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How to find exploits in video games

shalzuth.com

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Re: How to find exploits in video games

#11

Post by shipscode »

shalzuth wrote: post #2

I wrote a short blog post about my thought process on how I reverse engineer video games and build tools that enable me to do security testing on them. It’s a bit brief on purpose, as reading the code is expected. Let me know your thoughts and what would make it better.

Thanks for the write up! This is really interesting and a great piece of knowledge to have out there. Funnily it similar to mobile app reverse engineering workflows.

Re: How to find exploits in video games

#13

Post by shipscode »

joshua_delgad0 wrote: post #7
alphan0n wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most cases, in the US, reverse engineering is not illegal.

[flagged]

Terms of service breaches are not typically a criminal manner in the USA. Perhaps it could be a civil matter if you create financial damages. Even in that area, the cases are usually decided in the courts on a case-by-case basis.

Generally, code is free speech, and the right to free speech protects this in America.

Re: How to find exploits in video games

#15

Post by Levitating »

shalzuth wrote: post #2

I wrote a short blog post about my thought process on how I reverse engineer video games and build tools that enable me to do security testing on them. It’s a bit brief on purpose, as reading the code is expected. Let me know your thoughts and what would make it better.

I love the briefness of your post. Your code and method are clearly conveyed.

Re: How to find exploits in video games

#18

Post by malkia »

I had a wonderful app MS-DOS resident (TSR) on my PC that when pressing a key would do a snapshot of the whole memory (or specific area) to disk, to a file. So if you play a game, and lose a live, or HP points, you keep on pressing this, and then there were tools to do the diff.

There was one game that was storing the lifes as actual text - Ninja or something....

So last year my son was hacking some games, and nowadays there is a similar tool too - also based on diffs - though with me back then it was only 640KB, and nowadays we are looking towards 8-16GB if not more!

Somehow this technique still works for some games, but with way more gotchas...

Re: How to find exploits in video games

#20

Post by lunchmeat317 »

3abiton wrote: post #17

It's really interesting to see people enjoying/more interested in breaking a game vs playing the game.

You should check out Tool-Assisted Speedruns om tasvideos.org, then. They use some of these techniques to do RNG manipulation, among other things, to improve game times.
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