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Reverse engineering Call of Duty anti-cheat

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Re: Reverse engineering Call of Duty anti-cheat

#141

Post by Hikikomori »

dsjoerg wrote: post #134
alkonaut wrote: post #102

Cheating is ultimately a human problem. You can have some safeguards and heuristics like the ones the article describe, to weed out 90% the most blatant cheaters, so I think anticheats like these are fundamentally a good thing. But the anti-cheat can and should err on the safe side because ultimately it should be the players and admins themselves that sort this out. Online multiplayer games must (yes must ) take plac…

Why do you think human admins are the only viable solution? Plenty of games thrive without them—e.g., Apex Legends uses robust reporting and anti-cheat systems, and Rocket League's moderation is largely automated yet effective.

Apex had plenty of cheaters when I played it, if there's a cheater and they're not detecting it there's not much I can do, just 20-30 minutes wasted.

If its a server with admins I can contact them on discord and get them banned pretty quickly. As a system it worked pretty well, had some badmins but there was plenty of servers so could just join another. Though its not really compatible with the matchmaking style games we have today.

Re: Reverse engineering Call of Duty anti-cheat

#142

Post by phsau »

alkonaut wrote: post #91
monkburger wrote: post #41

As long as you can read and write to memory, you will never stop online cheating in FPS games.

This is true, but what is "reading and writing to memory" here? The article outlines dozens of ways of doing that with various hooks etc. And how they try to avoid that. If I put a hardware connection to the memory (basically WIRES to my memory bus) then yes, it's very hard to detect. But that's also very hard and expensive to do...

It's cheaper and more accessible than ever to use DMA/hardware cheats from cheat vendors.

Re: Reverse engineering Call of Duty anti-cheat

#143

Post by skizm »

jagrsw wrote: post #116

I experienced the trust factor (banning, w/o banning officially) issues on my Linux CS:GO account in 2021, dropping to yellow and then red. This made it difficult to find teammates, as I was constantly matched with cheaters. I discovered I wasn't alone, as many other Linux users with Radeon GPUs and 16GB+ VRAM were experiencing similar problems. We created a GitHub issue to track the problem and try to find a solutio…

> dropping to yellow and then red

How do you know what your trustfactor is? Or were you just speculating because the quality of games was lower? As far as I understand TF is hidden specifically so it can't be gamed.

Re: Reverse engineering Call of Duty anti-cheat

#144

Post by Macha »

reginald78 wrote: post #123
int0x29 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money loss is kinda the point. Cheaters can fake a new identity but if they get caught fast enough cheating becomes unaffordable.

Not sure it applies with CoD in particular but my impression is a lot of these games with super invasive anti-cheat went F2P which reduces the punishment of getting caught to wasting time. Combined with the no dedicated servers resulting in little manual admin being possible with new games you've basically created the perfect environment to cheat entirely for business reasons. So then they started adding things like…

> not even just requiring mobile numbers but requiring POST PAID mobile numbers

Wow, I live in a first world country and that would still ban like half the adults I know (Mostly because our bill pay phone plans are terrible value), along with basically every teenager (which for COD, you would think is the core target market).

Re: Reverse engineering Call of Duty anti-cheat

#145

Post by bunnybender »

HideousKojima wrote: post #127
jokoon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting article Maybe he was banned because as a developer, he had development tools installed on his machine, which increased the odds of him being labeled as a potential cheater. Sometimes I even wonder if other hackers could not hack the machine or other players, to install a software that triggers anti-cheat system: it becomes then difficult to lift the ban.

>Sometimes I even wonder if other hackers could not hack the machine or other players, to install a software that triggers anti-cheat system: it becomes then difficult to lift the ban. This appears to be the case in Apex Legends: https://old.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveApex/comments/1bhicc6/cl... Also I wish more "good" hackers were in games, like the guy in GTA Online I ran into once who was shooting me with a money mac…

> Also I wish more "good" hackers were in games, like the guy in GTA Online I ran into once who was shooting me with a money machine gun because Rockstar are greedy assholes.

Eh? Rockstar doesn't force you to buy Shark Cards, and everyone has gotten 11 years worth of DLCs for free. Making in-game money IS an essential part of the game. You also don't have to purchase every single vehicle or other item the game offers.

During my years of playing, I've met only a few cheaters who weren't complete douchebags (though some of them did act that way towards other players). I consider the "good" cheater to be a myth.

Re: Reverse engineering Call of Duty anti-cheat

#146

Post by llucy3 »

skizm wrote: post #143
jagrsw wrote: post #116

I experienced the trust factor (banning, w/o banning officially) issues on my Linux CS:GO account in 2021, dropping to yellow and then red. This made it difficult to find teammates, as I was constantly matched with cheaters. I discovered I wasn't alone, as many other Linux users with Radeon GPUs and 16GB+ VRAM were experiencing similar problems. We created a GitHub issue to track the problem and try to find a solutio…

> dropping to yellow and then red How do you know what your trustfactor is? Or were you just speculating because the quality of games was lower? As far as I understand TF is hidden specifically so it can't be gamed.

In CS, the difference between high and low Trust is very noticeable; it's a big change when your games with silent / mostly-nice teammates and enemies start to become slur-fests. The value itself is not visible to the end-user, but its effects are certainly felt.

Re: Reverse engineering Call of Duty anti-cheat

#147

Post by AnthonyMouse »

gambiting wrote: post #92
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the gold standard in the industry though, you don't warn(suspected) cheaters to not give them opportunity to adjust their tactics. Is this supposed to do any good? The actual cheater is still getting a signal that they've been detected, because they get banned. Then they figure out how, make a new account and go back to cheating. Meanwhile the normal user is both confused and significantly more inconvenience…

>>The actual cheater is still getting a signal that they've been detected, because they get banned. So....yes. But there are mitigating tactics around this, I really recommend looking into it because it's a fascinating topic. As the simplest thing - you don't ban cheaters the moment they are detected to not give off how you detected them. That's why Activision bans people in waves and all at once, even though they kn…

> Yes, which is why the aim is to have 0 legitimate players getting caught by this, obviously.

You can't just say that though, you have to actually do that, which is apparently not what's happening.

Re: Reverse engineering Call of Duty anti-cheat

#148

Post by solarkraft »

ryao wrote: post #121
jagrsw wrote: post #116

I experienced the trust factor (banning, w/o banning officially) issues on my Linux CS:GO account in 2021, dropping to yellow and then red. This made it difficult to find teammates, as I was constantly matched with cheaters. I discovered I wasn't alone, as many other Linux users with Radeon GPUs and 16GB+ VRAM were experiencing similar problems. We created a GitHub issue to track the problem and try to find a solutio…

Could it be that Gabe Newell is a nice guy?

He does respond to minor inquiries frequently, but do remember that his company supports a gigantic predatory underage gambling market.

Re: Reverse engineering Call of Duty anti-cheat

#149

Post by AyyEye »

Hikikomori wrote: post #85
rustcleaner wrote: post #80

Needs to be a law against the taking away of product functionality after the sale, even if it's contractual/EULA. A ban should never take the game away from the owner, and in cases where it does then they need to be refunded (treble damages on top of license, lawyer, and court fees if it takes a judgment to induce the refund). Getting banned on Steam, say, in the sense that all of one's purchases are invalidated shou…

Cheating will not get you banned on steam though, at worst your account is publicly shamed if its a VAC game. People play multiplayer games to have fun and interact with others. If you behave badly, be it cheating or otherwise, you should be banned from using the multiplayer service because your behavior impacts other people.

> If you behave badly, be it cheating or otherwise, you should be banned from using the multiplayer service because your behavior impacts other people.

What if you behaved great but some guy fresh out of code boot camp's algorithm bans you?

Re: Reverse engineering Call of Duty anti-cheat

#150

Post by michaelt »

arkh wrote: post #139
gambiting wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>The actual cheater is still getting a signal that they've been detected, because they get banned. So....yes. But there are mitigating tactics around this, I really recommend looking into it because it's a fascinating topic. As the simplest thing - you don't ban cheaters the moment they are detected to not give off how you detected them. That's why Activision bans people in waves and all at once, even though they kn…

I would not be surprised to learn some gaming company is selling cheats for their own games.

Yes, but I think the companies prefer the term "in-app purchase"
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