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A Message About Vanguard From Our Security and Privacy Teams

riotgames.com

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Re: A Message About Vanguard From Our Security and Privacy Teams

#11

Post by _kxbd »

ds wrote: post #7

The inherent issue with anti cheats as compared to anti-virus software is user intention. A user who installs a anti virus program wants that program to do its job and find bad actors. The virus on the other hand is completely unwanted by both the user and the software- Its existence is threatened by all fronts. However, a anti-cheat lives in a extremely adversarial environment. The cheater (and the cheat) wants the…

The future of anti-cheat is machine learning specific to the game. CS:GO already does this, where it used the Overwatch community review program to train it, and it can now automatically ban some cheaters.

I don't think it's a viable model because players are willing to do it for free, as CS:GO's Overwatch shows.

Re: A Message About Vanguard From Our Security and Privacy Teams

#12

Post by ruialmeida »

This will always be a cat and mouse game. There are some anti-cheat software more intrusive than others. Even Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) which is considered by many to not be very intrusive, used to intercept DNS queries to detect communication with paid cheats DRM.

Most anti-cheats also scan all processeses memory and even files to detect know cheat signatures. They tend to run with high privileges and some take in-game screenshots for analysis. Basically they have permissions to do anything and receive silent updates.

I wonder if statistical methods to detect cheaters result in too many false positives.

Re: A Message About Vanguard From Our Security and Privacy Teams

#13

Post by DavidVoid »

ds wrote: post #7

The inherent issue with anti cheats as compared to anti-virus software is user intention. A user who installs a anti virus program wants that program to do its job and find bad actors. The virus on the other hand is completely unwanted by both the user and the software- Its existence is threatened by all fronts. However, a anti-cheat lives in a extremely adversarial environment. The cheater (and the cheat) wants the…

To my knowledge radar cheaters are now dealt with by not sending information about enemy positions if they are behind walls. It's not a perfect solution ofc but it seems like it works reasonably well.

Re: A Message About Vanguard From Our Security and Privacy Teams

#15

Post by Kaveren »

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #9

I skimmed, but it seems none of this addressed why the service (edit) runs at boot-time? Also, expecting a service to not not look at your data if they have access is not security. If Valve can mitigate hacking in CSGO without such an intrusive service, I am sure Riot can. I, myself, did a very, very, very poor job with an autoencoder to detect anomalous matches in Dota and caught a large amount of players abusing th…

I think a Riot employee stated that cheaters would try to start cheats before the anticheat starts, so the anticheat running at all times is trying to prevent this.

CS:GO has a lot more hackers than games with more intrusive anticheats like Overwatch in my experience. Only solution is an invasive anticheat, machine learning, and trust factor systems.

Re: A Message About Vanguard From Our Security and Privacy Teams

#16

Post by houzi »

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #9

I skimmed, but it seems none of this addressed why the service (edit) runs at boot-time? Also, expecting a service to not not look at your data if they have access is not security. If Valve can mitigate hacking in CSGO without such an intrusive service, I am sure Riot can. I, myself, did a very, very, very poor job with an autoencoder to detect anomalous matches in Dota and caught a large amount of players abusing th…

Hackers in standard CSGO games are rampant from what I understand.

Serious players pay extra to queue up in a dedicated service for high tickrate servers and anti-cheats which I believe are rootkits as well.. not sure about any of this though.

Re: A Message About Vanguard From Our Security and Privacy Teams

#17

Post by dharmab »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #8
smoyer wrote: post #3

Explaining your rationale doesn't change the fact that gamers (many unwittingly) are potentially giving the keys to their computer kingdom to Riot. This behavior on a console would be completely acceptable but unless you're running a dedicated PC for gaming, I wouldn't install this software. As a thought experiment, I wonder what happens when the FISA court orders Riot to install a modified version on a suspected ter…

> unless you're running a dedicated PC for gaming That's the approach I've been taking for a long time now. If you don't, you will always a) have your fun ruined by trying to be security conscious b) in the end, most likely give in and allow things you really shouldn't allow on a trusted machine because otherwise you can't achieve your task (getting a game to run). So I have a game box, try to make sure that nothing…

My next gaming PC will run a Linux hypervisors and use PCI passthru to run Windows as a full-performance guest. Then if I need to use a web browser, I can switch to a Linux guest without interrupting the game.

Re: A Message About Vanguard From Our Security and Privacy Teams

#18

Post by ds »

_kxbd wrote: post #11
ds wrote: post #7

The inherent issue with anti cheats as compared to anti-virus software is user intention. A user who installs a anti virus program wants that program to do its job and find bad actors. The virus on the other hand is completely unwanted by both the user and the software- Its existence is threatened by all fronts. However, a anti-cheat lives in a extremely adversarial environment. The cheater (and the cheat) wants the…

The future of anti-cheat is machine learning specific to the game. CS:GO already does this, where it used the Overwatch community review program to train it, and it can now automatically ban some cheaters. I don't think it's a viable model because players are willing to do it for free, as CS:GO's Overwatch shows.

Valve also put a significant amount of work into this system. Asking every game developer to build that system for their game seems like alot to ask- Especially when they can just drop in a few lines of code // third party software package and have cheating 'handled'.

'Not invented here' is a blessing and a curse.

Re: A Message About Vanguard From Our Security and Privacy Teams

#19

Post by ds »

DavidVoid wrote: post #13
ds wrote: post #7

The inherent issue with anti cheats as compared to anti-virus software is user intention. A user who installs a anti virus program wants that program to do its job and find bad actors. The virus on the other hand is completely unwanted by both the user and the software- Its existence is threatened by all fronts. However, a anti-cheat lives in a extremely adversarial environment. The cheater (and the cheat) wants the…

To my knowledge radar cheaters are now dealt with by not sending information about enemy positions if they are behind walls. It's not a perfect solution ofc but it seems like it works reasonably well.

Depends, there are many methods of doing it. Many games let you hear gunshots/grenades/etc.. that are far away. You can use those sounds to show a radar spot.

Re: A Message About Vanguard From Our Security and Privacy Teams

#20

Post by fendy3002 »

dharmab wrote: post #17
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless you're running a dedicated PC for gaming That's the approach I've been taking for a long time now. If you don't, you will always a) have your fun ruined by trying to be security conscious b) in the end, most likely give in and allow things you really shouldn't allow on a trusted machine because otherwise you can't achieve your task (getting a game to run). So I have a game box, try to make sure that nothing…

My next gaming PC will run a Linux hypervisors and use PCI passthru to run Windows as a full-performance guest. Then if I need to use a web browser, I can switch to a Linux guest without interrupting the game.

I wanna try this but PCI pass through seems hard. And with KVM win7 guest, I get too many cert invalid error during accessing https, which is annoying.
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