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Game Hacking – Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)

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

#111

Post by bflesch »

snickerdoodle12 wrote: post #50
rvnx wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's "just" an automatic update, like Chrome, etc. It's one entry-point among others for RCE. If tomorrow NSA wants to gather any files on your computer, all they need to do is to ask Google to push an update for you through Google Omaha. https://epic.org/wp-content/uploads/privacy/nsa/foia/NSA-Goo... Google and NSA have a "partnership". Valve could also have such partnership in theory, through VAC, though unlikely i…

I get chromium & firefox from my distro's repos

Linux distros are vulnerable to the same supply chain attacks. Did you ever do a background check on your distro maintainers? How many of them have email addresses from non-democratic TLDs?

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

#112

Post by ChocolateGod »

tines wrote: post #108
compton93 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they just read the memory. The whole point of an external cheat is to only read memory. They can still use Win32 to send inputs.

How do you determine whether the mouse is over an enemy head? Is there some variable the engine maintains for that?

Read the player position and camera from memory, read enemies positions from memory, use basic maths to detect if camera is pointing at an enemy.

or the game engine could track internally what the player is looking at (GTA does this).

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

#113

Post by CaptainFever »

tines wrote: post #108
compton93 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they just read the memory. The whole point of an external cheat is to only read memory. They can still use Win32 to send inputs.

How do you determine whether the mouse is over an enemy head? Is there some variable the engine maintains for that?

No experience, but I think the game seems to track it? The default crosshair seems to change depending on what you're aiming at.

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

#114

Post by [deleted] »

frollogaston wrote: post #99
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.

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

[deleted]

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

#115

Post by oersted »

miamibre wrote: post #93
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.

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 incent…

> nowadays the ONLY way to have fun in most multiplayer games is to win by any means

That’s quite the hyperbole, I play plenty of multiplayer games and I enjoy myself plenty wether I win or not. Granted, games like Dota, Counterstrike or Tarkov are designed for a certain ultra-competitive audience, that’s fine, but there’s plenty of choice besides, more than ever.

These competitive games might be at the top of the charts, but they are rather niche in the grand scheme of things. It's just that the kind of people that play these games, they end up only playing that one game for years for a few hours a day. But in reality they are a minority and there are many more players spread out among all other games.

I think you are projecting your motivation to play games onto others, there are many reasons to enjoy games other than just getting those fake points at the end, and not everyone is as sore for loosing.

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

#116

Post by Arnavion »

miamibre wrote: post #93
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.

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 incent…

Cooperative games do still have the problem that you either need to have friends with the same interests and gaming schedule as you (the last one especially gets more and more difficult with age and real life responsibilities), or you play with randoms and then all the same annoyances with multiplayer games that you listed apply.

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

#117

Post by InvertedRhodium »

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 the ultimate meta play - it’s no longer you vs the game, it’s you vs the game developers.

I ran a botting SaaS for Aion years ago, and the constant cat and mouse was what kept me going at it.

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

#118

Post by Freban »

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…

>then grew disinterested

*Uninterested or just you lost interest. Disinterested means "not influenced by considerations of personal advantage."

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

#119

Post by vintermann »

esyir wrote: post #94
eszed wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe they think they're smarter than the others for using a cheat. "Outsmarting the system" etc.

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

#120

Post by vintermann »

handoflixue wrote: post #60
qualeed wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone at Valve had taken 10 seconds to review my stats It seems super reasonable when it's a one-off thing for your own account. When you think about making it into policy and scaling it up to 1000s of interactions, it quickly becomes unreasonable. > Statistical techniques can dramatically reduce false positives For a period of time, anyways. Until the statistics get gamed by the cheaters (e.g. adjust accuracy…

You could just do a basic automated review of stats. If someone has a 50% win rate and a 20% accuracy, they're probably not cheating - what's even the point of cheating if you don't win more often than chance?

Cheating to help someone else/your other account.
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