game Hacking – Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)

#99

Post by frollogaston »

SteveNuts wrote: post #30
garrettjoecox wrote: post #9

Years ago for educational purposes I decided to venture down understanding how easy/difficult it was to create a hack for Counterstrike. After just a few hours of watching YouTube tutorials and translating what I could grasp from C/C# into JavaScript (the only language I knew at the time), I had a working Node.js executable that edited memory offsets (using data from hazedumper[1]), letting me see enemies through wal…

I'll never understand what people actually get out of cheating in games. I'll admit I've tried it a few times just for giggles (way back in the Age of Empires II/MSN Gaming Zone days), but the novelty quickly wears off and then it's just not even fun anymore. There must be some very interesting psychology behind this.

It's more of a thing in ranked things like Counterstrike, which are half game half unpaid job.

Re: Game Hacking – Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)

#100

Post by cat1750309572 »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #89
tines wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely. Last I looked, VAC only looks at a few gross elements, like the names of the DLLs loaded into the game's process. If you don't match a blacklisted name, you're probably not detected.

And user account names. At least at one point you could catch a ban for having an account named "catbot" when running on a linux box. Admittedly that was probably quite a reasonable litmus test in practice even if not in principle.

I'm surprised someone remembers this, considering how long ago it was, the fact that Valve publicly denied this later, and that most people (on the side of publications reporting that situation initially and outside observers on reddit and other platforms) didn't understand/didn't care for the difference between linux user account names (that caused the bans at that time), steam display names, steam account names and steam custom profile urls.
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