As most of you know, these anti-cheat systems are functionally equivalent to rootkits. There is zero visibility into how these privileges are used for targeted attacks. Due to geographic location of the large game companies this has a geopolitical angle. Fingerprinting of devices and the networks they are in provides a lot of metadata that is most definitely fed into their intelligence apparatus.
Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton
131–140 of 485 posts
Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
A trusted entity (probably Valve) could provide a locked down distro where kernel integrity is enforced through secure boot and TPM attestation, but that would mean giving up some control over your own system. There's no guarantee that anything client-side is impossible to bypass of course, but the goal would be to more or less match what Windows offers, which isn't perfect either.
> giving up some control over your own system There could simply be a developer option that disables these integrity checks but subsequently breaks online games that rely on them. Valve could also offer a module that allows signed user-space binaries access to kernel space, which would be an improvement over Windows offers in that anti-cheat wouldn't need to live in the kernel. I think that's a fine trade off.
You don't even need a developer mode. I was looking into making my own image based distro/system which has its bootchain entirely verified and I intend to make any modifications via system extentions[1], which IIRC also get measured aswell (or was at least planned somewhere). To be fair, this is purely additive or overlaying, so no removing of files, at best changing. This all would be signed using Secure boot and after the fact using dm-verity.
Secure Boot in theory isn't even necessary, only TPM2. Secure boot only ensure that you are actually booting into a binary that you expect to boot in this case, so if your binary is actually different it would result in different PCR values in the TPM indicating something is wrong.
Sadly a lot of end user software (flatpak, ...) isn't packaged & signed in a way which would allow for full "only run software I allow by importing public keys" (read Linux IPE[2]), but what can you do, only your best I suppose...
[1]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-sys...
Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton
#133I'm ordering a new laptop to work on LLM stuff, and while I thought about jumping through the hoops to get Linux running with secure boot... I had a realization, it's a cold day in hell when someone else is going to tell me what I can run on my computer. All the latest multiplayer games are now requiring secure boot on Win11 as well I'm actually wary of all these anti-cheats, they're literally hyperinvasive maleware.…
Just get a ps5. I went through the same adventure.
I did that for years and I recommend it as well. Pure linux desktop + console for games is a nice combo and a good separation of functions.
Of course... at this point I am back to having a PC with a beastly GPU and I boot Windows for games and CAD. It is hard to resist high framerate 4k gaming once it becomes a possibility, so now I need to figure out the secure boot problem for the occasional game that requires it.
Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton
#134I'm ordering a new laptop to work on LLM stuff, and while I thought about jumping through the hoops to get Linux running with secure boot... I had a realization, it's a cold day in hell when someone else is going to tell me what I can run on my computer. All the latest multiplayer games are now requiring secure boot on Win11 as well I'm actually wary of all these anti-cheats, they're literally hyperinvasive maleware.…
Just get a ps5. I went through the same adventure.
A PS5 is an even more locked down system! There are vastly more games, many I already own, that work on Linux.
Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton
#135It's funny that game makers make a fuss about anti-cheat not working on Linux but then publish Switch versions of their games. That platform has almost zero security and is commonly emulated with cheats even in multiplayer these days.
> is commonly emulated with cheats even in multiplayer There is no Switch emulator that can play online on official servers. The only way you can cheat online is by hacking a real console, but the percentage of people who do it is quite small.
AIUI you can do it, but you risk the Switch you got the data from being banned.
Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton
#136I'm ordering a new laptop to work on LLM stuff, and while I thought about jumping through the hoops to get Linux running with secure boot... I had a realization, it's a cold day in hell when someone else is going to tell me what I can run on my computer. All the latest multiplayer games are now requiring secure boot on Win11 as well I'm actually wary of all these anti-cheats, they're literally hyperinvasive maleware.…
I was in a similar situation and ended up buying a PS5. It ended up being exactly what I wanted.
Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton
#137Is there really no way to make anti-cheat on Linux that can't be bypassed? I don't know much about this, but it seems very difficult to make an anti-cheat for a platform where you can make changes in the kernel.
Yeah. It’s an erosion of rights that doesn’t solve the problem. You only need one cheater to make a game feel bad and DMA devices or pixel tracking can’t be stopped with these anti-cheats.
Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton
#138I'm ordering a new laptop to work on LLM stuff, and while I thought about jumping through the hoops to get Linux running with secure boot... I had a realization, it's a cold day in hell when someone else is going to tell me what I can run on my computer. All the latest multiplayer games are now requiring secure boot on Win11 as well I'm actually wary of all these anti-cheats, they're literally hyperinvasive maleware.…
[deleted]
Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton
#139It's funny that game makers make a fuss about anti-cheat not working on Linux but then publish Switch versions of their games. That platform has almost zero security and is commonly emulated with cheats even in multiplayer these days.
what multiplayer (esports) game that can run on switch ???? fornite???? its not gonna be main playerbase
Madden and NBA2K
Re: Games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton
#140As most of you know, these anti-cheat systems are functionally equivalent to rootkits. There is zero visibility into how these privileges are used for targeted attacks. Due to geographic location of the large game companies this has a geopolitical angle. Fingerprinting of devices and the networks they are in provides a lot of metadata that is most definitely fed into their intelligence apparatus.
I remember trying to install Valorant for the first time, and its ridiculously invasive anticheat kernel mod (or whatever it's called) gave me my first blue (or was it red??) screen I'd seen on Windows in years.
Immediately uninstalled it and haven't ever played Valorant to this day. Fuck that crap, if your community is so toxic that you need a rootkit to keep cheaters at bay, then maybe it's more of a community problem than a technological one. And yes, if this means that you have to block all of China in order to do so, then that is still a community problem. Put your rootkits on your Chinese servers, separate them out, and let the cheaters fight amongst themselves.