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Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

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Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#151

Post by 22c »

userbinator wrote: post #139

It's a cat-and-mouse game, where the mice basically have infinite time to spend on anti-anti-cheat... and dare I say it, countless young people probably got their head start in learning about computers, programming, reverse-engineering, etc. by playing this "meta-game". I know some people who were otherwise completely uninterested in the typical STEM courses at school, but highly skilled at the sort of low-level know…

I don't doubt any of that but what I don't understand is where these guys are getting all their accounts from. I feel as though if I were making a hack for a game, I'd get numerous accounts banned in the process (which means needing to buy more and more copies of the game).

A youngster getting into reverse engineering surely does not have deep enough pockets to spend several hundreds of dollars on buying the game over and over.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#152

Post by fuckcensorship »

temporarrry0923 wrote: post #122
nwiswell wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how we end up with kernel level drivers rather than more measured approaches.

For sure in other games, yeah. Newell is opposed to kernel anti cheats, though, so probably not in CSGO. But other games now look at CSGO and make kernel AC's a selling point (literally Valorant's selling point), so yeah.

I think time will prove that Gaben made the correct decision by focusing Valve’s efforts on AI anti-cheat rather than following this kernel anti-cheat trend. It might be the only hope for a viable anti-cheat in the future if hardware based cheating becomes more commonplace.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/cheat-maker-brags-of-...

Besides that, Riot is already losing the cat and mouse game with cheating in Valorant despite their kernel anti-cheat. There are publicly available cheats which have been undetected for months. Hardware ID spoofers are commonplace as well so cheaters are able to make new accounts and go back to cheating if and when they get banned. Even if kernel anti-cheats worked perfectly, they still wouldn’t be able to detect newer hardware based cheats which run entirely on a second PC leaving nothing for a kernel level anti-cheat to detect.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#153

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

Okay, so the policy questions are interesting, but I have a technical question: How are they handling kernel compatibility? Even with DKMS API breakage could be brutal, and Valve supports Arch as a first class target so they can't just stick to a stable/old version (it'd be easy with RHEL and doable with Ubuntu, but Arch?).

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#154

Post by xerxes901 »

The whole "super intrusive anti-cheat" thing is really annoying to me as a non-competitive player, who just plays games like CoD, CS, etc occasionally with friends. And not just academically annoying, but practically too. I used to run Windows virtualised under Linux with a PCIe passthrough GPU. I remember having to re-install windows directly on my machine at a LAN party once because CS:GO couldn't be run in a VM anymore :(

I think there's a solution that would let wood-tier players like myself avoid this kind of intrusive software, whilst keeping higher-level play clean though.

- Implement server-side anticheat detection, that will ban things that look like bots. As other commenters have noted, bots are indistinguishable from good humans from the outside. So, the server-side detection would ban both bots and good humans

- Have _opt-in_ client side anticheat detection. If you have this enabled, then you're exempted from the server-side detection. So, you enable this if you're actually good.

Could even make this part of the ranking mechanics. Maybe you _can't_ enable the client-side anticheat until the server-side one thinks you're sus. Then you get prompted to turn on the client-side support and get a cool badge or something.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#155

Post by dbaggerman »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #153

Okay, so the policy questions are interesting, but I have a technical question: How are they handling kernel compatibility? Even with DKMS API breakage could be brutal, and Valve supports Arch as a first class target so they can't just stick to a stable/old version (it'd be easy with RHEL and doable with Ubuntu, but Arch ?).

I was a little confused about this as well - until I realised they don't actually specify that this is the Linux kernel. I suspect what they're talking about here is the Windows kernel.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#156

Post by AlexandrB »

The only FPS I play is NS2 and cheating seems like less of a problem than what people are describing in these comments. I wonder if it's because you play on community-run dedicated servers and not some opaque matchmaking system. This allows admins to kick cheaters at their discretion.

This is the equivalent of forums vs. Facebook. The moderation on well-run forums is better than what Facebook can offer because it's done by real humans.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#157

Post by nazgulsenpai »

If anyone here played Modern Warfare 2 on PC when it released, you know this is about 13 years late :)

While I don't like kernel level anti-cheat, its hard to disagree that its better than nothing and also hard to deny that cheating in competitive realtime multiplayer PC games isn't a huge problem.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#158

Post by temporarrry0923 »

fuckcensorship wrote: post #152
temporarrry0923 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure in other games, yeah. Newell is opposed to kernel anti cheats, though, so probably not in CSGO. But other games now look at CSGO and make kernel AC's a selling point (literally Valorant's selling point), so yeah.

I think time will prove that Gaben made the correct decision by focusing Valve’s efforts on AI anti-cheat rather than following this kernel anti-cheat trend. It might be the only hope for a viable anti-cheat in the future if hardware based cheating becomes more commonplace. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/cheat-maker-brags-of-... Besides that, Riot is already losing the cat and mouse game with cheating in Valo…

>Even if kernel anti-cheats worked perfectly, they still wouldn’t be able to detect newer hardware based cheats which run entirely on a second PC leaving nothing for a kernel level anti-cheat to detect.

If it got to this point, to continue your metaphor, the mouse is nearly extinct. The point is not to eradicate cheating, it's to stop the bleeding. Valorant cheats don't even have to do this btw (really only necessary for incredibly extreme cases, see lohousedev and sparkles' video)

Do you know how easy it would be to stop 90% of cheating, at least for a few weeks, in CSGO? It's so easy I figured it out by dumping cvars with a server plugin when I was 14. There is zero way for a legitimate player to have certain cvars set, only a cheat would; yet, cheating is still a massive problem in CSGO.

VACnet has been actually really good, so I agree that that's a better avenue. In addition I am still against kernel AC's (speaking as a legit player, not as an ex-cheater). But the cat-and-mouse game is effectively over if 95% of the mice die.

Valorant's cheating is NOWHERE NEAR csgo. Someone I know on Valorant's AC team actually said they're ramping up (vaguely) so fingers crossed?

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#159

Post by lotophage »

22c wrote: post #151
userbinator wrote: post #139

It's a cat-and-mouse game, where the mice basically have infinite time to spend on anti-anti-cheat... and dare I say it, countless young people probably got their head start in learning about computers, programming, reverse-engineering, etc. by playing this "meta-game". I know some people who were otherwise completely uninterested in the typical STEM courses at school, but highly skilled at the sort of low-level know…

I don't doubt any of that but what I don't understand is where these guys are getting all their accounts from. I feel as though if I were making a hack for a game, I'd get numerous accounts banned in the process (which means needing to buy more and more copies of the game). A youngster getting into reverse engineering surely does not have deep enough pockets to spend several hundreds of dollars on buying the game ove…

CoD warzone is free to play. The paid accounts I always assumed were either hacked or bought with stolen credit card numbers.

Re: Call of Duty Adds Kernel Level Driver for Anti-Cheat

#160

Post by lobocinza »

maccard wrote: post #97
krono wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EA and Rockstar banned people from Battlefield 5 multiplayer and GTA online for having modded their single player games. Google for a few minutes and you'll come across plenty of horror stories and news items. But of course the real reason they would love to prevent anyone from tampering with the game is so they can sell more single player cheats such as experience booster packs.

They do? I googled it and it's full of "I accidentally left my mods on and connected to GTAO and got banned", not " I was banned for playing modded single player games"

Yep. https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/25o2411812k47...

Banning on single player would be silly. But GTAO is another story. It's designed as a cash farm. You have to grind missions, buy shark cards or use cheats. So as I understand they will ban anyone if they detect it's using mods/cheats. But GTA anti-cheat systems are weak and sessions are P2P or at least were.

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