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Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

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Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#101

Post by AuthAuth »

laughing_man wrote: post #43
AuthAuth wrote: post #24

>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.

It's hard to know. If I were cheating on a competitive server, I'd be using cheats that gave me an edge without making me dominant. That sort of thing is very difficult to detect.

But because you were cheating you'd be above your level. So there would be a mismatch somewhere. You'd need to vastly improve your aim to compensate for bad game sense or use wall hacks to compensate for bad map awareness. Either way its not to hard for people to notice if they watch a replay. Not many cheaters are doing tiny adjustments because that would suggest they're already at that skill level.

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#102

Post by iscoelho »

myrmidon wrote: post #78
iscoelho wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aimbot is actually very solvable! 1) When DMA is fully blocked, Aimbot resorts to being a pixel bot. 2) Once you're relying on a pixel bot, all the anti-cheat has to do is "bait" the bot. After you click the bait a few times, you're banned. (: RuneScape is actually the pioneer of this technique.

Baiting alone is not a reliable long-term solution, because it both interferes with competitive games (a lot) and because it requires you to basically stay on top of a captcha escalation (especially once cheaters limit themselves to "realistic" reaction time constraints), and this is a bad position to be in (because it means continuous effort for the developer). The most helpful approach in my view is to make fresh a…

You'd be surprised to know that this strategy works quite well! Pixel bots require a hardware fake display when faced with kernel anti-cheat. They also depend on color/pattern recognition, as AI is not yet capable of operating at the frame rates required for competitive games. That allows the bait to be seen by a bot, but invisible to the eye.

If you are successfully baited and detected, you also get HWID banned, so it only takes once. This makes cheating via pixel bot unviable.

On the contrary, DMA is so desired because it eliminates this risk.

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#103

Post by avadodin »

km144 wrote: post #73

> So I would rather share a match with the occasional cheater than run un-auditable ring-0 software on the same machine I use for anything private. The article makes an argument that anti-cheat is not worth the trade-off, yet the author admits they are a non-gamer. Then they go on to present one example of anti-cheat that tells us all we need to know about actual gamers' preferences—FACEIT. For those who don't know,…

Faceit has cheaters too by all accounts and some of the cheats have advanced to the point that not even kernel access under secure boot helps as they don't even run on the same device.

Behavioral patterns are a much better target.

If your cheats make you play like a legit player, who cares? It's the same as in the gym. People are bothered by people who look like Ahnold, and still can't lift one plate. Not the fattie who takes t to look like a normal person.

I think that's the spirit of VAC.

The only issue is it can't —or won't— detect people helicopter–hopping no–scope sniping around the map or terrible players who shoot you in the face every time in 12ms.

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#104

Post by HDBaseT »

sushid wrote: post #33
sgjohnson wrote: post #25

I’m actually surprised how a lot of commenters here are defending kernel-level anticheat.

Have you played games with a ton of cheaters? It's infuriating, and I'm glad that kernel-level anti-cheat makes it such that you can have an enjoyable gaming experience. Now, I no longer play competitive shooters due to my age, but this was a huge issue back in the day.

Yes, but the problem is highly exaggerated and Counter Strike has multiple mechanisms for isolating or preventing cheaters, even outside of "traditional" anti-cheat tooling.

I play at moderately high elo in Counter Strike (Faceit Level 10, 25k Premier) in a lesser populated region and even Valve matchmaking is mostly fine. I have a multi-thousand dollar inventory, old Steam account and over 7,000 hours in Counter Strike, all of these things (likely) impact my trust factor.

Trust Factor doesn't detect cheaters, but it sure does expose me to way way less cheaters. It's pretty uncommon to see an obvious cheater in CS2, the number of closet cheaters likely increased. In CS:GO rage cheaters were more common, but they are (for the most part) detected a little bit better now.

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#105

Post by HDBaseT »

AgentMasterRace wrote: post #11

what a goof. yes it's a privacy risk, but so is half the things people do on the internet. cs2 is infested with hackers, arc raiders died because of hackers... many games I've played and loved are dead because of hackers.

"CS2 is infested with hackers" is either cope OR you have low trust factor.

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#106

Post by nhggfu »

online real-money and crypto poker sites have a big cheating problem too - and face similar issues for detection.

Alarmingly the software for one popular operator has some very invasive features - verging on spyware - including harvesting screenshots of all screens (sent to some unknown biz in india, stored under "who-knows-what" security), hardware fingerprinting, and 'remote access' wired in for future releases.

https://pokerindustrynews.com/features/coinpoker-anti-cheat-...

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#107

Post by literallyroy »

avadodin wrote: post #103
km144 wrote: post #73

> So I would rather share a match with the occasional cheater than run un-auditable ring-0 software on the same machine I use for anything private. The article makes an argument that anti-cheat is not worth the trade-off, yet the author admits they are a non-gamer. Then they go on to present one example of anti-cheat that tells us all we need to know about actual gamers' preferences—FACEIT. For those who don't know,…

Faceit has cheaters too by all accounts and some of the cheats have advanced to the point that not even kernel access under secure boot helps as they don't even run on the same device. Behavioral patterns are a much better target. If your cheats make you play like a legit player, who cares? It's the same as in the gym. People are bothered by people who look like Ahnold, and still can't lift one plate. Not the fattie…

Saying FACEIT has cheaters “by all accounts” feels like a bad faith argument without including that it has significantly fewer cheaters (at least at higher ranks). As well as having the ability to report to real human moderators.

I have too many hours in cs:go and cs2 and am level 10 FACEIT. I have had many awful cheater experiences in the native competitive systems but have never had an obvious cheater (never reported someone) in a FACEIT match.

It works. It raises the bar high enough that cheating is significantly less frequent.

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#108

Post by literallyroy »

HDBaseT wrote: post #105
AgentMasterRace wrote: post #11

what a goof. yes it's a privacy risk, but so is half the things people do on the internet. cs2 is infested with hackers, arc raiders died because of hackers... many games I've played and loved are dead because of hackers.

"CS2 is infested with hackers" is either cope OR you have low trust factor.

My NA experience was bad at top level premier (or was ~1 year ago).

Why assume a large swath of the community is coping or low trust factor and that instead your experience is the only accurate one?

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#109

Post by SwellJoe »

I have purchased every Civilization (and closely related) game since III. I have played more hours of any single Civ than all other games combined.

I didn't buy Civ VII, because I don't buy malware. As long as it's got Denuvo, it's not a game I'm buying or playing.

Re: Kernel anti-cheat is an overreach

#110

Post by preisschild »

SwellJoe wrote: post #109

I have purchased every Civilization (and closely related) game since III. I have played more hours of any single Civ than all other games combined. I didn't buy Civ VII, because I don't buy malware. As long as it's got Denuvo, it's not a game I'm buying or playing.

Fuck Denuvo's parent company (Irdeto) too. They have been making DRM cards for austrian state TV for decades and thus making it a PITA to do something like broadcasting your TV signal over IP to the TVs in the house...
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