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Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

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Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#21

Post by LoganDark »

vel0city wrote: post #20
LoganDark wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This rhetoric comes up all the time. It goes like this: "if you don't like it, don't buy it." / "don't play it." / "find something else." It's everywhere: don't like non-repairable devices? Well don't buy those then. don't like proprietary operating systems? Well don't use those then. don't like games with anticheats? Well don't play those then. I've found this argument to be entirely antisocial because it completely…

> I don't want to be forced to accept an anticheat for games. I don't want to be forced to play with cheaters due to some people's philosophical concepts of what software I should be allowed to run on my computer when there's technology to radically minimize their numbers for the games I'd like to play. If I want to have a computer that's locked down to be a platform for playing games online with a low likelihood of…

> If I want to have a computer that's locked down to be a platform for playing games online with a low likelihood of encountering cheaters shouldn't I have the freedom to be able to choose that?

This is exactly why I choose Mac and iPhone. I actually trust Apple to do this. I do not however trust Microsoft or third-party app developers to do this. But I absolutely believe in that freedom and exercise it myself.

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#22

Post by grg0 »

The tl;dr from the post is that kernel anti-cheat presents both an attack vector for malware and a backdoor for firms. The former is already known to be exploited.

I don't know why comments here are so negative. PC gamers should be wary of installing this stuff, and PC users in general wary of attempts to lock down their computer. If game companies want a fully locked down PC, they already have one; it's called a console.

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#23

Post by ronsor »

cowthulhu wrote: post #18

This article reminds me of Chesterton Fence - the author is complaining about something, without ever experiencing why it exists.

Unlike the Fence, kernel anti-cheat wasn't always there and won't be effective in the future with new AI-powered cheats growing.

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#24

Post by AuthAuth »

>it hasn’t stopped cheating

No but it has largely reduced it to where you can play competitively and not run into cheaters. Go play f2p csgo and enjoy a hacker in nearly every single game blatantly spinning in spawn head shotting everyone.

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#26

Post by CursedSilicon »

cowthulhu wrote: post #18

This article reminds me of Chesterton Fence - the author is complaining about something, without ever experiencing why it exists.

I must admit I immediately questioned the credibility of the article when the author admitted they "aren't a gamer" and then started making allusions to vague political threads. Not to say these criticisms aren't valid, but they're a weird jumping off point

The reality is none of the companies want to do these things. Every step in this process locks out some subset of customers. And that's not including the ones who meet the technical requirements but are turned off enough by the decision to just avoid the games anyway

They're an unfortunate response to how utterly profitable and expansive cheating in online games has become. They cost the companies precious development time that could be spent making the game better to instead make it just vaguely "playable" for normal people

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#27

Post by glitchc »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #3

> Riot went as far as pushing a UEFI firmware update to Valorant players to close a hardware attack — the first time an anti-cheat has reached below the operating system to change your firmware I don't believe Vanguard did this at all? It told users they need to update their firmware to play, it didn't touch the firmware itself. > Cheats started in user space, so anti-cheat moved into the kernel to see them. Cheats f…

Almost all trainers from time immemorial operate in the kernel space because they require direct access to memory addresses. The whole cheats paradigm started with altering values stored at specific addresses. Alter the right value and the player character gets infinite ammo or lives or whatnot, and it went from there. Modern day cheats embed more sophisticated logic that ultimately boils down to altering locations in memory in a specific order, which brings me to my point:

An anti-cheat mechanism can always be defeated if the cheater can access a lower order of abstraction from the mechanism. An arms race is the inevitable outcome. It's either that or competitive gaming is not viable.

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#28

Post by frollogaston »

grg0 wrote: post #22

The tl;dr from the post is that kernel anti-cheat presents both an attack vector for malware and a backdoor for firms. The former is already known to be exploited. I don't know why comments here are so negative. PC gamers should be wary of installing this stuff, and PC users in general wary of attempts to lock down their computer. If game companies want a fully locked down PC, they already have one; it's called a con…

There are people who treat their PC almost like a console, cause all they use it for is video games anyway, but they want more than what a console offers (and will spend a lot). They install whatever. Kernel anti-cheat isn't even the worst thing on those, that'd be Windows.

It's fine. Personally I keep my Mac clean. It can play a few games, which is enough for me. I also found a spare PC in e-waste, and occasionally boot it up to play games in Win10, but wouldn't care if it died.

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#29

Post by gopher_space »

glitchc wrote: post #27
ChocolateGod wrote: post #3

> Riot went as far as pushing a UEFI firmware update to Valorant players to close a hardware attack — the first time an anti-cheat has reached below the operating system to change your firmware I don't believe Vanguard did this at all? It told users they need to update their firmware to play, it didn't touch the firmware itself. > Cheats started in user space, so anti-cheat moved into the kernel to see them. Cheats f…

Almost all trainers from time immemorial operate in the kernel space because they require direct access to memory addresses. The whole cheats paradigm started with altering values stored at specific addresses. Alter the right value and the player character gets infinite ammo or lives or whatnot, and it went from there. Modern day cheats embed more sophisticated logic that ultimately boils down to altering locations i…

I mean the assumption here is that administration needs to be automated. Cheating is an intermittent problem at worst on moderated servers.

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#30

Post by frollogaston »

pibaker wrote: post #7
vel0city wrote: post #5

> I want to preface this with the fact that I’m not a gamer. So you're prefacing it as someone who has never really dealt with the games you like to play getting totally infested with and nearly unplayable with so many cheaters in practically every lobby. Its easy to think its something that's not needed if one never spends any time in the space. Do they stop all cheats? No. Do they make the bar extensively higher to…

Yes, it is very rich for someone with no skin in the literal game to police what others do to their computers. I don't play any games that use anticheat. But I also don't go out of my way to tell other players who knowingly, consensually installs games with anticheat so they can play them. It's like saying it is an invasion of privacy for cycling athletes to be subjected to doping tests. It's their game. Why does it…

It's everyone's problem if those PCs get turned into a botnet, but otherwise whatever.
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